When the Yankees welcome setup man Brian Bruney back later today, it will be the first time they can go into a game knowing who will pitch the 8th inning in a close game in nearly two months. Well, I guess CC Sabathia counts every five days, but I digress. As much of an eyesore as the bullpen has been this season, Tyler Kepner points out that the Yankee relievers have quietly pulled it together in June thanks to the work of four men: David Robertson, Phil Hughes, Phil Coke and Al Aceves. They’ve combined to allow just 25 baserunners and 5 earned runs in 23 innings this month, striking out 23. Of those four, only Coke broke camp with the team out of Spring Training.

As I was wont to point out in April, the bullpen at the end of the year will look nothing like the bullpen that started it. Edwar Ramirez and Jon Albaladejo have been banished to the minor leagues in favor of Robertson and Hughes, kids with upside that can actually put a fastball by a hitter once in a while. Jose Veras has gone from trusted setup man to janitor (get it, mop up man? haha … okay fine I stole that one from Joe). Damaso Marte’s injury thrust Al Aceves into high leverage spots, and Brett Tomko has been serviceable while keeping Bruney’s seat warm (before Friday’s meltdown he had a 2.53 ERA). As of this very moment, only three members of the Opening Day bullpen are still on the active roster: Mariano Rivera, Phil Coke, and the aforementioned Mr. Veras.

This isn’t anything new either. Last year’s Opening Day bullpen consisted of guys like Albaladejo, Billy Traber, LaTroy Hawkins, Kyle Farnsworth and Ross Ohlendorf. By the time September call-ups rolled around, Mo and Bruney were the only relievers left standing from the Opening Day squad. The year before that you had Mike Myers and Scott Proctor and Sean Henn start the year just beyond the right left-centerfield fence, none of them lasting the season. That’s the beauty of not spending big money on volatile relievers: flexibility.

The 2009 bullpen has gotten progressively better each month as bodies were shifted in and out until the right mix was found. They went from a 6.46 ERA and a 1.51 WHIP in April to 4.04 & 1.39 in May to 3.29 & 1.17 in June. With Brian Bruney coming back today, expect those June numbers to get even better, because frankly the dude’s been money since the start of last season. Yeah yeah yeah I know it’s only 43.1 IP with two pretty serious injuries mixed in, but in those 43.1 innings he’s allowed just 21 hits and struck out 46. He also cut his walk rate down to 3.7 BB/9, hardly eye popping, but worlds better than the 6.9 mark he put up in his three seasons prior to that.

As Joe pointed out yesterday, one of the current members of the bullpen will go bye bye to make room for Bruney. Bryan Hoch confirmed with Joe Girardi yesterday that will in fact be a pitcher-for-pitcher move, so any worries about the 13-man pitching staff should end. It would be absurd to option David Robertson given his work during his latest call-up (13.5 K/9, .472 OPS, SSS warning), and such a move would have me seriously questioning the front office’s desire to field the best team. That leaves Tomko and Veras as the two candidates to go, and as bad as he’s looked at times, Veras is ten years younger than Tomko. It really doesn’t matter who they keep and who they cut, because whichever guy stays will be working super low leverage mop up innings anyway. Keep Veras, he’s younger and has a better arm.

Earlier this season Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi repeated time and time again that they would ride it out and see if the bullpen corrects itself before doing anything drastic. While no one would be opposed to adding a Huston Street at the right price, the relief corps seem to finally be headed down the path towards effectiveness.

Photo Credit: Jarrett Baker, Getty Images

Anyone reading this post of mine should first read Joe’s very thorough and level-headed recap of last night’s Yankee disaster. While I was busy cursing at the TV and calling for Joe Girardi’s head, Joe managed to talk me down.

That is, until Joe Girardi dared to rationalize his decision to have Mariano Rivera. Kim Jones asked him if he considered using Rivera, and Girardi replied: “I was going to if the situation arose, but the situation did not arise.” Rivera, by the way, is still sitting in the Fenway bullpen, waiting for the situation to arise.

Later, Girardi said that he would have used Rivera for four outs but not five or six. To me, that makes no sense. Rivera would have thrown an extra seven or eight pitches to get outs five and six. Once he enters the game for a save longer than one inning, he has to warm up twice anyway. So the Yanks should maximize the outs they get for him. (Related: I dread the day Mariano Rivera isn’t around. It’s coming up on us rather quickly.)

Anyway, after the game, my sister and I were having it out on G-Chat, and apparently, she too could manage the Yanks. Victoria said:

I wanted Rivera to pitch 6 outs immediately when there were two on and no out. Obviously, Rivera…It was SO. OBVIOUS. It really disturbs me that i keep thinking of the obvious things to do that aren’t done. I’m a stupid little girl. No one’s even telling me. I’m thinking of them all by myself. I really should manage the team!!!! Or, like, someone’s senile grandmother.

Someone’s senile grandmother indeed.

