Let's Play Yankees GM - Roster Moves As Players Return

The New York Yankees have missed a major chunk of their expected starting lineup and yet the team is in first place and playing very good baseball. The wounded have been slowly dribbling in and will continue to do so in the weeks ahead. So many of the "fill-in" players have been playing so well that a roster crunch is definitely on its way. So how should the Yankees handle the roster as players return? Let's take a look at how this could (or should) play out.

I should point out ahead of time that these thoughts are contingent on no further injuries and based on expected return times of missing players. Let's first look at the non-pitchers.

Didi Gregorius should be the first one back. Didi is the only one not surprised that he is ready so soon. The caveat here is that the Yankees' infield has been as solid as I have seen it since the 1990s. DJ LeMahieu is so good at second base and he has been hitting so well. You hate to move him. But move him the Yankees will have to do. What is the corresponding roster move?

The easy answer is Thairo Estrada. The kid is ahead of projections and was not supposed to start his career yet. Plus, he is not playing every day to stay sharp. But the 23-year-old has a .380 wOBA and a 140 wRC+ while playing respectable defense. Would he learn just as much at the Major League level and contribute like he has?

My answer is to DFA Kendrys Morales. Morales is a dinosaur who cannot help himself hitting consistently into the shift. He is good for a walk here and there. But otherwise, he offers little value at the plate and no value in the field. And, he clogs up the DH and the base paths. Sending him away makes it easier for LeMahieu to get consistent at bats as either the regular first baseman and a rotate DH with Gleyber Torres, Gregorius (Torres plays short when Didi DHs) and Gio Urshela.

Didi Gregorius becomes your regular shortstop. Gleyber Torres moves to second, which is a shame. Urshela is your fixture at third, Luke Voit is your first baseman / DH and LeMahieu is the rover with Estrada the backup.

The next player back appears to be Troy Tulowitzki. This should be an easy one. Thanks for trying, Tulo. See ya. Any other decision would be stupid. By missing half the season already, he has lived up (or down) to his injury reputation.

Then there is Aaron Judge. I do not know about you, but I sure miss Aaron Judge. This should be an easy decision as well. Cameron Maybin has been good for the Yankees and is a great team guy. But he is the only logical choice. Brett Gardner is part of the furniture. Aaron Hicks is a newly-contracted guy and Clint Frazier is one of your best prospects and is mashing reasonably well in between his strikeouts. The only logic behind keeping Maybin is that he can play all three positions in the outfield. But as long as you have Gardner and Frazier, things are covered.

The last position player back will be Giancarlo Stanton. His long absence this year has been extremely disappointing. Not that the Yankees could not cover his absence, but he makes a ton of money and together with Judge could be hitting moonshots all over the place. Things get really interesting when he returns. What should the roster move be?

The problem is that you cannot trust Stanton in the outfield. I hate a clogged up DH. If he could play LF every day, I would be fine with that with Gardner as the backup and then you have to send Frazier down. But if he is a DH only, then you need Frazier for depth and the move is to send Estrada down. I am okay with four rotating infielders as long as they do not get hurt.

I am not even going to discuss Greg Bird. I am not even going to think about him or Jacoby Ellsbury. In fact, I am fine if I never see them in pinstripes again. And, of course, Miguel Andujar is gone until next season.

Okay, the return of Dellin Betances is long-awaited and hoped for. His roster move will be easy as the Yankees have been carrying a fringe pitcher all season.

As for starters, I do not see any point in bringing in Dallas Keuchel. First, he will be expensive for what, a little more than half the season? If CC Sabathia can hang in there and if Luis Severino comes back in August, the Yankees should be fine. Plus, Jordan Montgomery is somewhere out there in the ether too. The only worry is how many innings you want to put on Domingo German. German could be a bullpen piece in the second half and then a full-time starter next season. I guess I am fine with either signing Keuchel or not signing him.

Personally, I do not think Keuchel is as good as he used to be. His strikeout and ground ball rates have dipped. The only reason, perhaps, to sign him is so that the Rays or Red Sox do not.

