Yankees Ignored Major Warning Signs About New Pitcher

As Boland noted, Bird struggled immensely in July to the tune of a 19.89 ERA across 6 1/3 innings. He was among MLB's top relievers through the end of May, posting a 1.67 ERA and 2.59 FIP with 39 strikeouts over 32 1/3 frames during that stretch, though his workload eventually came back to bite him.

Regardless, New York parted ways with infielder Roc Riggio and left-handed Drew Shields, who MLB Pipeline ranked as the No. 10 and 28 prospects in the organization's minor league system, respectively, in order to land Bird last Thursday.

In his first outing as a Yankee in the club's matchup against the Miami Marlins on August 1, Bird entered in the seventh inning while New York held a comfortable 9-4 lead.

The 29-year-old proceeded to give up a grand slam to Kyle Stowers, however, cutting the Yankees' lead to 9-8. Miami would eventually tack on five additional runs against fellow deadline additions David Bednar and Camilo Doval en route to a 13-12 comeback victory.

Bird's next appearance came in the 10th inning of Monday's series opener vs. the Texas Rangers after Devin Williams blew the save in the ninth. New York failed to score in the top half of the frame, and Josh Jung blasted a walk-off three-run home run off Bird to hand the Yankees their fourth-straight loss.

On Tuesday, Bird was optioned to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Boland shared his opinion that the organization may have felt as though it was capable of helping the right-hander make the proper adjustments and thus disregarded any red flags in his profile.

"I suspect, and this is just a suspicion, because I've seen this with the Yankees and trade deadline acquisitions in the past, starting with Joey Gallo as a good example, where their analytics wing decides, 'Well, we'll fix him. We've got all the answers. We've got our pitching lab.' Nobody likes to pat themselves on the back more for being 'cutting-edge' than the Yankees, and that they ignored basically the fact that there were some concerns industry-wide about Bird," Boland said.

Bird will look to regroup in the minors and eventually work his way back to the big leagues later this season, but the Yankees may have made a mistake by trading for him amidst his downward spiral.

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