Our half-jokes aside, this problem stretches back beyond Joe Girardi’s unwillingness to learn from his previous high leverage mistakes. When push came to shove tonight, when CC Sabathia was at 120 pitches, when the game was on the line, the Yankees had no one in the bullpen outside of Mo upon whom they could rely to get outs. Gone are the days of Graeme Lloyd, Jeff Nelson, Mike Stanton or even Steve Karsay and, yes, Tom Gordon. If the starters don’t go eight, the Yankees have to hold their collective breaths and pray for the best.

Last night, the game was Al Aceves’ to lose. He was tossed into a no-win situation and walked away with, well, no win. Phil Coke helped out as well. Tonight against the Mets, it might be Jose Veras’ turn to inherit some less-than-optimal situation or maybe David Robertson and Brett Tomko get the call. I’m not inspiring too much confidence, right?

The Yankees of course don’t want to be in this position. The best laid plans had Brian Bruney and Damaso Marte splitting the eighth inning/set-up duties. Both have missed most of the last six weeks. While Bruney should be back next week, Marte is still a few weeks away, and we don’t know how effective he’ll be. Even just getting back one would be enough. With Bruney, last night’s game takes on a completely different tone when Sabathia leaves.

But outside of Bruney, the Yankees need bullpen help. Last month, Joe pondered the potential relief help. He examined Chad Qualls, Jose Valverde, Huston Street and Russ Springer. Today, Ken Rosenthal says those are exactly the names under consideration by the Yankee brass, and officials have already expressed interest in Huston Street.

It never makes sense to give up much for a reliever. They break down; they lose their ability to get outs; they are replaceable. But the Yankees’ relief corps need some relief right now. With the draft behind us and the trade deadline seven weeks away, the Yankees will kick the tires on a whole bunch of relievers. Who wins Yankee Bullpen Roulette is anyone’s guess, but it better be someone who can throw strikes and get outs. For better or, in my opinion, for worse, Rivera won’t be in for those six-out saves the Yankees need so desperately.

After watching Chien-Ming Wang pitch out of the bullpen yesterday, I’ve decided I like him out there. Well, not him specifically, but I definitely like that type of reliever. It’s one reason Al Aceves can be valuable to the Yankees this season: the ability to pitch multiple innings out of the bullpen. The problem with having just Aceves, though, is that if he pitches three innings, as he did Friday night, he’s not available for a couple of days. So when, two days later, the Yanks need another long relief appearance, it’s nice to have a guy like Wang to fill that role.

It’s become standard practice for baseball teams to carry seven relievers on top of their five starters. This leaves the bench somewhat depleted, but for a team like the Yankees which normally has a stellar one through nine, it’s not much of an issue. That doesn’t meant that the way they construct the bullpen is right, though. In fact, with seven guys sitting out in the pen it might be time to rethink how they pick the relievers on the staff.

The general preference seems to be filling the pen with a bunch of one-inning, or even one-batter, guys. Sometimes they’ll go two, but for the most part you see a new reliever every inning after the starter exits unless he’s remarkably efficient, or the manager wants to play match-ups. But is playing match-ups necessarily the right move? After all, baseball is a game based on randomness. Anything can happen at any given time, and so playing lefty-lefty sometimes doesn’t work out. The percentages are supposedly in the pitcher’s favor, but probability, especially in an environment like baseball, isn’t exactly like flipping a coin.

What I’m getting at is the question of whether there’s an opportunity to capitalize in the bullpen. Start after start, we see starters exiting after six innings. That means three relievers between the starter and the end. Sometimes one of those relievers is Mariano, but what about those other two? Sure, you could have a lights-out eighth inning guy, but he can’t pitch every day. That, in fact, is one of my criticisms of Joe Torre’s “three-headed monster” schemes. If starters aren’t pitching past the sixth, you can’t just toss Quantrill-Gordon-Rivera every day. Torre did, and we saw the results at the end of the season.

What if the Yankees decided to use Aceves and one more designated long-man to fill multiple innings out of the pen? This would cost just two roster spots, leaving four more non-Mo spots in the pen. That goes to one-inning, high percentages guys. Think Bruney, Marte, Coke and eventually Melancon. So when A.J. goes six innings one day, Aceves can come in and finish the start. If there’s a one-run lead in the ninth Mo can come on. If he’s not available, Aceves can just finish what he startedrelieved.

If on the next night the starter can only go six, then you have the second long man to fill in. Again, Mo can pitch the ninth in a close game, or the long reliever can just finish it out, as he would the third inning of any start. It’s possible, in fact, that on these two consecutive games none of the one-inning relievers gets the ball. The long reliever is the guy who can take the game to the end (or, again, Mo can finish it).

This works well with the Yankees, who have a number of pitchers who can go deep into games. Sometimes CC will just finish what he started. Others he’ll leave only one or two innings left for the bullpen. This is where the one-inning guys fit in. When CC, A.J., and Andy go seven or eight, they can each pitch an inning in relief. Or, gasp, one could pitch two innings.

A while back, Phil Coke spoke about the bullpen not having defined roles. Well, this would shore up that problem nicely. Players A and B are long men. Players C, D, and E are one-inning guys. Player F is a LOOGY. Mo is Mo. Roles defined.