I do not think we need to talk about Jonathan Loaisiga or Ben Hiller. Hiller will need to prove himself again in the minors and Loaisiga needs to find some command.

So there it is. The Yankees will have some interesting decisions to make as the wounded come trickling back. How they handle the corresponding roster moves could go a long way toward determining how far they get in the AL East or, if the Yankees get there, the playoffs.

Wade Davis and Phil Hughes - Brothers from Different Mothers

This writer can't help himself. For as long as both pitchers have been in the majors, the similarities between Wade Davis and Phil Hughes have seemed striking. And it isn't just their six foot, five inch frames they share either. A year apart in age, both fairly high draft picks, they both have short names and similar deliveries. Both have been expected by their respective clubs (Bay Rays and Yankees) to become aces in the rotation. Both have come up short of those expectations. Is this any more than a doddering thought from the imagination? Let's investigate.

Phil Hughes, mostly from his time in the bullpen, has twice as many games in the majors than Davis. The difference is somewhat made up by Davis who has always been a starter. Davis has thrown 308 innings in his career compared to Hughes' 384.1. Both give up too many homers. Davis has a career 1.14 homers per nine innings pitched. Hughes is at 1.12. Both walk batters at nearly the same rate. Davis has a career walks per nine of 3.30 while Hughes is at 3.18. Hughes has a much higher career strikeout rate per nine innings but again, that's because of his relief work where he could pitch an inning and go all out.

Both have similar fastball speeds. Last year, Davis averaged 92.4 mph on his fastball and Hughes was at 92.5. How similar is that? Both have lost velocity this year--Hughes more so, but last night was back to his previous rates of last year. Davis also features a two-seam fastball while Hughes has a cutter. Both have a curve. Davis has 6.1 inches of horizontal movement on his curve while Hughes has 6.4 inches of that movement. Both have change ups. Hughes has a bigger margin of difference between the speed of his change up to his fastball than Davis has. Again, Hughes has a cutter while Davis has a slider. Both are similar in speed and break.

Phil Hughes has a .568 winning percentage as a starter and Davis has a .538 winning percentage. Davis has averaged 5.92 innings per start. Hughes, 5.45. Davis has a .283 BABIP as a starter, Hughes .291.  Here's a nice one. As a starter, opposing batters have a .754 OPS against Phil Hughes. It's .755 against Wade Davis.

One major difference is in how they handle pitch counts. Hughes as a similar OPS against on every pitch count. But Davis gets hit harder as his pitch count grows. So there's a major difference. One way this difference manifests itself is in the first inning. Hughes has a much higher ERA in the first inning than Davis does. But both pitchers have similar fly ball to ground ball ratios. Hughes is at 1.23 for his career and Davis is 1.14 (in both cases, the fly balls outnumber the ground balls). Hughes has a 19.3 lifetime line drive percentage. Davis has a 19.1 lifetime line drive percentage.

Here are some other stats for comparison. They are all career numbers:

• O-Swing - Hughes: 26.4 percent, Davis: 26.9 percent
• First pitch strikes - Hughes 61.2 percent, Davis: 58.6 percent
• HBP - Hughes: 10, Davis: 10
• Homer to fly ball percentage - Hughes: 9.3, Davis: 9.0

The pitchers seem much more similar than they are distinct. Did this writer cherry pick some stats? Sure. But there are enough cherries to prove a point. Both have lost velocity this year. Both have lost movement on their fastball this year. Both are experiencing lower swing and miss rates this year. Both seem to be regressing instead of improving. Again, both are young. Hughes is 25 and Davis is 26. Neither are as aggressive as it seems they should be. Neither are commanding on the mound or contain much presence on the hill. Hughes has much more as a reliever than a starter. Davis has no relief appearances. Both could still end up being very good starters in the future. But both right now seem to be a bit of a drag on their respective rotations. They have similar deliveries and builds. Davis and Hughes seem like two peas in the same pod, or if you will, two brothers from different mothers.

