This Week on the Blog
Yankees: The Yanks still have Blake Rutherford and maybe a few others to sign from their recent draft. And it will happen. The guys who have already signed like Luaces and Jordan Scott are making loud noises witht their bats, taking their walks and stealing at will. In fact, ther is bat noise going on all over the system for the first time in memory. Last night, good ol' Tyler Austin hit three jacks, Aaron Judge hit #14 Gary Sanchez socked number 8 to not be forgotten. Those three players are absolutely ready to play in the bigs and should all be up in the wake of the sell off. And that opportunity should not be denied.
Knicks: The Knicks got Derrick Rose last week, then sat out the draft. They've signed a couple of undrafteds to play for their summer league team, including the latest Plumlee. Willy Hernangomez's agent says he is coming over. Unfortunately, the Knicks are not on Kevin Durant list of visits, yet. But since they can't contact him yet, that could change. I hope they have a strong plan A, B, and C ready to go, and also, should things not work out for 2016-17 player wise, they should be ready to trade Melo and build around KP.
Rangers: The Rangers want Steven Stamkos. I've felt that coming for years. To get him, they are going to have to get their cap in order this week, and Gorton has said as much. So we will probably see the sell off that we were expecting on night one of the draft. Let's hope it brings back some of th young talent they lost out on during their cup chasing misadventures. Let's hope it also brings more picks. Also, let's when the trades do happen, it's the big contracts and not the RFA's.
Giants: The Giants still haven't addressed the OL.
So there it is. Later this weekend and or early this week, I'll have a Ranger draft review and the GCL roster preview for the Yanks.
Have a great week everyone.
posted by Kalel9 @ 4:21 PM
38 Comments:
The Yankees most optimal way of winning now is to risk offending their declining, overpaid veterans, by playing young players, starting with Sanchez, but admitting mistakes is not something Cashman does very easily.
Even if he were to admit mistakes, that would require ownership actually signing off on buying out Teix and A-Rod and relegating McCann to the bench. I doubt Hal goes for that.
They can start by benching them, Castro, and McCann. We can't blame Hal alone.
Judge hit his 15th tonight and is now tied for first in the IL. Oh and he's a hell of a lot better in RF than Beltran and not playing in any field that helps his power like YS does Beltran's.
Castro has been a solid player both defensively and offensively playing 2B.
Perhaps if they can trade Headley and sign Gourriel to play either 3B or move Castro to 3B and let Gourriel play 2B.
Castro's OPS+ is 88. Hardly "solid." It has been over 100 once in the last four seasons.
Again, anything but solid and owned $10m a year for 3 more seasons after this one b
If they are ever getting out of this mess hard decisions have to be made.
I think they're serious about Gurriel, who dropped the O from his name a few years ago. And I think they're in more trade negotiation than they're letting on. They need to call up Judge.
They need to call up Sanchez. At least in Judge's case you could argue there being a crowded outfield where there's at least decent production from the starters, and his hot streak is limited to just the last few weeks and you want to see consistency. Sanchez is rotting away in AAA, and there's not enough production from McCann and Romine to justify it.
Castro is all potential. Until he learns to walk, he'll be mostly a liability offensively with the occasional big hit.
Hicks sucks and it's time to trade Beltran.
At the very least, A-Rod needs to be a PH, Torreyes needs to go, McCann needs to be a platoon player with Sanchez.
No way that Hicks us a better pure hitter than Refsnyder. Another decision that can't be put on Hal.
I guess I was wrong about Evo.
Teix with a HR. Prepare for mediots saying he's baaaaack.
I'm not sure anyone can put lipstick on this pig anymore save for Hal Steinbrenner.
A GM who made moves that continued the Bronx Bombers tradition would be a start.
Sorry, but you won't be seeing Gary Sanchez on this team until 2019 I'm afraid.
What's very encouraging about Sanchez is the low K rate. Ditto Andujar at Trenton. I'd feel a bit more confident that Judge is ML-ready if his K rate got better, which hasn't yet happened during his hot streak. Don't get me wrong -- the hot streak is strong evidence that AAA isn't a glass ceiling for Judge, but, so long as he's K'ing 1/3 of the time in AAA, smart ML pitchers will fool him even more.
