Yankees look good, bullpen wobbly

Nine games into the season, the Yankees look like a good team with one loud flaw. They took two of three from the Marlins over the weekend and opened 2026 at 7-2, first in the AL East, after a 5-1 trip through San Francisco and Seattle. The offense has already put up 47 runs, and the rotation has kept games orderly enough for that to matter. The problem is what happens after the starters leave (baseball-reference.com, baseball-reference.com). That is not a minor detail, because the Yankees spent real effort trying to make the bullpen a strength. Last summer they imported David Bednar, Jake Bird, and Camilo Doval after a stretch in which their relief ERA was the worst in the American League since July 1. This spring, the club set up Bednar for the ninth inning, with Doval, Fernando Cruz, and Tim Hill around him, and kept Bird and Brent Headrick on the Opening Day roster after strong camps. The plan was obvious: shorten games again (mlb.com, mlb.com, mlb.com). For most of the first week, the rest of the roster made that plan look almost incidental. Aaron Judge homered in his first Yankee Stadium at-bat of the year in the April 3 home opener, and Ben Rice added a homer and a two-run double in an 8-2 win over Miami. Earlier in the road trip, Paul Goldschmidt and Rice powered a series win in Seattle that pushed New York to 5-1. The early shape of the lineup is easy to see: Judge still bends games, Rice keeps forcing himself into the middle of the picture, and the Yankees are scoring enough that a merely competent bullpen should be enough (espn.com, mlb.com, mlb.com). The starters have done their part too. Max Fried, the biggest rotation addition, gave the Yankees 6 2/3 innings on 104 pitches in the April 5 finale against Miami and left with a 4-3 lead. Will Warren had already worked 5 2/3 innings in the opener. Even the games that got messy did not start messy. They became messy when the bullpen was asked to turn six or seven clean innings into 27 outs (espn.com, espn.com). Saturday was the warning shot. The Yankees beat Miami 9-7, but they did it while allowing 15 hits and turning the late innings into a public stress test. Giancarlo Stanton drove in two runs and even stole a base, helping New York claw ahead, yet the relief line told the real story. Bednar got the save, but he needed 33 pitches to record it, and the Marlins kept putting runners on until the last out. A box score can say “save” and still describe a problem (mlb.com, mlb.com). Sunday made the point harder. Ben Rice hit a three-run homer. Fried did enough to hand over the lead. Then Bird entered in the eighth and got four batters, none of them cleanly. He walked one, hit one, allowed a single, and was charged with three runs in a 7-6 loss after four scoreless appearances to begin the year. Bird said afterward that he had given the Marlins “freebies,” which is a useful word for the entire Yankee bullpen right now. The unit is not getting overpowered. It is giving away leverage, one baserunner at a time, and forcing a strong first week to feel less stable than a 7-2 record should (mlb.com, espn.com, mlb.com).