Oh, the Yankees found the best reliever in baseball again

I’m thinking a lot lately about that axiom, the purpose of a system is what it does. There’s so much inertia in our lives, things happen because they’re designed to happen. That can be frustrating, horrifying, repulsive in the real world, but fortunately, we’re not talking about the real world today. We’re talking about baseball.

Wednesday’s series-clinching win over the Diamondbacks got a little hairy by the end of it, but we did get something of a coming out party for the guy I think might be the best reliever in baseball, Ian Hamilton.

Photo by New York Yankees/Getty Images

Hamilton threw 2.2 scoreless innings in Wednesday’s outing, striking out four D-Backs and holding serve in a tie game. He has not allowed a run in 2024, he has struck out 43.8 percent of men he’s faced, and hasn’t issued a single free pass — indeed, just one person has even reached base against him.

All this from a guy who had bounced between five organizations in three years before the Yankees inked him to a minor league deal ahead of last season. Ian Hamilton should not be this good, and yet…

The purpose of a system is what it does. That has downsides when it comes to the Yankees — they don’t push all the chips in year after year, and despite proclamations, they are perfectly content to be competitive, in the playoff picture every year, but never want to take on enough risk to be the odd-on favorite.

The upside to POSIWID is the Yankees’ continual development of nobodies into “oh my God did you see that pitch”-level relievers. Jonathan Loáisiga has a 2.89 ERA since giving up his attempts to be a starter in 2020. Clay Holmes has been one of the 15 or so best relievers in baseball after the Yankees acquired him in mid-2021. One is always cautious about sample sizes, but former NRI Nick Burdi is looking like another diamond in the rough early. Of course Michael King went from an unheralded trade piece with the Marlins to one of the centerpieces in landing Juan friggin’ Soto.

When the Yankees have struggled to develop in-house starters, and just one member of the much-hallowed Baby Bombers is still on the roster, this perpetual motion machine of relief arms stands out as perhaps the best thing the organization does. It’s also proven to be one of the best financial decisions the team’s made:

Season by season the Yankees are opening up more payroll space for other, harder-to-produce position groups. Now, whether that opened payroll has been used as effectively as possible is a different conversation, but it becomes very difficult to retain Aaron Judge or try and retain Juan Soto when you’re devoting $30 million a year to your closer and setup man.

Ian Hamilton, by the way, is making less than a million bucks.

This shift from buying to making leaves us wondering who a lot of the various names are once spring training opens up, but I have more confidence in the Yankees being able to produce the next great relief pitcher than any other player type. There will be some weird little trade where the clubs sends cash to a team in the midwest, and a year after I’ll be writing a similar version of this piece.

For what it’s worth, I need to disagree with my colleague Esteban. The best use of Ian Hamilton is right where he is right now. He’s less of a fireman, and more of the “hold the line” type. When you need to keep the score where he is, and you need six outs, there’s probably nobody in the current bullpen I want right now than Ian Hamilton.