ARLINGTON, Texas — Once they picked themselves up from Tuesday’s gut-punch of a loss, the Yankees were back in a familiar spot: having to reconsider the closer role.
With three and a half weeks left in the regular season, the ninth inning remains an issue after Clay Holmes blew his league-leading 11th save in a brutal 7-4 loss to the Rangers that knocked the Yankees out of first place in the AL East.
Aaron Boone once again left the door open for the Yankees to “consider everything,” citing the options they have at the back end of the bullpen. He had a similar response after Holmes blew his 10th save in the Little League Classic on Aug. 18, but then used Holmes for the next three save opportunities before Tuesday, which he cleanly converted each time.
The reality is that if the team had a clear-cut solution to replace Holmes — after only adding a pair of supplementary relievers at the trade deadline — it likely would have gone to it already.
“We’ll talk through it and do what we think is the best thing,” Boone said Tuesday night.
Holmes was pitching for a second straight day Tuesday, so he is unlikely to be used again Wednesday if a save opportunity arises regardless of what the Yankees decide about his role.
The Yankees may owe it to the team to give Holmes a breather and try someone different to close out games before they get to October. But who?
The three main candidates would be Tommy Kahnle, Luke Weaver and Jake Cousins. Of that group, only Cousins has recorded a save this season (against the White Sox last month on a night when Holmes was unavailable), though Kahnle has seven in his 10-year career.
Cousins may have the most closer-like stuff of the group, with a wipeout slider that generates plenty of bad swings. He entered Wednesday with a 2.73 ERA, 45 strikeouts and 14 walks across 33 innings this season, though he had allowed at least one run in each of his last three outings — including Tuesday’s eighth inning, when he did not receive much help from his defense.
Kahnle came into Wednesday with a 2.00 ERA, 38 strikeouts and 16 walks in 36 innings. He has lost a tick on his fastball — against which opponents are hitting .320 — but has leaned mostly on his changeup to get outs, though it remains to be seen how a changeup-heavy approach would work in the ninth inning. There are successful closers that depend mostly on one pitch, but it is often a triple-digit fastball or biting slider, not a changeup (especially one without much threat of a fastball to play off it).
Weaver, meanwhile, is a converted starter who has carved out a high-leverage bullpen role for himself this season and pitched well to a 3.33 ERA with 79 strikeouts and 23 walks in 73 innings. But he has never had a save opportunity in the big leagues, with most of his appearances this season coming in the seventh and eighth innings.
A potential wild card outside of that group is Luis Gil, but the Yankees for now appear committed to keeping him as a starter — because when he is right, he could be one of their best options to start a playoff game. The right-hander is scheduled to come off the injured list to start on Friday against the Cubs. And while moving Gil to the bullpen would solve the Yankees’ rotation crunch — and more importantly give them a relief weapon with overpowering stuff — it might not be realistic to ask him to pitch multiple times a week (never mind on back-to-back days) after being on a starter’s schedule all season and almost all of his career.
Another late-inning option, Ian Hamilton, could rejoin the Yankees this weekend if he gets through one more rehab outing healthy on Wednesday or Thursday.
He recorded a pair of saves last season (one of them a three-inning outing), but had not been as sharp this year before landing on the IL with a lat strain in June.