Fernando Cruz can certainly frustrate. But far more often of late, Cruz has dazzled with both dominant displays and gritty performances coming out of the bullpen. Perhaps no performance better encapsulates these game-changing abilities than his five-out save in the middle game against the Guardians Tuesday night. He struck out four of the five batters he faced including three in a row in the ninth to lock down the Yankees’ 3-2 victory in Cleveland. As impressive as several of the other Yankees pitchers
have been, there was really no competition for this edition of Yankees Sequence of the Week.
We join Cruz with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Chase DeLauter standing on first after drawing a leadoff walk. The Yankees cling to a 3-2 lead courtesy of Spencer Jones’ first big league home run and the go-ahead solo blast from Jazz Chisholm Jr. in the eighth. The bullpen has performed spectacularly to this point in relief of a laboring Gerrit Cole, Paul Blackburn, Tim Hill, Camilo Doval, and Jake Bird have all put up zeroes following Cole’s departure after four. Cruz has already worked his magic in the previous frame, inheriting a pair of base runners from Bird but striking out Travis Bazzana and getting José Ramírez to line out to strand both in place. Angel Martínez steps to the plate as the Guardians’ last hope having already collected a pair of base knocks on the day.
Cruz has been experimenting with varying his first pitch selection in recent weeks, usually looking to establish a called strike one with a four-seamer or slider to set up chase on the splitter for the rest of the AB. However, he has a single-minded approach in this spot, not wanting to mess around with either of his less dependable pitches. He throws perhaps the best splitter in baseball and goes full send with his number one pitch.
It’s pretty obvious that Martínez is sitting dead splitter in this spot, given the way he is able to track this pitch that starts as a ball above the strike zone and ends as a ball below it. His swing is matched perfectly to the movement of the pitch, but he’s just a tad early as he rips it foul to the right.
Despite seeing that Martínez was all over that first pitch splitter, there’s no flinch from Cruz. It’s almost like he’s saying, “Here’s my best against your best, let’s see if you can beat me.” He maintains supreme confidence in his splitter, knowing that if he executes to his spot, there are very few hitters in the league if any that can hit it.
This is frankly an unfair pitch from Cruz. This splitter breaks downward ten more inches than the previous one. You can see the look of bewilderment on Martínez’s face as he just nicks the top of the ball for a foul tip into J.C. Escarra’s glove. He swung exactly where he thought this pitch would end up based on the movement of the prior splitter, only for this one to dive downwards way more than he was expecting.
Now that Cruz has shown he can throw the splitter in the zone and still get a swinging strike, he has Martínez in big trouble with the count 0-2. If he can execute another splitter just a little lower than the one he just threw, the hitter should have no shot at making contact.
Decent execution from Cruz, even better take from Martínez. This splitter leaves Cruz’s hand looking like an elevated, centrally-located strike before plummeting down and away almost into the dirt — just insane movement on the pitch and kudos to the hitter for not chasing.
That ball doesn’t change anything in this AB. Cruz still has the count leverage overwhelmingly in his favor and knows he can enforce his will upon Martínez with one more well executed splitter.
Swing and a miss, good night. Cruz caps of this untouchable sequence with his best splitter yet. The pitch travels about halfway to home looking like a meatball strike on the inner half. Just after the ball passes through the hitter’s swing decision point, it drops off the table falling over three feet before it reaches Escarra. Martínez has already started his swing before the pitch’s movement kicks in, meaning it is actually impossible for him to make contact.
Here’s the full sequence:
I don’t think it is a stretch to say that Cruz is the Yankees’ most trusted reliever at the moment. He has by far the best swing and miss stuff of their entire relief stable. With David Bednar’s recent upturn in form, the Yankees once again have a formidable duo for the final two (or more) innings of a winning ballgame. For anyone who may have missed the game on Tuesday or didn’t get to see all five outs that Cruz recorded, I leave this for your viewing pleasure:
