Yankees Shouldn’t Go All In Yet

Facing elimination tonight, the Yankees are pulling out all the stops by announcing that CC Sabathia will be available out of the bullpen tonight, even though he started Game 5 on Wednesday and threw 112 pitches. For his part, CC says that he “could throw 45 to 50 pitches” on one day’s rest. My question – should he throw any?

Yes, the Yankees have to win tonight or their season ends. But they also have to win tomorrow or their season ends. As often as the “take it one game at a time” cliche is run out there, the Yankees actually have to take it two games at a time, because winning just one doesn’t really do them any good. Winning tonight is critical, of course, but so is winning tomorrow – they are of equal importance. And I’m not sure that using Sabathia in relief tonight is the best use of resources in effort win both games.

The working assumption is that a pitcher’s quality of performance goes up with each off day they get between starts (to a point, anyway). If we accept that premise, then Sabathia should be more effective tomorrow than he would be tonight. We don’t have nearly enough data to quantify the difference between a starter throwing a few relief innings on one or two days rest, but we should be able to safely assume that there is some difference, even if we don’t know how much.

If they use Sabathia tonight, they would essentially be borrowing win probability from tomorrow night’s game in order to increase their chances of winning Game 6, but the potential quality difference could make that a bad trade-off. Using made-up numbers to illustrate the point, let’s say these were the respective probabilities of winning each game if Sabathia was used in relief tonight versus tomorrow.

Sabathia relieves tonight.

Game 6 – 55 percent
Game 7 – 40 percent

Chance of winning both: 22 percent

Sabathia relieves tomorrow night.

Game 6 – 50 percent
Game 7 – 50 percent

Chance of winning both: 25 percent

Under this scenario, the Yankees would increase their odds of winning tonight but decrease their odds of winning the series. Now, these numbers are not real, and in reality using Sabathia in relief for an inning or two is not going to make a difference of this magnitude in either game, so this isn’t some kind of colossal screwup if he pitches tonight. But I do think the win-Game-6-at-all-costs mindset misses the bigger picture.

You have to win Game 6 to force Game 7, absolutely. But you have to keep the overall goal in mind, and that is to win both games. My guess is that the Yankees best chance to win both would be to save Sabathia for tomorrow, when he may be more effective. I understand the temptation to use him tonight, but I think the Yankees may be better off if they resist that urge and try to win tonight’s game with the rest of their bullpen.