Can the righty stave off disaster as a rotation option?

Photo by New York Yankees/Getty Images

For at least a month or so, the Yankees are going to need someone to step up into the starting rotation. It’s impossible to completely fill in for Gerrit Cole, but the difference between true replacement level and kinda being average is a significant one. If the Yankees had had a true-talent average replacement for Aaron Judge last year, things wouldn’t have been quite as bad as they were.

At time of writing, the Yankees seem focused on internal replacements for Cole rather than external, and one of the potential options is Cody Poteet. The former fourth-round pick signed with the Yankees back in January and has received some buzz from Aaron Boone. His 4.45 ERA in 19 career games (9 starts) is part of the reason why the Yankees got him for the league minimum, but the team does have a track record of taking seemingly innocuous pitchers and getting something out of them. Now that they need someone to stabilize the rotation for the first weeks of the season, maybe Poteet can be that guy.

The first thing to note is that Poteet is essentially returning from a lost season and a half after undergoing Tommy John surgery in August 2022. While he did make one relief appearance for the Royals’ Triple-A affiliate last year (scoreless!), camp with the Yankees has been his most consistent ball in some time. Part of that is a downside, but part of that also represents an opportunity for the Yankees to “mold” a new Poteet entirely.

Prior to TJS, Poteet had a fairly conventional approach with high fastballs paired with a changeup that was probably his best pitch. That changeup should probably stay a part of his arsenal especially against righties, though he has a career ground-ball rate of 42 percent without a fastball that moves much or is focused on the shadow zone. To me, this indicates potential for the Clay Holmes approach.

Holmes of course has an above-average strikeout rate, but only 77th percentile among relievers, in an era where guys like Félix Bautista can sit down 40-odd percent of batters faced. Instead, Holmes relies on his sinking fastball around the edges early in counts, trying to engineer the right kind of contact, before using a sweeper-slider combo to take strikeouts where they’re available.

In Poteet’s case, introducing more movement to the fastball probably allows him to take more advantage of that nascent contact ability, and the fact he’s shown he can command both the changeup and a slider makes the Clay Holmes approach make sense. We only have 5.2 spring training innings to go on, but a 35-percent strikeout rate paired with a 58-percent ground-ball rate is sorta Holmesian.

So, maybe there’s a new approach Poteet can work towards that can make him a contributor in the rotation. The other problem is unfortunately he hasn’t thrown more than five innings in an outing since May 23, 2021. So he would need to get stretched out or else paired with another pitcher in a piggyback role.

No one pitcher is going to be able to replace the workhorse load that Cole can bear, but as Poteet returns to regular action the Yankees will also be mindful of his workload. While there’s something intriguing in Cody’s raw performance, he can’t be the only solution to the problem of Cole’s absence.