And right now, that's not necessarily a good thing.

Meat Tray and Intergalactic Gas - It Might Work

Casual (and no so casual) observers have sat around this off season watching the New York Yankees pass on every pitcher on the board. It's almost like once they couldn't get Cliff Lee (who, of course, signed with the Phillies), nobody else looked good enough. They passed on Webb, Duchsherer, Young, Pavano, Capuano and Francis. What's left out there doesn't inspire anyone (Millwood, Garcia, etc). And so it looks like the Yankees are looking at Sergio Mitre and Ivan Nova as their fourth and fifth starters.

The only sure thing for the Yankees is Sabathia. He'll do what he always does and put up consistent and sometimes dominating numbers. Phil Hughes at times looks unhittable and at others, vulnerable. A. J. Burnett is a huge question mark. So it's not like the top three of the rotation looks all that stable. This puts even more pressure on Mitre and Nova to somehow make it work. Let's look at the two individually and then collectively.

Mitre, or "Meat Tray" as he is unaffectionately called by Yankee fans, doesn't inspire confidence of any of those fans. Mitre is the guy the Yankees would bring in the game (in 2010) when it was the eighth or ninth inning and it wasn't a close game. His counting stats look good for 2010 but they are a mirage. His still gave up more than a homer per nine innings just like always, but on batted balls overall, Mitre gave up a .226 batting average. There is no way to sustain that kind of luck. The other thing about Mitre is that he simply doesn't strike out enough batters. His 4.83 is soft and again, it's hard to sustain that kind of strikeout rate and stay competitive.

So, yeah, Mitre had a good ERA last year at 3.33. But his FIP was 4.69 and that isn't that great. The one positive about Mitre is that he throws many more ground balls than fly balls. That's a plus in a homer heavy park. Last year, the Yankees' infield wasn't very rangy, but they didn't make any errors either. If they can repeat that kind of fielding at least, ground balls are a good thing for the Yankees.

And then there is the intergalactic gas of Ivan Nova. The gas isn't for his fastball, but the heartburn most Yankee fans feel as him being counted on so heavily. Nova had some good moments in his brief stint in 2010 and he did finish with a positive WAR. His FIP of 4.40 was lover than his actual ERA of 4.50. But the two things that are bothersome about him are his immaturity and his lowish strikeout rate. Nova displayed some negative behavior in games that did not go well in 2010 and was unhappy when getting pulled from the game. He upset one team for head hunting after that team hit a homer against him. And then there is his strikeout rate of 5.57. That's better than Mitre, but it isn't great, especially in light of giving up 3.6 walks per nine innings. The Fan would be fine with this if he showed good strikeout rates in the minors, but he didn't. He did just about what he did for the big club.

And yet Nova has an upside. He, like Mitre, throws more ground balls than fly balls and unlike Mitre, Nova has a professional history of keeping the ball in the park, which carried over into the majors. His curveball was rated his best pitch in 2010 by Fangraphs. All of his other pitches came in slightly under zero on their scale. The other element that is interesting about Nova is that he tended to breeze through the batting order the first time and then ran into trouble the second time. If he can get through the batting order a second time and get some depth to his games, then he will be effective.

The fact that Mitre and Nova are ground ball pitchers makes their rotation status a bit more palatable...much more so than if they were fly ball pitchers. But still, it's no the kind of back end of a rotation that inspires any kind of confidence.With that said, you have to wonder why the Yankees let so many high risk (but also high reward) free agent pitchers go by without offers high enough to win their services.

It's going to be an interesting year in the Bronx.

Curtis Granderson Versus Shane Victorino Versus Alex Rios

Playing centerfield is a glamour position in Major League Baseball. When you think of the position, you think Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and all the other great players that have played there. It is a position that requires speed, range, instincts and a little bat would be good when thrown in. Teams don't generally look for a slugger for centerfield. Those are reserved for the corner outfield spot. When these "rules" came about on the kind of hitter a certain player position should be, who knows. But centerfield is rarely manned by a slugger. It's the speed guys like Kenny Lofton, Willie Wilson, Mickey Rivers and the like that play there. They lead off in the batting order and steal bases. But as Mantle and Mays proved, you could bop too and still play the position. Mr. Hamilton in Texas did that in 2010 too.

