Yanks: Trading DRob Pros and Cons

The Angels just gave the Padres three of their top 4 prospects, plus one other guy for Huston Street and another guy from AA.   That's quite a haul, and that should get the Yankees thinking about moving their unsigned closer David Robertson,

Robertson has been one of the best relief pitchers in baseball for several years, and it's kind of weird that the Yanks haven't extended him yet.    They should, absolutely try to do that before the deadline and before entering into any sort of trade talks around him.    He was a great set up man and has made  a seamless conversion to the overrated closer roll.  

Well, people will think, Dellin Betances is clearly our closer of the future but that would take him out of the key relief ace role, and move him into a job that is at least partly ceremonial, where he'd get called into plenty of "save situations" that pretty much anyone can handle.   It's sort of been sad that Mo and DRob both went from being dynamic two inning aces to closers, even though Mo is now a legend as the greatest closer ever.

In fact, if DRob gets traded the Yanks should make Kelley or Warren the closer's for now, and really start converting over to a more dynamic bullpen built around two inning guys like Betances and Lindgren, etc, with either a lesser closer or those guys splitting up the save opportunities.

But the only reasons to trade DRob are that he is unsigned for next year, and that the Padres just robbed the Angels for Huston Street.

Last year, the Yankees did not trade Cano at the deadline, and thus, missed out on what would have been a huge prospect take.   They then let the Mariners sign Cano then punted their compensatory draft pick.  In other words, they got absolutely nothing for their best player.

That was an insane sequence of events and really the price of not locking Cano up earlier.    But they haven't locked up DRob, either, so unless they can, they should consider it.