{"id":732452,"date":"2026-06-12T19:17:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T19:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/732452\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T19:17:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T19:17:10","slug":"yankees-sequence-of-the-week-fernando-cruz-clinches-five-out-save","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/732452\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees Sequence of the Week: Fernando Cruz clinches five-out save"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fernando Cruz can certainly frustrate. But far more often of late, Cruz has dazzled with both dominant displays and gritty performances coming out of the bullpen. Perhaps no performance better encapsulates these game-changing abilities than his five-out save in the middle game against the Guardians Tuesday night. He struck out four of the five batters he faced including three in a row in the ninth to lock down the Yankees\u2019 3-2 victory in Cleveland. As impressive as several of the other Yankees pitchers have been, there was really no competition for this edition of Yankees Sequence of the Week.<\/p>\n

We join Cruz with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Chase DeLauter standing on first after drawing a leadoff walk. The Yankees cling to a 3-2 lead courtesy of Spencer Jones\u2019 first big league home run and the go-ahead solo blast from Jazz Chisholm Jr. in the eighth. The bullpen has performed spectacularly to this point in relief of a laboring Gerrit Cole, Paul Blackburn, Tim Hill, Camilo Doval, and Jake Bird have all put up zeroes following Cole\u2019s departure after four. Cruz has already worked his magic in the previous frame, inheriting a pair of base runners from Bird but striking out Travis Bazzana and getting Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez to line out to strand both in place. Angel Mart\u00ednez steps to the plate as the Guardians\u2019 last hope having already collected a pair of base knocks on the day.<\/p>\n

Cruz has been experimenting with varying his first pitch selection in recent weeks, usually looking to establish a called strike one with a four-seamer or slider to set up chase on the splitter for the rest of the AB. However, he has a single-minded approach in this spot, not wanting to mess around with either of his less dependable pitches. He throws perhaps the best splitter in baseball and goes full send with his number one pitch.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty obvious that Mart\u00ednez is sitting dead splitter in this spot, given the way he is able to track this pitch that starts as a ball above the strike zone and ends as a ball below it. His swing is matched perfectly to the movement of the pitch, but he\u2019s just a tad early as he rips it foul to the right.<\/p>\n

Despite seeing that Mart\u00ednez was all over that first pitch splitter, there\u2019s no flinch from Cruz. It\u2019s almost like he\u2019s saying, \u201cHere\u2019s my best against your best, let\u2019s see if you can beat me.\u201d He maintains supreme confidence in his splitter, knowing that if he executes to his spot, there are very few hitters in the league if any that can hit it.<\/p>\n

This is frankly an unfair pitch from Cruz. This splitter breaks downward ten more inches than the previous one. You can see the look of bewilderment on Mart\u00ednez\u2019s face as he just nicks the top of the ball for a foul tip into J.C. Escarra\u2019s glove. He swung exactly where he thought this pitch would end up based on the movement of the prior splitter, only for this one to dive downwards way more than he was expecting.<\/p>\n

Now that Cruz has shown he can throw the splitter in the zone and still get a swinging strike, he has Mart\u00ednez in big trouble with the count 0-2. If he can execute another splitter just a little lower than the one he just threw, the hitter should have no shot at making contact.<\/p>\n

Decent execution from Cruz, even better take from Mart\u00ednez. This splitter leaves Cruz\u2019s hand looking like an elevated, centrally-located strike before plummeting down and away almost into the dirt \u2014 just insane movement on the pitch and kudos to the hitter for not chasing.<\/p>\n

That ball doesn\u2019t change anything in this AB. Cruz still has the count leverage overwhelmingly in his favor and knows he can enforce his will upon Mart\u00ednez with one more well executed splitter.<\/p>\n

Swing and a miss, good night. Cruz caps of this untouchable sequence with his best splitter yet. The pitch travels about halfway to home looking like a meatball strike on the inner half. Just after the ball passes through the hitter\u2019s swing decision point, it drops off the table falling over three feet before it reaches Escarra. Mart\u00ednez has already started his swing before the pitch\u2019s movement kicks in, meaning it is actually impossible for him to make contact.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the full sequence:<\/p>\n

\"Courtesy<\/a><\/p>\n

Courtesy of Baseball Savant<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think it is a stretch to say that Cruz is the Yankees\u2019 most trusted reliever at the moment. He has by far the best swing and miss stuff of their entire relief stable. With David Bednar\u2019s recent upturn in form, the Yankees once again have a formidable duo for the final two (or more) innings of a winning ballgame. For anyone who may have missed the game on Tuesday or didn\u2019t get to see all five outs that Cruz recorded, I leave this for your viewing pleasure:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fernando Cruz can certainly frustrate. But far more often of late, Cruz has dazzled with both dominant displays…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85,116985],"class_list":["post-732452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-yankees-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}