One of the biggest questions raised here would be of where to find a second long man. There are 18 weeks left in the season, not counting the All-Star week. If you can give one of the long men six innings a week (two appearances of three innings or three appearances of two innings), that comes out to 108 innings. They Yankees could, if they could find a way to guarantee he gets to his innings goals, slot Phil Hughes into that spot. It would allow him multiple-innigns work, keep him at the major league level, and also make him available, given proper notice of course, for spot starts, which would further increase his innings totals.

This idea is very rough and not even half-baked. It’s something I thought of while watching Wang pitch in relief of Hughes today. I’m also not married to relegating Hughes to this role. In any case, it seems like a creative way to utilize the team’s pitching surplus. Create a role called “finisher.” That reliever is called upon to pitch multiple innings and finish games. And, as always, Mo can finish the tight ones. Beyond getting more guys more innings, it is also a way to keep the one-inning guys fresh.

(Plus, if they can slot two quality guys like Hughes and Aceves into the long roles, they might not even need to carry 12 pitchers. If those guys are pitching every other or every third game and the starters are taking it to the seventh or eighth in the rest, it would seem the team could get by with just six guys in the bullpen. As an aside, it would also make sense to have a option-able guy on the bench so that the team could call up another reliever in case of emergency.)

How could we expand upon and refine this idea so it would work for the Yanks this year? The idea is to limit the usage of the crappy relievers, maximize the innings of the guys who are pitching well, and get guys like Hughes and Joba to their innings totals. It would seem that letting them go longer in the pen would be one solution. So how can the Yanks make it work?

As Jonathan Albaladejo nearly gave the game away in the 8th inning yesterday, I was sitting in Yankee Stadium, apoplectic at the Yanks’ reliever’s inability to throw strikes. After striking out Jason Kubel, a good hitter, in the 7th, Albaladejo lost it. He walked Michael Cuddyer, allowed a first-pitch single to the weak-hitting Carlos Gomez and then walked Nick Punto, the Twins’ number nine hitter who is batting just .200/.304/.221 this season.

With one out and the bases loaded, Brett Tomko came in, and as I cringed in my seat, I e-mailed Joe. “I can’t deal with Girardi’s bullpen management. It’s awful,” I said. Joe came back to rightly defend the Yanks’ skipper: “He’s working with nothing. I have no problem with the moves he’s made today.”

In hindsight, Joe was, of course, right. The Yanks didn’t have Phil Coke available, and bringing in Edwar Ramirez or Jose Veras would make just as little sense as bringing in Tomko. The Yanks escaped that bases loaded situation thanks to an amazing play by Mark Teixeira at first base, and the pen lived to see another day.

Following yesterday’s walk-off win, the Yanks’ pen now ranks 12th in the AL in ERA. The team’s relievers have thrown 114.2 innings and have allowed 115 hits while waking 58. That’s a WHIP of 1.51. The relievers’ 108 strikeouts are impressive, but the 25 home runs allowed tops the American League. With Boston’s pen leading the AL, it’s no stretch to say that the Yanks’ bullpen is responsible for the team’s third-place showing right now.

Over the weekend, Peter Gammons dropped another one of his notes column, and in it, he briefly mentions the Yanks as bullpen buyers. I don’t need to be Peter Gammons to know that, but the ESPN scribe tosses out some potential targets for those teams looking for bullpen help. He writes:

The Dodgers are on the prowl for relievers; so are the Indians, Yankees and Twins. But the teams holding pitchers expected to be available believe the market will only get increasingly bullish. And few teams are ready to throw up white towels.

Among the list of relievers expected to be available are Houston’s Jose Valverde, Colorado’s Huston Street, Oakland’s Russ Springer, Pittsburgh’s John Grabow and Baltimore’s Danys Baez. Boston might be willing to move Manny Delcarmen, who might be able to close in the National League, but they’d trade him only for a significant bat.

If those pitchers make up the bulk of the relief market and those teams are going to be “increasingly bullish,” I shudder for the future of any potential bullpen trades. Last year, the Yanks shipped Ross Ohlendorf, Jeff Karstens, Jose Tabata, and Dan McCutchen to the Pirates for what was then the best bat on the market and the best lefty reliever. Based on Gammons’ early report, it sounds as though it will cost just as much this year to land a decent pen arm.

Of those Gammons mentions, only Baez and Street are at all appealing. Grabow is struggling in Pittsburgh right now; Russ Springer is old enough to have played on the same team as Matt Nokes and Andy Stankiewicz; Jose Valverde is a ticking time bomb on the mound. Baez is having a decent season after a few bad years, and Street can pitch in the AL when healthy. As the Rockies paid an arm and a leg for him, he’ll cost as much at or near the deadline.

In the end, then, I guess we’re going to war, for now, with the bullpen we have and not the bullpen we want. I’m sure David Robertson and Mark Melancon will get second or third cracks at it. However, we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of Brian Bruney. If he returns healthy and effective this week, that might just be the push the Yanks need to shore up the ends of their games.