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Monday, July 26, 2021

The catastrophe begins: Yanks trade two prospects for a 28-year-old bullpen lugnut with an ERA near 5.00

The front office is not done destroying the Yankee legacy. Having tortured us over the last 11 years, they're now working on the next 11.

Go back into quarantine, everybody. The Yankees apparently intend to drain the farm system in exchange for a run at the final 2021 wild card playoff birth. 

Today, they traded infielders Hoy Park, 25, and Diego Castillo, 23, to the Pirates for RH reliever Clay Holmes, 28, going on 35. 

Holmes' ERA is 4.93 over 44 relief appearances. (Note: The Yankee leader in appearances is Chad Green - with 40. Green has been hanging on by a thread lately, and this guy has been used even more.) In four years with Pittsburgh, he has a career ERA of 5.57. Clearly, he's found a home in the Yankee bullpen. 

Park - a virtual Moonlight Graham - appeared for one pitch with the Yankees: last week's waterboarding by Boston, when he pinch-hit in the eighth with the game on the line. He swung at the first pitch, broke his bat, and grounded out to first. And that was that. In Scranton, he had been tearing up the International League - .307 batting average and 11 HRs. He can play everywhere, bats left and steals bases, clearly a guy who had no future with the Yankees.

Castillo had a breakout season at Double A - hitting 11 HRs and batting .277. He too can play almost anywhere.

Wow. This trade deadline week is going to be a horror show. 

20 comments:

Celerino Sanchez said...

They would’ve been better off getting the Holmes guy from Holmes on Homes. At least he could’ve helped out around the stadium in addition to having a 5.00 ERA.

mik said...

"This trade deadline week is going to be a horror show." -- True

This year has been a slow moving horror show. I've been calling this roster a zombie team who show occasional signs of life, just enough to fool you in to believing they may make a full recovery, only to see them fall back into a coma.

I honestly don't know the answer. Hal wants his money, Cashman wants his control and Boone just wants to keep his job and be liked by everybody.

It adds up to = "Horror Show!"

Rufus T. Firefly said...

Javier Vasquez wasn't available?

Celerino Sanchez said...

Playing the role of Scott Procter this year will be Clay Holmes

Anonymous said...

Cash should have to tell Nick Turturro in person prior to any trades. That I would pay to see.

Kevin said...

Let's not get too emotional over Park. He's having a nice season in AA, at age 25. But after he got his espresso with the big club, he was outrighted on waivers, meaning that any team could have claimed him for free. The only problem was that he would have to put on the roster. The other guy suffers from limp stick syndrome. So we got a lug for two guys that would have been Rule fived. From what I've been reading, we are loaded with those guys. Gotta love that rich as owl shit farmland.

Celerino Sanchez said...

I just wanted to hear John Sterling say "Hoy Parks One!"

Anonymous said...

Good for Park, and bad for the Yankees, the only team in MLB that would have preferred Odor to Park. That's it. No one should devote another minute of his time or another cent of his resources to this team. Cashman is not only stupid, but seems to suffer from some serious cognitive/emotional disorder. Boone is a hapless mediocrity, managing each inning with the mincing desperation of a man on a frayed string. Hal Steinbrenner is an inbred cipher.

You guys want to continue to root for a slow-motion implosion masquerading as a baseball team? Enjoy yourselves. This trade presages the end of the Yankees as they were once known. They are now a past without a future.

Anonymous said...

I thought the Yankees were always looking for guys who can play any position. But they opted for Odor and Wade over Park. I haven't seen Park play, but we've seen Wade and he's nothing special, despite his speed. I think taking a chance on Park would've been the smarter move. Well, someone in Pittsburgh was thinking the same thing. I guess they didn't want Wade.

The Hammer of God

Joe of AZ said...

Hi I'm Brian Cashman and I approved this (lameass) message

Kevin said...

EVERY SINGLE TEAM IN BASEBALL COULD HAVE HAD PARK FOR FREE, WHEN WE NEEDED THE ROSTER SPOT. Nobody felt that he was worth a lousy roster spot, for free! I think that Park's worth is pretty well summed up. Face it, we probably don't have five players in that shitty farm who will be remembered in ten years. And God knows I've been watching and waiting.

Kevin said...

Wade sucks, maybe he could help the Jets.🙄

Anonymous said...

KEVIN IS A LIAR AS WELL AS A MORON. Right before the trade deadline Cashman was not about to leave a potentially useful minor-league trading chip exposed to be had for nothing. Kevin makes this shit up to sound like an expert--but he's a psychotic and moron.

Anonymous said...

Here's an explanation from another site that explains why Kevin DOESN'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK HE IS TALKING ABOUT:

"[Park] was replacing a player on the COVID list so the Yankees were able to add him to the active roster without adding him to the 40 man roster. So he didn’t have to clear waivers when he was sent down. He was rule 5 eligible after the season so they would have had to protect him. So was Castillo so that was probably a major factor here."

FUCK YOU, KEVIN, YOU IMBECILE. You and your fabrications and dopey anecdotes, obsessively posting your ignorant, deranged drivel here and on other sites in the intervals of perusing your child porn collection.

Joe Formerlyof Brooklyn said...


To ease the tension: Story 7/26 posted on Tauchman. Turns out he pitched an inning for the Giants. His fastball got up as high as 82MPH (!!!).

But here's the money paragraph:

Saturday’s experience left Tauchman with a career ERA of 9.00, a number almost as ugly as his batting average this season: .177. In 62 game since being traded by the New York Yankees in April, Tauchman is hitting .173 with with 51 strikeouts in 62 games.

Obviously, a mistake to trade this guy, eh?

Dantes said...

Trades like this make me wonder if Cashman has someone print the blogs out for him and he decided to give a big fu to the fans. Oh, you want Park? Nah, have some more Wade,over there surviving more purges than Betty White

JM said...

Holmes' big selling point is that righties are batting .173 against him. If only he could face the Yankees' lineup every time out, he'd be an All Star.

Anon, calling Boone a hapless mediocrity is an affront to mediocrities everywhere. He's much worse than that.

We need more guys like Wade who are blindingly fast. Of course, it would help if they could also hit, which is not one of Wade's strong points.

Anonymous said...

After mulling it over and taking all this in, I still think it would've been better to see what Park can do. After he plays a few weeks, then make a decision on which one to keep. (Still a small sample size, I know, but most of the time, with 50 at-bats, you will get an idea of what a player is capable of.) The club chose Wade, Odor, and Gardner over Park. I think that's what it comes down to. Wade has hit very poorly. Odor was so bad that Texas pays his entire salary to play for us. And Gardner is obviously in the twilight of his career. And the guy we got in exchange is a bullpen lugnut with a lousy ERA. Trade for trade's sake?

And let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Park sucks and was never a "prospect". WTF was he doing in AAA? Yankee scouts and coaches are seeing this guy everyday. A decision has to be made within 2-3 years if it was a mistake to sign him as an international free agent. If they really thought he was crap, they should've traded him years ago, not hung on to him for 7 years. Would the Rays have hung on to this guy for 7 years if they thought he was worthless? If Park is crap, then it automatically follows that the Yankee front office is incompetent for hanging on to him this long.

The Hammer of God

Yankee Daddy Roger said...

I still don't understand this aversion to left handed hitters who aren't named Odor. I agree with Anon. Instant Karma: All we are sayin, is Give Park a chance!

Danny Tartabull said...

This one hurt me. Hoy Park was actually exciting. How do we think our guys are going to spin a 4 ERA into gold?