TORONTO — I’m bullish on the Yankees using an opener in the playoffs, although that stems from a bearishness on their actual starting pitchers.
I’ve changed my perspective on this because the Yankees’ starters haven’t sufficiently changed their performances.
You might consider this an odd time to float this idea, since Saturday afternoon marked the 2019 Yankees’ first loss in 12 times deploying an opener. Yet even in this game, a 5-4 defeat to the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre, opener Chad Green did his job by tossing a shutout first inning, and his successors Stephen Tarpley (two runs in 2 ¹/u2083 innings) and Chance Adams (one run in 1 ²/u2083 innings) kept the Yankees in the game.