Tanking has a new name: "The risk-averse, performative rebuild."

Tanking: It's how GMs keep their jobs. It's so clean, so ruthless, so maniacally foolproof. Trade the old guy for a bunch of youngsters. Even if they all fizzle, you've bought yourself three to five years of work, while the verdict clarifies.

"The risk-averse, performative rebuild is increasingly no longer just a plea for patience to see a sound long-term plan through; it’s a vehicle for job security and for the public to defer judgment."

Kiley McDaniel, a former Yankee scout turned writer, has published a long piece on the age-old debate between stats and scouts. It's totally "insider baseball," so much that you'd probably find a well-worn printout in every restroom stall at Yankee headquarters. 

He says one reason for the current slow free agent market could be that every team relies on virtually the same, overbearing avalanche of analytics - and the suits are paralyzed by an endless, all-you-can-eat buffet of spreadsheets. It's a long read, but interesting, if you have no life. The nut of it: The successful front office must use both stats and scouts - (which is sort of obvious, eh?) and a key to success is identifying and keeping the good scouts, because a lot of the clipboard-wielding bastards are musky hound dogs, neck-deep in their own crapola. 

I believe that I speak for the entire Yankiverse when I say there is no excuse - absolutely none - for the Evil Empire to ever be outspent on scouting, organization, or the development of young players. That means soap in the showers, and I'm talking Irish Spring, not some generic brand of spiced lard.

The farm system/scouting is one area where the cheap, slimy owners have yet to impose caps on spending. And for years, the Yankees seemed to pull their first round draft picks out of a punch bowl: (Brackman, Bleich, Culver, Heathcott, Bichette, yeesh, shoot me!) In the last five, they've taken Ty Hensley (a bust due to injuries), Aaron Judge (I'll call that a win), Ian Clarkin (now traded, still viable), James Kaprielian (same), Kyle Holder (interesting glove, still viable) and Blake Rutherford (traded for D-Rob, Toddfather, Kahnle.) Judge, alone, makes it a success. (This year we took a pitcher still recovering from Tommy John surgery, so good luck on rating him a boom or bust.) 

When your team is winning, it's amazing how competent the front office looks. Five years ago, Houston was a joke. Now, they're the gold standard. Same with the Yankees. Before the 2016 sell-off, we were mired in quicksand, doomed to forever chase the one-game Wild Card. Now, the farm system seems to be brimming with talent, though you have to wonder how much of that is Yankee hype. 

Cooperstown Cashman must thread the needle here - win the Division this year without gutting the farms, because there will be no shortage of GMs looking to enact "the risk-averse performance rebuild." For me - and this is just the opinion of a sadly obsessed fan sitting under a foot of snow in Syracuse, NY - everything revolves around the fate of two prospects - Clint Frazier and Miguel Andujar. Frazier is the guy who - truth be told - hasn't put up great minor league numbers; he supposedly has "legendary bat speed," the verdict of scouts. Andujar is coming off a great year in Scranton; the numbers suggest he's ready. So will they stay Yankees? Scouts or stats? Or both? The future of the Yankees falls somewhere in between.