Yankees’ Clarke Schmidt is ready to be a solution in the rotation

27% of pitches thrown by Clarke Schmidt were thrown over the “heart” of the plate per Statcast in 2022, in Spring Training he’s up to 35.8%. In terms of just in-zone pitches, 54.5% of pitches thrown by Schmidt in Spring have been in-zone, while in 2022 it was 50.4%. There’s an added aggression to Schmidt’s approach on the mound, and the cutter plays a huge role in that. You should credit Matt Blake and the Yankees’ pitching development for helping Schmidt with the shape of this cutter, but you should also credit Schmidt with making the adjustment on the mound to go out and pound the strike zone with his pitches.

This does one of two things; first, it helps a pitcher avoid walks, which, as mentioned earlier, affects your ability to prevent runs. K-BB% is a great indicator of run prevention, and Schmidt was below the league-average mark last year because of his high walk rate. Issuing fewer free passes also means shorter innings, which reduce in-game fatigue and can get a pitcher through the order more often and allowing them to eat up more innings. Secondly, this helps a pitcher generate more out-of-zone swings, and that’s something he struggled with in 2022.

Finding his confidence in the zone has led to a sub-3% BB% in the small sample we have so far in Spring Training, but it’s a sign that he could finally maintain a better-than-league average walk rate this season. Strikeouts, walks, and groundballs are metrics I’ll always value for pitchers because of their correlation with run prevention, and Clarke Schmidt isn’t any different.

Do the Yankees Have a Longterm Starter in Schmidt?

The only way for us to truly know is based on his 2023 season. I imagine the Yankees will have him limit his times through the order early on, and they certainly have the bullpen to do so. This seems like I’m complaining about Rodon’s injury being seemingly minor, but trust me, I’m taking Rodon over anyone in the sport when healthy outside of five or six other starters. That being said, it does create a weird situation when he returns where the Yankees are going to have to make a judgment call on Schmidt or German with just two or three starts under their belt in the 2023 season.

As big of a fan as I am of Schmidt, German’s a notoriously slow starter. He had an ERA of 9 and FIP of 9.46 through his first two starts in 2021 and an ERA of 6.39 through his first three starts of 2022. Schmidt on the other hand, could struggle early on in the ERA department but boast a strong K-BB%, but get ousted from the rotation even if he’s due for positive regression. It’s a weird situation where I don’t know if Schmidt is going to make enough starts this season for us to have a meaningful sample size to answer this question.

I certainly believe Clarke Schmidt has shown us incredible potential this Spring Training, but now he has to put everything together and take advantage of limited opportunities to stick in the rotation. At the very least, I think Schmidt is going to be a really good reliever. The Yankees have an arm that, in one way or another, will help this team immensely, and as the old adage goes, you can never have too much pitching. It’ll be interesting to see how the Yankees manage his innings and his workload, but what I do know is that Schmidt is pushing all the right buttons so far this Spring.