Texas Rangers starting pitcher Jordan Montgomery throws against the Tampa Bay Rays during the first … [+]
Jordan Montgomery arrived on the scene in 2017 as a respectable back end of the rotation piece for arguably the most fun Yankee team of the past decade. Serving as the fifth starter on a surprising 91-win team highlighted by Aaron Judge hitting 52 homers, he threw his curveball about 26 percent of the time for a .175 average and won nine games with a fairly respectable 3.88 ERA.
Six-plus years later, his presence is the subject of a debate about recent decisions made by the Yankees, who are on a bad run of whiffing on various transactions lately, resulting in their worst year since 1992 and some kind of meeting where the word audit is being thrown around.
The debate intensified late Tuesday afternoon when Montgomery began the second year of the 12-team playoff format with seven innings of six-hit ball for the Texas Rangers against the Rays.
His performance increased the concept of the trade for Harrison Bader being an all-time whiff on the Yankee part since Montgomery has 19 of his 38 career regular-season victories since becoming an ex-Yankee and eligible to grow facial hair at the 2022 trade deadline.
The move was made for multiple reasons, one being the optimism Bader would be productive in center field when he returned from plantar fasciitis. Bader was one of the few to hit in the postseason last year but got bogged down in injuries and struggled for the final six weeks of his tenure before the Yankees waived him and the Reds claimed him.
Another reason was because the Yankees traded Montgomery to St. Louis to get Bader after they acquired Frankie Montas, who turned out to be damaged in the elbow so extensively, he did not return until Game 161 of this year. Montas made a handful of mostly bad starts before getting hurt and was acquired about a month after an injured list stint with Oakland.
The other reason was because the Yankees were believed to be in a deal that would net them Pablo Lopez from the Marlins and that seemingly fell through when GM Brian Cashman was unwilling to include Gleyber Torres.
The way the Yankees saw it at the time, Montgomery was a spare part in their pitching plans for the postseason. He did not appear in the 2017 playoffs when the Yankees reached Game 7 of the ALCS and pitched four innings in the 2020 ALDS against Tampa Bay before being traded with a 3.11 ERA.
For various reasons and not including suddenly being allowed to grow a beard, Montgomery is a different pitcher with Texas than with the Yankees.
The curveball he threw so frequently saw its usage diminish slightly in 2020 to 22.1 percent with the changeup comprising 25.6 percent of his pitches. In 2021 when the Yankees rarely gave him run support Montgomery threw his changeup (24.4 percent) at roughly the same clip as his curveball (23.70. By 2022, those percentages were nearly identical.
It was the sinker that took noticeable increases in uses. This year, he threw it 42.6 percent of the time and last year it was at 34.6 percent, resulting in batting averages of .255 and .247 respectively. In his final full season as a Yankee, that pitch was thrown 21.9 percent of the time with hitters batting .359 against it.
In Game 1, his mix was the following: 26 four-seam fastballs, 24 curveballs, 23 sinkers and 20 changeups.
“Probably steady, similar usage, curveball, changeup, and then glove side, two-seamers and four-seamers,” Montgomery told reporters about the pitch mix.
Which leads to the question about if the Yankees were properly encouraging Montgomery to throw the pitch and improve on its effectiveness. Because it seems like his two recent employers are encouraging the pitch to be a main part of his arsenal which is why Montgomery being a former Yankee is among the main talking points about recent Yankee failures and the first day of the postseason.
“He’s a guy that can adjust on the fly if he thinks so,” Texas manager Bruce Bochy told reporters. “He’s got four pitches, and occasionally he’ll use one more than the other. But this is kind of what he’s been doing, using the fastball well, both sides. He can sink it, he can go up with it, and he’s got a couple breaking balls and changeup. He pounds the strike zone very well.”
It is certainly fair to wonder that and also wonder if Montgomery will be as effective once he gets a new multi-year contract in free agency from someone. He only was starting because Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer are injured.
Based on his first Game 1 start and 44 starts since leaving New York, it seems the Yankees did not get the most out of him, leaving fans to ask the simple question of “Why Can’t We Get Guys Like That,” something that seemed inevitable based on his recent comments to Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic ahead of the postseason.
“I’m just trying to get better every year,” he said to the Athletic. “It worked out. I think everybody in the Yankees’ organization I’ve ever been around knows how hard I work. So it was kind of bound to happen.”
And when it did start clicking, the debate about a bad trade began more earnestly.