Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Watching that smug little Jose Altuve, awaiting the Cashman purges

Eight weeks from now, baseball's winter meetings will open in some wretched, Trumpian hell-scape of golf and cleavage. By then, the Death Star will have already begun clearing the gristle from 2019, with Brian "Cooperstown" Cashman dealing bodies like a slumlord flipping Section 8 high-rises. Cash has no choice. Without a culling of the herd, the Yankees will lose big in the upcoming Rule 5 draft, the weirdest realignment of personnel in all of professional sports.

In the Rule 5, each team gets to protect 40 players, leaving the rest of its farm system open to be poached. But there's a catch: The drafted player must remain all year on his new team's 25-man roster  In recent winters, the Yankees lost Mike Ford and Nestor (Octavio) Cortes Jr., only to have them returned in the final days of spring training. This year, both will surely be protected...

Unless they're traded first.  

Cashman's dilemma is simple: He has way too many MLB-ready players to protect. Thus, we should expect a whirlwind of minor trades designed to wrangle low-level talent for players they'd otherwise lose for a stack of Mallo Cup coupons.

Despite his considerable blind spots, Cashman has gotten good at this. For several years now, he's dealt Triple A meat for credible Rookie League arms, simultaneously culling and restocking the herd. Actually, he started in September, when Ryan McBroom went out the door for that venerable prospect from Kansas City, Jose Future Considerations. Yeah, it's a handful of magic beans, but beats the bar of Neutragena that comes from the draft. McBroom -- whom we once acquired for Brigadoon Refsnyder in a similar deal - had a solid year in Scranton. He looks like a Luke Voit type, and would surely have been drafted. So, maybe Future Considerations can pitch in Pulaski. 

In the meantime, to avoid having to think of that insufferable runt at 2B, let's look at the 40-man roster - the players we must soon protect.

Pitchers: (22) Paxton, Ottavino, Britton, Loaisiga, Kahnle, Heller, Green, Severino, Tanaka, German, Cessa, Garcia (Devie), Montgomery, Albert Abreu, Michael King, Cortes, Chance Adams, Happ, Tarpley, Clarke Schmidt, Luis Medina, Roansy Contreras.

Catchers (3): Sanchez, Romine, Higashioka.


Infielders (9): Bird, Voit, Ford, Andujar, LeMahieu, Urshela, Torres, Estrada, Wade.

Outfielders (7): Hicks, Judge, Frazier, Maybin, Tauchman, Stanton, Estevan Florial.

That's already 41, and it doesn't count the hangers-on, Tyler Lyons and Corey "Toe Tapper" Gearin, or the impending free agents Didi Greorius and Brett Gardner, two of the most beloved Yankees in the decade. Nor does it cover the possibility that Aroldis Chapman forgoes free agency to stay with the team. (It's hard to imagine Edwin Encarnacion returning, but you never know.) And then there is - gulp - Jacoby Ellsbury. (Note: There will always be Jacoby Ellsbury.) The Yankees are like that used car guy on TV: We're overstocked! Everything must go!

The Yankees' list of top prospects tilts heavy toward arms. In some rating systems, 8 of the top 10 are pitchers. That's exciting and depressing, when you ponder how many coveted elbows will go through the shredder. Sadly, it looks as though the franchise will rely on scouts - rather than my opinions - to determine who to protect.  

The 14-year-old in us wants Cashman to bundle five certifiable clods in exchange for Max Scherzer. If we're lucky, he will get someone who warrants protection in 2022. It's not a crap-shoot. It's a lottery. But soon, a bunch of Yankees will disappear, and only then will the true hot stove league begin. For now, we're stuck licking our wounds and watching Altuve. 

23 comments:

  1. I'm watching Soto and Corbin. Stuff the runt.

    ReplyDelete
  2. In Scotland during my football (soccer) carreer I was know as 'the wee man'

    Like Altuve I am a short arse. Im 5 foot 6 inches

    So part of me likes to see a fellow midget do well but not against the Yankees of course

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am here to say HAPPY INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY to our very own CAPSLOCK!

    ReplyDelete
  4. The 4-D Chess Master on Adderall, Brian "Hotshot" Cashman, Wizard of Connecticut, High Lord of Backroom Back-Stabbing, Regent of the East.

    And by his side on all future pitching decisions, "King of the Garbage Dump," Larry Nutsack Rothschild, wrangler of men, destroyer of boys, High Lord Torn Ligament and Protector of the Crown Jewels.

    Together, they rode down to Texas, calmly puffing on their crackpipes and concocting plans to dominate the East next year with their fantastic and fantastical pitching acquisitions.

    LET US PRIASE THEM!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hear! Hear! We all cheer for ALLCAPS!

    ReplyDelete
  6. There are a bunch of names on that protection list that I wouldn't bother protecting. But I guess it's better to protect and then trade them than just letting somebody walk off with them and get nothing.

    I SAID, THERE ARE A BUNCH OF NAMES ON THAT PROTECTION LIST...

    Oh, never mind.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Why the fuck would you protect Happ or Stanton or ...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ken, that is a righteous 'stache you're sporting. You're making my womanly thoughts distracted.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Mighty WinWarblist,
    My 'stashe is it's own entity, it can do anything and everything>LOL!!!!!!!!
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    ReplyDelete
  10. Just curious, who is everyone here rooting for in the Series? I'm always torn between these two thoughts:

    1) If the Astros win, we can justifiably say, well, of course we lost, we lost to the best team in the world.... they won the Series, after all.

    or

    2) No fucking way I'm gonna root for the team that sent us home.

    Hmmm....

    Thoughts?

    ReplyDelete
  11. I'm gonna go for "No Fucking Way"!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Oh, and are we expected to go after a pitcher for 40M/yr, 7 years who gave up 5 runs in a World Series game? The Yanks whose performance is measured in the World Series?

    ReplyDelete
  13. I'm rooting for Washington. They deserve a ring every 95 years or so.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Nats! Preferably by a firestorm that razes most of Texas.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Spare San Antonio and the towns of Sabinal, Hondo, Alpine and yes, even El Paso. Everything else, whatever...

    ReplyDelete
  16. And Uvalde, please spare Uvalde...

    ReplyDelete
  17. Austria's Only Baseball FanOctober 23, 2019 at 8:11 PM

    Scotland! As I mentioned in a post nobody read because they were still recovering from, well... ya know. But I am 169cm, exactly 1cm taller than Altuve. And I am 60kg, which is 15kg lighter. And I know that I should never mention this on our beloved site because someone, somewhere, will never let go of it, but I was a professional ballet dancer in my late teen and early 20s (and later artistic director and ballet master of a small modern dance company). But I can still fit into the 501s I wore when I was in my 20s!

    And the MLB merch department finally got some Scherzer T-shirts back in stock in size SMALL, so I ordered one.

    Jesus, they earlier had a massive sale but all the shirts were like XXXXXL! I can't even begin to imagine...

    ReplyDelete
  18. Rule 5 sucks but the intended purpose is admirable. It lets career minor league players have a greater ability to escape their current MLB organization. Often good players get buried on the depth chart.

    That said, we probably aren't in as bad of shape as Duque contends because there are exceptions to Rule 5. Basically, you're talking about players over 23 (depending on what age they signed.If signed at 18 you have to have played 5 years of MiLB, 4 years if you signed at 19. So that removes almost all player personnel from the rookie and A leagues and a good portion of the players who went to college and then re-entered the draft. So roughly 25-26 year olds. So we are talking AA and AAA players with limited ability to stick in the majors with their current teams.

    I don't know where our guys fit into all of this but we will lose a few decent depth players.

    ReplyDelete
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