Erik Boland: Yankees' bullpen has been everything Aaron Boone could have hoped for
Yankees relief pitcher Camilo Doval works against the Giants, his former team, during the ninth inning of a baseball game in San Francisco on Wednesday. Credit: AP/Jeff Chiu
SAN FRANCISCO — The Yankees left spring training feeling as good about their team entering a season as they had in probably more than a decade.
It had to do with what they felt was a deep, diverse lineup, complemented by a deep bench, with the best starting pitching depth they’ve had in years — even with Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon and Clarke Schmidt starting the season on the injured list.
The bullpen?
That was the one area that produced some questions. As the Yankees wrapped up the exhibition season, it was something Aaron Boone mentioned.
“Guys need to establish roles and establish themselves in the bullpen, especially early on,” he said. “There’s some competition for some spots for guys to elevate themselves or grab some roles.”
Before the Yankees completed a three-game sweep of the Giants with a 3-1 victory on Saturday night, Boone said that didn’t necessarily mean “set” roles beyond David Bednar, who is entrenched as the closer.
“[Depending on the opponent’s lineup], it could be Timmy Hill pitching in the eighth inning. We’ll see how it shakes out,” Boone said. “Because a lot of times the biggest moment is the sixth or seventh inning, you’re going to go through the heart of the order or something.
“Pitching in leverage, pitching in higher leverage. Look, everyone at some point, just based on the schedule and availability, is going to have to be thrust into a tough spot or a leverage spot. That’s part of it. Hopefully you have a couple of guys down there that step up or go to another level that allows them to be counted on, reliable people in some of the bigger spots in the game.”
Three games in, whomever Boone has called on has proved to be reliable.
Yankees relievers threw 2 2⁄3 scoreless innings in a season-opening 7-0 victory Wednesday night and followed that with 3 2⁄3 scoreless innings in Friday’s 3-0 victory. Four relievers threw a combined 4 2⁄3 scoreless innings to nail down Saturday’s win.
Bednar allowed the first two batters of the ninth to reach before striking out Harrison Bader and getting Patrick Bailey to hit into a 4-6-3 double play, the fourth turned by the Yankees (three of them behind the relievers).
“I have the highest expectations for those guys,” said Ben Rice, whose two-run double in the third made it 2-0. “We saw this series how good they can be. I think we’re going to continue to see more of that.”
It is too early in the season, of course, to know for sure. As longtime general manager Brian Cashman always says: “Bullpens are volatile.” That can be from year to year, month to month, week to week or even day to day.
Last season, the Yankees had as good a bullpen as any team 2 1⁄2 months into the season. The summer nosedive that followed had many culprits, not the least of which was a leaky bullpen.
Cashman tried to plug it at the trade deadline, adding three relievers, but only Bednar made a difference in a positive sense. The other two, Jake Bird and Camilo Doval, were varying degrees of bad, with the former getting banished to the minors after posting a 27.00 ERA in three appearances and the latter pitching to a 4.82 ERA in 22 outings.
Bird and Doval looked far different in spring training, though, and played key roles in this series.
Doval, known for a power sinker, threw a scoreless inning Wednesday night before resembling his 2023 All-Star self (with the Giants) on Friday by striking out the side. “Dominant,” Boone said. “The sinker from the side, looked like a split, and I thought really good pace and tempo to him filling up the strike zone.’’
“It’s not fun. It’s not fun. Honestly, all of his pitches aren’t fun,” third baseman Ryan McMahon, who saw plenty of Doval when both were in the NL West, said of his repertoire, which also includes a cutter and slider. “When he’s on, he really just has to be on with like one or two of them. But if he has all three of them going, he’s damn near unhittable.”
He added: “He’s thrown some incredible pitches. Like, if you look at them metrically, the way they’re moving, it’s similar, I feel like, to how they moved when he was having all that success. So it’s just getting him back, getting him confident in his stuff again and just chucking it up there. Because he can throw you three balls down the middle and it’s going to be really hard to square up when he’s got his best stuff.”
Bird, primarily a sinker-slider pitcher, had neither during his brief time with the Yankees in 2025. Many rival scouts thought he was gassed from overuse with the Rockies in the first half, something the Yankees pushed back on then but, being the Yankees, all but acknowledged as the likely reason in spring training.
Bird has looked good in his two appearances. On Saturday night, he escaped a first-and-third, none-out jam in the sixth to keep it a 3-1 game, striking out Willy Adames and getting Bader to hit into a double play.
“That was huge right there,” starter Will Warren said. “That was monster.”
Three games in, the Yankees’ bullpen has been just that.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
