Dellin Betances

Dellin Betances stood 6'8" on the mound, threw upper-90s heat with a curveball that made grown men look silly, and turned himself into the best setup man the New York Yankees had in years. From 2014 through 2017 he made four straight All-Star teams (an absurd stretch for a non-closer), and for a while, he was as automatic as anyone in the sport not named Kimbrel or Chapman. Then it got complicated. It usually does.

From Grand Street to the Bullpen

The Yankees drafted Betances in the 8th round out of Grand Street Campus in Brooklyn back in 2006 and paid him $1 million to sign -- a record bonus for that round at the time (somebody in scouting saw a lot in a lanky, hard-throwing teenager most of the league had passed on six times already). He spent years grinding as a starter in the minors, all projectable frame and shaky command, before the club moved him to the bullpen full-time. That's when it finally clicked.

His MLB debut on September 22, 2011, was a mess: two-thirds of an inning, four walks, a hit batter, two runs against Tampa Bay. Not exactly a trailer for what was coming, unless you squinted hard at the walk total (that part, unfortunately, stuck around).

The Best Setup Man in Baseball

That 2014 season is the one people still bring up. Betances went 5-0 with a 1.40 ERA and struck out 135 batters in 90 innings -- a Yankees single-season record for a reliever, and the most by any big-league reliever since Carlos Marmol back in 2010. He made the All-Star team as a rookie and never really left that conversation for four years running.

By 2016 he'd formed one-third of "No Runs DMC" with Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller -- Betances's first name plus his teammates' last names, a nickname a writer named Diane Firstman coined and the Yankees eventually licensed into real T-shirts with Run-D.M.C.'s blessing. That trio struck out roughly 42% of every hitter they faced together. Best bullpen in baseball, right up until the front office traded Miller away that July in the middle of the 2016 fire sale.

The Wheels Wobble

Here's the part that doesn't make the highlight reel: the same electric stuff that made Betances nearly unhittable also came with real control problems, and by 2016 and 2017 the walks piled up. In February 2017 he lost an arbitration hearing, asking for $5 million and getting awarded $3 million instead -- routine enough, until Yankees team president Randy Levine got on a conference call afterward and ripped into Betances and his agent publicly, calling him a pawn in his agent's scheme to reset reliever pay. The union's Tony Clark called it unprofessional. Betances called it unfair to be dragged into a room and "trashed... for about an hour and a half." Neither side covered itself in glory, and the relationship never fully recovered.

The control issues showed up at the worst times, too. In Game 4 of the 2017 ALDS against Cleveland, he walked Yan Gomes on six pitches and nearly hit Francisco Lindor before walking him too, in a scoreless, no-out jam that Tommy Kahnle had to clean up. Freakin' brutal timing for a guy who'd been automatic three years earlier.

The Ending

Betances missed most of 2019 with a shoulder impingement and a lat strain, finally making his season debut on September 15 in Toronto. He struck out Brandon Drury for what he thought was the third out of the inning, hopped off the mound, and partially tore his left Achilles tendon on the landing. His last pitch in pinstripes doubled as the moment his Yankees career ended, on a play with no bat and no ball in play. That December, the Yankees let him walk, and Betances signed a one-year, $10.5 million deal with the crosstown Mets, reuniting with former teammate Carlos Beltran, by then their manager.

Four All-Star teams, a Yankees strikeout record for relievers, and a front-office beef that never really cooled off -- that's the whole Betances file. The stuff was never the question. It's just that between the walks and the wear and tear, the Bronx only got the full version of him for about four years. Wish it had been longer.