Yankees’ Luis Cessa is making it work with a unique pitch mix

Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports When assembling their bullpen for the 2021 season, the Yankees probably viewed Luis Cessa as more of a low-leverage pitcher as opposed to one in the same tier as Aroldis Chapman, Chad Green, or Darren O’Day, for example. He is the quintessential good-but-not-great bullpen arm that hasn’t always been “good” in the past.

For his career, Cessa has a 4.24 ERA and a 4.75 FIP — respectable numbers, for sure, but nothing special. Midway through the 2019 season, however, he discovered that better outcomes would result from an increase in his slider usage.

In the second half of that 2019 season, Cessa used his slider 50.8 percent of the time according to FanGraphs, and had…