2. It amazes me how few voices across the Yankiverse seem to care about the farm system, which - there's no fun way to put this - was decimated yesterday. Unless you look closely, you'd think the Yankees gave up nothing, and that these opposing GMs are stupid. People seem to think the 1980s cannot happen again. Maybe this will work; maybe the Yankees will turn it around and make a run. But when you go trading prospects, as the Yankees did yesterday, you run the risk of getting badly torched. Will yesterday go down in history as the day we traded Rafael Flores? Or Roc Riggio? Or - gulp - both?
3. It sure would be nice to have a lock-down bullpen, shortening games to the sixth inning. Three days ago, we had Allan Winans. Now, we're stocked. But a central question remains: Will Boone blow it up?
4. Speaking of shortened games: Anthony Volpe. With Jose Caballero on the roster, either Volpe gets his shit together, or his games might start ending early. In his recent hostage videos, Boone has said of Volpe's errors - "That can't happen." Well, it's been happening, and people have begun using the "Y" word - yips - to describe Volpe's problem. His MLB-leading number of errors would be far worse, had he not been saved through May and June by a great fielding first-baseman.
5. Speaking of Caballero, he's the most intriguing pick-up of all. He's tied with O'Neill Cruz for the MLB lead in stolen bases, with 34. I assume he'll be a late-game pinch runner, unleashing pandemonium. Still, the guy gets thrown out 19 percent of the time, not good. By comparison, Jasson Dominguez has 16 SBs and been caught twice (11 percent.) BTW, Jazz is 14-4 (22 percent), and Volpe is 12-7 (too dreadful to calculate).
6. Speaking of The Martian, it will be hugely depressing if, as a result of these trades, he turns into a platoon player. Look, the guy is just 22. Twenty-two. You don't cap his development by benching him against lefties. Some of us here can remember Ron Blomberg, who was destroyed by a minor league platoon, one of the stupidest moves ever made by the Yankees. You say it can't happen again? Well, once they bench Dominguez against lefties, he'll begin to regress. (Also, in his early years, a struggling Bernie Williams was nearly pitched overboard. Not saying Dominguez is the next Bernie, but the guy needs to play.)
7. Thank you, Lord, for Bryce Harper. Last week, in no uncertain terms, Harper told Commissioner Vader- who wants an MLB payroll cap - to fuck the fuckin' fuck off. Listen: A cap would absolutely kill the Yankees. It would kill us for a decade. Yeah, players are overpaid. But this is a battle between millionaires and trillionaires. And if America doesn't think it should cap spending on Presidential campaigns, why should we think it's good for baseball? As Mustang told me yesterday, "Harper will be into the Hall as a Philly. But he will go into heaven as a Yankee."
8. The Scranton Railriders were postponed yesterday due to massive hits upon the farm system inclement weather. Supposedly, Spencer Jones was in the lineup - he'd been rested three days due to "back spasms," which everybody assumed was just the Yankees protecting him for a trade. Along with George Lombard Jr., he's basically the only thing Cashman didn't peddle.
9. Strange how the outcome of one game can affect your psyche, but I think the Yankees winning yesterday had a deep effect on how MLB rated Cashman's trade tsunami. Had the Yankees blown this series against Tampa, the shouting today would be much louder and angrier. In the public domain, Cashman is skating.
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I'm starting to think that, for Brian Cashman, the trade deadline - his chance to shine and show his dominance over all - has become more important than winning the World Series. So long as the Brain can "win" the trade deadline, he can go to bed feeling powerful, the eternal woodie, the full stomach, the weakling-stomping transformation into Charles Atlas moment. The Series is kind of small potatoes after that. Hey, anything can happen, right? It's a coin toss, right? Everything is right there in front of us, right? He won the trade deadline. What else matters?
I don't know. Aside from the fact that we still have Volpe at short, Pinstripes Nation has a good rundown of why we DIDN'T decimate the farm system. Cashman gave up two guys who look good, and a lot of middling pitchers, of whom we seem to have many throughout the farm system. Paraza and Periara had to go, for themselves as much as for the org. Who else did we lose who was more than a possibility, a maybe, a "if things go right and everything works out perfectly" decent major leaguer.
Hate to defend The Brain, but aside from keeping Volpe at short and being unable to land a good starter (notice there was a passel of starters who were supposedly on the block and none of them moved), he did pretty good. We have a much better bullpen with a couple of new guys under contract for the next year or two. Weaver and Williams are in walk years, after all. (Hopefully, Williams walks.) We have a better bench. We have better infielders.
And we did not give up Jones, or Rice, or the Martian (platooning him would be a terrible move). Or Billinger or Grisham, for that matter. We got a lot of what we needed and didn't really give up too much, except for Bird.
Of course, Cashman is still pretty bad and Boone is still an idiot. So all of this could blow up in our faces.
Something doesn't add up. We all know Cashman is no elite GM aside from his ability to stay employed by the Yankees. Given the fact that this was supposedly a lopsided seller's market for good and dominant relief pitchers, how is it that trading GMs did not extract a lot more from Cashman? My theory is that the Yankees organization is renowned for not conducting proper physical due diligence, especially with pitchers. We should expect this group to fall into the same category as Scott Effross and Frankie Montas.
In the public domain, The Intern is ALWAYS skating.
But let’s face it: this team is not about winning baseball:
IT IS A FRANCHISE - just like McDonalds is a franchise and Hal is treating it as such. As long as the dollars keep flowing, nothing changes.
This shuffling of the bullpen does nothing to the bottom line. The real victory in this TD is that no enormous salaries were taken on. The Yankees have only added a few lugnuts that Boooooone will misuse and abuse. All they’ve done is rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic.
2 points
1. Did we really “decimate” our minor league system? That same critique has been lobbed in the past, but really what great stars have we traded away? I’ve been guilty of prospect hugging, but with this team many never get a shot (Rumfeld) or just never grab their opportunity (Peraza, Pereira, Florial). What if Dominguez is still a league average player 2 years from now?
2. Couldn’t agree more about Judge. The team has been lying about injuries for years, ostensibly because of the bade optics. He’s going to have to DH when he does return, and the thought of Stanton staggering around RF certainly gives one pause. I’ve said in the past that Judge will eventually end up at 1B and I still feel that’s going to happen.
Carl J. Weitz, 999, you're both giving me the heebie-jeebies. Could well be so. But at least there's nobody we KNOW has recently been injured, unlike the infamous 2022 deals, where we brought on board several guys who had just got off or were still on the DL...
...I think that, overall, this was a good day. The bullpen HAD to be bolstered, and I don't know that any of these farmhands looks like a future superstar.
I do agree entirely with our Peerless Leader: The Martian has to play every day. And I started off as Martian Skeptical. He has simply done enough this year to earn a shot.
I read that the Bender deal, before it was final, depended on a medical exam. And that, supposedly, it's what the Yankees always predicate their deals on.
Makes no sense if it's true. Makes less sense if it isn't.
Yankees release Marcus Stroman after adding trade deadline acquisitions to active roster
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