Jake Cousins was an unlikely success story last year. Will he be able to retain a key bullpen role this season?
Bullpen reclamation projects have become something of a cottage industry for Brian Cashman and the Yankees’ front office in recent years. Last year, the team developed Luke Weaver from a failed starter to the shut-down closer on a pennant-winning team. They also found a diamond in the rough in the person of a well-traveled right-hander whose services the worst team in baseball had decided they no longer needed.
2024 Stats: 38 IP, 2.37 ERA, 4.06 FIP, 1.05 WHIP, 12.6 K/9, 4.7 BB/9, 1.2 HR/9, 0.1 fWAR
2025 ZiPS Projections: 45 IP, 4.00 ERA, 4.21 FIP, 1.30 WHIP, 8.68 K/9, 4.2 BB/9, 1.2 HR/9, 0.1 fWAR
Jake Cousins broke out last season after the White Sox traded him to the Yankees for cash just after Opening Day. Following a promising first two seasons working out of Milwaukee’s bullpen, Cousins regressed in 2023, struggling at both the major and minor league levels before getting dealt to Houston. The 6.00 ERA he registered for their Triple-A squad led to his non-tender and signing to a minor-league deal with the White Sox.
Over the course of the 2024 season, Cousins worked his way from a low-leverage depth option to a legitimate part of the back end of the Yankees’ bullpen down the stretch and into the playoffs, a run that included eight holds and even the first save of his career in an August game against the White Sox club that spurned him just a few months earlier. He accomplished this while essentially throwing just two pitches (Cousins threw his four-seamer only six times all year). Cousins’ slider is his bread and butter, a filthy pitch with 6.6 inches more break than the MLB average against which opponents hit .141 last year and which worked as a put-away pitch 28.7 percent of the time.
Cousins’ sinker, which he threw a bit more than half as often as his slider, was a plus pitch as well, holding opponents to a .162 batting average and just two extra-base hits in 215 opportunities. In combination, the two pitches led Cousins to elite whiff and strikeout rates, both of which stood out in a Yankee bullpen that mostly featured groundball pitchers.
The flaw in Cousins’ game, as has been the case throughout his career, was control. The 30-year-old walked 20 in 38 innings last year, creating traffic on the bases that occasionally came back to bite him. This came to pass during what was a difficult postseason for Cousins, who allowed five runs in as many innings, two of which were scored by players who he put on base via free pass. This trouble with walks is why Cousins’ FIP was nearly two runs higher than his ERA — and why fWAR, which relies on the three true outcomes, regarded the pitcher as roughly replacement-level despite his excellent run prevention while bWAR, which considers ERA, rated him more favorably.
Looking ahead to 2025, those control issues lead most to project regression. That said, if Cousins’ impressive peripherals on both the slider and sinker are sustainable, he should be a valuable weapon as a middle-inning bridge to Devin Williams and Luke Weaver. Still, his status as a pre-arbitration player making a modest guaranteed salary and with a limited track record will mean Cousins will need to perform to stick in what will likely be a crowded bullpen picture in 2025.