NEW YORK — The name attached to the record is the one that stops you. Mariano Rivera. Now after 22 years, Brent Headrick is closing on him.
Rivera was the greatest closer the game has known. He was the last man to wear Yankees’ No. 42, a first-ballot Hall of Famer with a plaque in Monument Park.
For two decades, a single-season mark he set has sat mostly untouched, shared only with a teammate from that same 2004 season. It is not a save record or a strikeout record. It is quieter than that, and in some ways harder.
This season, a left-hander the Yankees plucked off waivers has been chasing it down, one clean inning at a time. He was not supposed to be here. He began the year as a depth arm and became one of the most trusted relievers in the bullpen.
Now the math is close enough that the question has to be asked out loud.
Brent Headrick leads the majors in scoreless appearances, and he is closing in on one of the most remarkable records in Yankees history. Rivera and Tom Gordon each posted 65 scoreless outings in 2004, a shared franchise single-season record. Headrick entered the weekend with 52, the most in baseball, and has kept adding to the total during the Yankees’ winning streak.
With more than a month left in the regular season, Headrick is within roughly a dozen clean outings of matching two of the most reliable arms the franchise has ever run out of a bullpen. For a 28-year-old claimed off waivers from the Twins, that is a stunning place to be.
What Rivera and Gordon did in 2004
The record Headrick is chasing came from one of the deepest bullpen tandems in Yankees history. In 2004, Tom Gordon set up and Rivera closed, and both were nearly untouchable in the innings that decided games.
Rivera saved 53 games that year, tied for the most in a single season in franchise history, and led the majors. Gordon set up in front of him, going 9-4 with a 2.21 ERA over a league-heavy 80 appearances. Between the two, each recorded 65 outings in which he allowed no earned run, the shared record Headrick is hunting.
That scoreless-appearance total is the number in play. Not total games, and not saves, but outings where a pitcher entered and left without an earned run scoring against him. It is a measure of consistency, and it rewards a pitcher used often and trusted in tight spots.
Headrick has been exactly that. He owns a 1.55 ERA, and his scoreless-appearance total is already the most by any Yankees pitcher through the club’s first 120 games in franchise history.
The workload that comes with the chase
The pursuit has a cost, and the Yankees are watching it closely. Headrick’s innings total is by far the highest of his four-year career, and he is being used almost daily in a division race full of close games. Pitching coach Matt Blake did not hide the tension between winning now and protecting a valuable arm.
“Obviously it’s a concern when you get to this volume of work,” Blake said. “But it’s something we’ve just got to monitor down the stretch and be smart about trying to win every game versus trying to set ourselves up for October.”
Headrick has tried to manage the load by controlling everything around it. He told reporters he is stripping his routine down to the essentials so the volume does not wear him out before the games that matter most.
“All of my workload is coming from the game,” Headrick said. “But I’m still able to be built up and go out there with as close to the best version of myself as I can.”
He has also refused to dwell on the mounting count, treating each outing as its own task rather than a piece of a chase.
“It’s crazy to think about how many appearances it’s been,” Headrick said. “But nothing in the past matters. That’s all over with. Today matters, and when tomorrow comes, that’s what I’ll worry about.”
The two 2004 records Headrick is chasing at once
Here is the wrinkle that makes this season rarer than the Rivera comparison suggests. Headrick is not chasing one 2004 Yankees record. He is chasing two, and they measure different things.
The first is the Rivera and Gordon mark of 65 scoreless appearances, a test of how often he keeps the slate clean. The second is Paul Quantrill’s franchise record of 86 total appearances, also set in 2004, a test of sheer volume. That 2004 team leaned on its relievers the way this one does, and Headrick is on pace to approach both marks.
Headrick made his 65th total appearance on Aug. 19, on pace for more than 80, a level no Yankees reliever has reached since Boone Logan in 2012. The scoreless record and the volume record are two sides of the same story: a reliever the Yankees cannot stop calling.
What Headrick means for the Yankees bullpen
The record chase matters because Headrick matters to the Yankees’ October hopes. The club declined to add a significant reliever at the trade deadline in part because it believed in arms like his, and the bet has paid off. New York owns one of baseball’s best bullpen ERAs, and Headrick has been near the center of it.
Reinforcements should ease his burden. Ryan Weathers, Clarke Schmidt and Will Warren could all provide bullpen innings in October behind a rotation fronted by Cam Schlittler and Gerrit Cole, giving Aaron Boone more ways to protect leads without leaning on Headrick every night. That depth is what could keep him fresh for the games that decide seasons.
For now, though, the Yankees keep calling his name. Every clean inning nudges him closer to Rivera and Gordon, and every appearance nudges him closer to Quantrill. The team’s caution and its needs are pulling in opposite directions, and the games keep coming.
Where the chase stands now
Headrick sits in the low-to-mid 50s in scoreless appearances, roughly a dozen shy of a record that has carried Rivera’s name for more than two decades. With the Yankees chasing Tampa Bay in the AL East and playing the tight games that put him on the mound nightly, the opportunities will keep coming.
Whether he gets there depends on two forces pulling against each other: how often the Yankees use him, and how carefully they decide not to. A waiver claim who began the year as an afterthought is now close enough to Rivera’s name to make the question real. The answer will be written one scoreless inning at a time.
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