The flaw for which major league decision-makers are most routinely over criticized is their preference for the safe and familiar. As a columnist or fan, it’s easy to deride the Yankees as foolish for preferring mediocre veterans like Mike Stanton and Paul Quantrill, who were cut by the team yesterday, to unproven young players who are likely no worse – and possibly quite a bit better – and will certainly be paid a lot less, thus freeing up money for other needs.

But it’s also easy to forget that there is a lot of value in predictability. In any given season, the vast majority of players will do more or less what they have done in the recent past, and the Yankees were hardly insane to expect that Stanton and Quantrill would do what they usually do, which is pitch well enough to help the team.

With all that said, it’s easy to take risk aversion too far. Every single reliever who’s pitched significant innings for the Yankees this year has been an expensive veteran. Even Tanyon Sturtze, who sported a 5.47 ERA last year as an emergency starter and long reliever, is making $850,000 this year; any team that can run Sturtze, Quantrill, Stanton, Buddy Groom, Felix Rodriguez, and Tom Gordon out in front of Mariano Rivera has clearly developed something of a bullpen monomania. For that reason, the release of Stanton and Quantrill doesn’t really strike me as a case of unfair scapegoating, but a considered and reasonable attempt to fix a genuine problem.

There are two dangers in building a bullpen the way the Yankees have. The first is that a lack of diversity in bullpen construction meant to put a floor on the performance of your relievers ends up putting a ceiling on it as well. When every one of your relievers has an easily traceable track record, the chances that any one of them will collapse are greatly lessened (though not, as the Yankees have shown this year, eliminated). But so are the chances that any one of them will break out and do something you wouldn’t have thought possible.

The other is that by choosing safe veteran pitchers, you have to pass over pitchers who have established themselves as better. Ask Colter Bean, the 28-year-old reliever whose two innings for the Yankees this year brought his career total all the way up to 10 1/3. Bean has the misfortune of not being able to break a pane of glass with his fastball, but he’s an excellent pitcher nevertheless. He’s been pitching for Triple-A Columbus since 2003, during which time he’s posted a 2.68 ERA in 191 2/3 innings, striking out 228 and walking 69. He’s probably not the guy you’d want facing the middle of the Red Sox’ lineup with the game on the line, but anyone who strikes out more than a batter an inning for three years running in Triple-A deserves a real shot in the majors.

Minor-league performance matters. The difference between Triple-A and the majors is a lot smaller than people think, and it’s mainly that the stars play in the majors. If a pitcher can strike out a man an inning in Columbus, he can be trusted to pitch to the lesser players in any big-league lineup.

This realization is the secret to the success of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, who for years have been building one of the best bullpens in baseball out of players no one has ever heard of, and who get paid nothing. 38th round draft picks, minor-league veterans who have been released by seven teams, 20-year-olds in their first seasons as relievers – all have pitched brilliantly for the Angels over the last few seasons.

Some of the Angels throw gas, and some of them practically roll the ball up to the plate. None of this seems to matter to the organization so long as its pitchers are successful. The Angels’ willingness to overlook occasionally sketchy backgrounds in their quest for pitchers who simply get hitters out has become a huge advantage for them.

That doesn’t sound like a big secret, and it isn’t. The Angels are as risk-averse as the next team; they’re just willing to consider what a pitcher has actually done in the minor leagues, rather than coming up with reasons to dismiss it. With the recent changes in the Bronx, the Yankees finally look like they’re ready commit to a similar common-sense approach. The three pitchers who are effectively replacing Quantrill and Stanton – Scott Proctor, Jason Anderson, and Wayne Franklin – have minor-league records that indicate they can be very effective relievers if spotted properly.

Proctor and Anderson strike out about a man an inning, with good control; neither is going to turn into Goose Gossage, but they’re big improvements over what the Yankees have been running out on the mound. Franklin has repeatedly been used as a starter in the majors, and failed in the role, but as a minor league reliever he’s been effective. These are good pitchers, who will do more to help the Yankees win than the men they’re replacing. They certainly can’t be worse.

The odd thing of it all, though, is that Colter Bean remains on the farm. He’s better than Franklin, Proctor, and Anderson. If the Yankees are going to admit that what you do matters more than who you are – which is what this latest round of changes amounts to – they ought to go all the way and admit that it’s also more important than how you do it.