David Bednar and Yankees bullpen face 3.28 ERA pressure
david bednar has become part of a Yankees bullpen problem that looks clean on the stat sheet and messy when the game tightens. The group owns a 3.28 ERA, second in the majors, but it has also let the club down often recently.
Cashman’s January view
Brian Cashman was still projecting confidence at the end of January. He said, "As we enter spring training, we definitely are a different bullpen right now than we were last year, because we’ve had some departures," and then added, "But we also have some young pups pushing up the ladder, we have a Rule 5 pick we selected, we just made this addition [Chivilli]. So I think it’s a work in progress with a lot of quality choices. Some might be emerging talented players from our system, some might be more imports like [Chivilli]."
That view was built around change, not certainty. The Yankees had departures, young players moving up, a Rule 5 pick, and Chivilli added to the mix, but the current version has not stayed steady enough to protect leads cleanly.
Doval and Bednar wobble
Camilo Doval continued to scuffle. Bednar, meanwhile, kept giving fans heart palpitations regardless of the outcome. Those two names sit at the center of the Yankees’ late-inning unease because the bullpen’s few reliable arms have been run out time and time again.
The problem is not a lack of options on paper. It is that the same small group keeps carrying the load, and the overuse is showing up in the kind of uneven results that have already cost the Yankees in recent games.
The 4-3 meltdown on May 9 brought the issue into sharper focus. The Yankees wasted a brilliant Cam Schlittler performance that night, and the loss fit the pattern of a bullpen that can look strong in aggregate while still cracking when the game reaches the late innings.
May 9 exposed the strain
That strain is the hard part for the Yankees. A 3.28 ERA sounds stable, but the recent sequence says the relief corps has two fixable problems: Doval has not settled, and Bednar has not offered the kind of calm finish the club needs after spending so many innings on the same trusted arms.
For now, the pressure lands on usage. If the Yankees keep leaning on the few dependable relievers while Doval and Bednar fight their command and comfort, the bullpen’s good overall number will keep hiding a much rougher night-to-night reality.