They aren't winning with this group. So they can keep on keeping on, or try something different, like their own best prospects.
Judge has been walking more than K'ing ever since they changed his hand position, and he's been on this tear.
LINJ -- I hear you. I'd just like to see Sanchez now and, I hope, Judge in a month or two. I hope that Judge can learn some more at AAA and can avoid falling into a Dave Kingman rut at the ML level. He should be middle of the order, not a #7 hitter. Cheers! S68.
Stot
I made that exact point somewhere else yesterday. But where is the will on their part?
Neil Best @sportswatch
Randy Levine on becoming sellers: "You guys obviously have nothing more important to write about than to write nonsense about that."
Phil, as you pointed out in your response to that tweet, the Yankees have been far less successful since he became part of the organization. I don't think that's a coincidence.
This Chapman extension talk, if a reminder that the Yanks do not have to trade him, so if you want him you better ante up.
Randy Levine: "The difference is that most of you guys have never run anything, and we have a lot of history knowing what we're doing."
I bet Billy has some lovely stories about Levine from his time in baseball ops.
Levine is slime in every aspect of life, but he does what the owner wants within the confines of what Cashman is able to achieve within his mandate. I think they all suck, because it's not reasonable to believe that it's Levine and Hal that want a pitching and defense first team.
And the next thing that Harpo runs well will be his first.
Everything that the Yankees are about now is a residue of what Stick created 20+ years ago. They have been in decline since those original set of decisions.
For example, take free agency. They can't trade most of the free agents they signed over the last ten years.
Phil Jackson, ototh, was able to trade his biggest free agent's contract within one year of signing him.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/current_attendance.shtml
For games through 2016-06-26
Yankee attendance is -66,476 from last year over the period.
MLB attendance over that period is -226,524
So the Yankees account for almost 30% of the decline.
Helluva job, Randy.
The Mets are up 194,523 over the period, but the Yankee GM has no Synderagaard trade or a deGrom prospect development to cite despite his emphasis on pitching,
So yeah, they all know what they are doing.
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/16559518/carmelo-anthony-new-york-knicks-already-talking-free-agent-kevin-durant
LINJ, my post wasn't meant to absolve Cashman of his foolish lack of emphasis on offense or going away from OBP-type players. It was merely to highlight how incredibly naive Levine is. I happen to think he's the single biggest problem with the Yankees' FO, though I want them all gone as well.
I didn't think that, Mike. We're on the same page basically.
I don't think Levine's naïve, I think he's flat out liar.
By the way the benching A-Rod v. RHP. Jeremy said he discussedplaying him less with Cashman. I can't fault him for that but as Kay says, he's not the only problem in the lineup.
Some AutoCorrect fail there
Girardi not Jeremy.
I think Levine has negatively influenced the organization on the money side of things. I think he has had Cash shot down on some players, like Moncado and Sano a few years ago that Cash wanted and Hal didn't know enough about.
Sure, but that doesn't explain all their underperformance. Evo, Pineda, Castro, Headley, McCann, Ellsbury. Some of that is on the GM. It's so past time for a change, it's crazy.
I am as big a Refs guy as anyone but this is dumb:
“He’s [Judge] really on a nice roll right now,” Cashman said before the Yankees faced the Rangers. “There [are] some things he’s definitely improved on, but our first alternative would be to see what Hicks could do anyway. And Refsnyder. [Refsnyder] is swinging the bat well enough and you know he can play the outfield.”
The problem with that quote is he thinks more highly of Hicks than he ought to.
Off topic, but I didn't realize Choo was having such a good season for the Rangers. In hindsight, I'm glad they're not on the hook for him for 7 years, but man, those OBP skills are really nice.
After reading the article about what close friends Judge and Refs are and how they help each other, I'm glad Refs is getting a chance to establish himself on the team independently of Judge. Judge will get his chance and a good one.
Refs should play 2B.
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