#yankees

#yankees

Harkey, 58, has served two separate stints as the team's bullpen coach. His first stint was from 2008-13, which included the World Series winning 2009 season. After spending 2014-15 as the pitching coach for the Diamondbacks, he returned as the Yankees' bullpen coach in 2016 and had been in that role ever since, until today's news. The club has generally churned out a strong relief corps in those ten seasons.

Maybe the Yankees can take some small consolation from the fact that they had three more postseason wins than the team that spent $765 million to steal Juan Soto away from the Bronx. Call that a Subway Series victory for Hal Steinbrenner. The Yankees' principal owner avoided being on the hook for Soto's onerous 15-year contract and still got five more sellout crowds at the Stadium - nearly a quarter-million beer-drinking, hot dog-eating customers - before the Yankees ultimately fell to the Blue Jays, 5-2,

The Yankees acquired Williams from Milwaukee to be their closer. He lost the job twice but rebounded and was solid in the final stretch and the postseason as David Bednar's setup man, although he did give up a two-run single that allowed a pair of inherited runners to score in the seventh inning of Game 4 as Toronto increased its lead from 2-1 to 4-1.

Schlittler, 24, who beat out Gil for the third rotation spot down the stretch of the regular season, struck out 12 in eight innings in the Yankees' 4-0 victory over the Red Sox in the deciding Game 3 of their AL Wild Card Series. He became the first pitcher in MLB history to throw at least eight scoreless innings with at least 12 strikeouts and no walks in a postseason game.

Possible clinches in the AL: The Yankees and Mariners are all but guaranteed a playoff spot, and today's games could remove the "all but" qualifier from that phrase. If the Yankees beat the White Sox, they'll clinch a playoff spot for themselves and also open the door for the Mariners to clinch a spot with a win over the Rockies later in the evening.

And that is: who between Cam Schlittler, a rookie who has dazzled with an electric fastball since taking over for the injured Clarke Schmidt in the rotation in early July, and Luis Gil, the AL Rookie of the Year who features plenty of electricity of his own in his fastball, starts in the third game of whatever playoff series the Yankees find themselves in next week.