{"id":686134,"date":"2026-03-27T18:53:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T18:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/686134\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T18:53:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T18:53:13","slug":"yankees-mailbag-streaming-headaches-and-bullpen-musings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/686134\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees Mailbag: Streaming headaches and bullpen musings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">Good afternoon everyone, it\u2019s time to dive back into the mailbag and answer some of your questions. Remember to send in your questions for our weekly call by e-mail to\u00a0<strong>pinstripealleyblog [at] gmail [dot] com<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">ReadingYankee asks: <strong>I can\u2019t possibly be expected to keep so many streaming services for the sake of watching a handful of baseball games in a season. Will all of this streaming of baseball games have a point where it stops expanding? Or, perhaps a better question is will we ever go back to a one-stop service where an out-of-market family can watch ALL the games in a season?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Everyone is looking ahead to the 2027 season and the labor dispute that\u2019s sure to boil over into a lockout, and with good reason, but the media rights landscape that MLB is navigating may just be the second-biggest issue facing the sport right now. The league is pushing streaming heavily these past couple of years, securing deals with Apple, Amazon Prime, and now Netflix among the biggest names to get a foothold on covering regular season games. They\u2019re hardly the only league to be doing so, but MLB faces the dual issue of being a more regional broadcast sport compared to the others in the North American big four, and those regional networks are struggling right now. Turnover from bankruptcy has seen the likes of Bally Sports and the FanDuel Network already come and go in a lot of places, leaving many franchises in a bit of a bind with their day-to-day broadcasts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The Yankees haven\u2019t felt this side of the issue as much, thanks to the success of the YES Network freeing them up to be one of the few flagship stations that\u2019s thriving. However, that success then gets cut into by the league forcing a foothold for streaming, because any media rights deal is going to demand to see a premier franchise like the Yankees on their site. This leads to a massive headache for the fans, and at the same time isn\u2019t even pulling many new eyes towards the league \u2014 but it is bringing in a wave of revenue. I don\u2019t know how they can remedy these issues, but one thing is for sure: the league isn\u2019t slowing down on this front anytime soon, unfortunately.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Russo Radio asks: <strong>Why are we holding onto Blackburn as a sure \u2018pen member? What am I missing? It looks to me like he gave up basically five runs a game for years and still does the same now!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The simple answer is that bullpen depth is bullpen depth, and the team sees enough in Paul Blackburn to give him some room to throw in the bottom of the \u2018pen \u2014 at least to start the year out. He\u2019s only been with the team since the back-half of last year, but his numbers largely showed improvement since coming over from the Mets: his strikeout rate spiked from 16.4 percent to 24.6 percent, his walk rate dipped a bit to 6.2 percent, and while his ERA remained high at an unsightly 5.28 his FIP was a much more manageable 4.39, while his expected rates were significantly lower than that mark at 2.92 and 3.54 respectively. That\u2019s enough to showcase room for tinkering with Matt Blake and company, so while the early reserves of the pitching staff are being used to support the starting rotation with three regular members still out, Blackburn can stick around and work with the mop up role. There\u2019s the potential that he earns his way into some middle leverage, but at worst-case the Yankees move on once pitchers start to return and push the fringe starters back into the bullpen.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">treatycity asks: <strong>This applies to Winquest. Drafted as Rule 5 player the Yanks must keep him on their MLB roster the entire season, so he\u2019s on their 40-man. Let\u2019s just say that he stays on their 40-man the entire season, would he have three options available starting next season, if they need\/want to use them?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"\">To clarify, it\u2019s not enough for Cade Winquest to sit on the 40-man roster all year \u2014 he has to stay on the active 26-man roster, barring IL stints, all season in order for the Rule 5 restrictions to be lifted. Should he accomplish that, and log more than 90 days on the active roster in the case of a long-term IL trip, then he\u2019ll be freed up to the larger 40-man roster and regain the options in his rookie contract starting next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good afternoon everyone, it\u2019s time to dive back into the mailbag and answer some of your questions. Remember&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":686135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[82396,1936,1884,145508,1266,31976,62,38475,32582,95562,1290,67,132,68,2386],"class_list":["post-686134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball-games","tag-getty-images","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-media-rights","tag-mlb","tag-paul-blackburn","tag-sports","tag-streaming-services","tag-the-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-the-mets","tag-toronto-blue-jays","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-yankees"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116302657325888988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}