Larry Rothschild: Resign Or Not To Resign?

Hooray! Larry Rothschild may be back?! I don’t know if I should be celebrating yet and maybe you are feeling the same as me. I guess I just don’t feel very confident in our coaching staff right now. We are a young, rebuilding team. What we have been doing hasn’t worked for awhile now so the idea of change is understandable. I am just not so sure of the alternatives.

So Cashman held his annual “State of the Yankees” address, and there was no earth shattering news. The Yankees aren’t going to spend a bunch of money this off season. The offense sucked (here is looking at you Alan Cockrell) leading to more of my feelings with HOT & COLD from last week. Last but not least, pitching is going to be the main focus this off season. All Yankee coaches are under contract except Larry Rothschild.

We have heard a lot of comments when it comes to Rothschild here on BYB. Sure, he has the knowledge and the Yankees were lucky enough to steal him from the Cubs…..but should he come back? I don’t know. The Yankees seem to be more interested in “power” pitching then command and refining skill sets and if that is the case, what’s the fascination with Rothschild?

If the Yankees can go back to commanding pitches and focus on making quality pitches then I think there is a case to be made to keep Rothschild. The problem here is we are not seeing a whole lot of success stories for this. Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman really made Rothschild look good right before they were traded away.

 If you want to be critical, a case like Luis Severino shows what went wrong and why Rothschild shouldn’t keep his job. Severino was a dominant front of the order pitcher in 2015 and this season nothing seemed to go right for him. He ended up losing his starting role and was sent back down to the minors only to be called up late in the season in a relief pitcher role. Severino was never supposed to be a relief pitcher and I don’t think he should be. It’s too early to make that decision but he needs better mentoring from a pitching coach but is Rothschild still up for the job?

The Yankees have missed the post season in three of the last four seasons and have made consecutive changes to their hitting coach so could the Yankees finally change their pitching coach too? Based on all of the rumors it seems unlikely. Multiple sources including MLB Trade Rumors are reporting that the Yankees and Rothschild are trying to work out a deal to return HERE.

The Yankees definitely need to get a pitching coach signed pretty quickly and while I am not 100% sold on Rothschild, I really can’t think of any other coaches out there that may be ready to take on the job and better develop our young talent. The Yankees are in a tough rebuilding mode. Rothschild already has the reputation and knows the existing pitchers on hand. If he can get the pitching staff to focus on mechanics and quality he may be the best answer…..but again like last week I am on the fence.

What do you think? Who should the Yankees go after if they don’t resign Rothschild? Man I am glad I only have to write about this stuff instead of making these decisions.

 –Jeana Bellezza, BYB Senior Writer & Editor
  Follow me on Twitter: @NYPrincessJ