It may surprise you to know that according to Fangraphs, the top two guys in value over the last five years (playing center) are Carlos Beltran and Grady Sizemore. That those two are still on top after missing significant time to injuries in the past year or two, either speaks to how good they were/are, or it speaks to how few valuable centerfielders there are in the game. It may or may not surprise you that right behind those two players is Curtis Granderson followed by Alex Rios and Shane Victorino. In fact, this piece probably started out to figure out who was the better player, Granderson or Victorino. But that wouldn't be right without including Rios as he is right between them in value for the last five years.

Among the five players we've mentioned, Granderson and Beltran are tied for the most homers with 118. Sizemore has 104, Rios has 94 and Victorino has 60. And while power certainly helps, we need to look at the bigger picture when comparing the players. Taking Sizemore and Beltran out of the picture (though it is hoped that both return in a big way in 2011), let's take a deeper look into the three remaining centerfielders.

Let's start with defense. According to Fangraphs, Rios has the honors here. His defense is rated off the charts. It's weird, not having watched Rios play very often, you can't picture him as a great fielder. And for the first couple of years of this sample, he didn't even play center as he played with Vernon Wells in Toronto. Who would have thought that Rios would be the best fielding centerfielder of this era. Victorino comes in second behind him but the gulf is wider between Rios and Victorino than it is with Victorino and Granderson. The bottom line here is that all of our guys are great fielders who help their teams defensively as well as offensively.

When it comes to offense, it's closer than you think. Let's start with Weighted On Base Average or wOBA as it is called. Granderson comes out on top at .358 over the last five years. Victorino and Rios come in together in a dead heat at .347. Would you have guessed that? The Fan wouldn't have. Granderson walks more than the other two, but he also strikes out more. Victorino steals more bases, but not much more than Rios (another surprise), while Granderson lags behind them a bit.

Granderson had a good second half in 2010. He seems to have learned to hit lefties with Kevin Long as his coach. Victorino had a bad year in 2010. Rios had a great first half but faltered in the second. There are some good young centerfielders coming in the game like Austin Jackson and Andrew McCutchen. But for the last five years, Granderson comes out on top in the value race between he and Rios and Victorino. We'll see this year if Sizemore can get back to being one of the best in the business and it remains to be seen if Beltran has anything left in the tank or if he'll even play centerfield for the Mets in 2011.

Imagining Cashman's Conversation with Casey Close

There were some reports yesterday that Brian Cashman, the Yankees' general manager, called Casey Close, Derek Jeter's agent, to talk about comments Cashman made at a recent function concerning Derek Jeter eventually moving to the outfield. The comments, tweeted live by Amanda Rycoff of espnW caused a firestorm as only a story about Derek Jeter can create. Cashman probably decided that he had to explain himself to the shortstop, so Cashman called Jeter's agent. Since none of us are privy to such a conversation, we can only imagine how it went. The following is this writer's imagination on how that call might have gone.

• Close: Hello?
• Cashman: Hey, Casey, how's it going?
• Close: Oh, it's you. Nice going.
• Cashman: Uh...is...he...mad?
• Close: Nah, he's known you are just telling people what they want to hear.
• Cashman: Really? He knows that?
• Close: Ah, not only do you put your foot in your mouth, you're gullible too. Of COURSE he's mad.
• Cashman: I was afraid of that. What did he say?
• Close: He's wondering why you keep talking to the media about him like you have all winter.
• Cashman: Well, he's been a story. I've got to talk to the reporters about it.
• Close: All he wants to know is why you don't talk to him first, that's all.
• Cashman: Point taken.
• Close: You haven't had a good winter. You've been hanging around those Steinbrenners too long.
• Cashman: Hey, nothing I've said hasn't been the truth.
• Close: Well, we can debate that, but why do you have to talk to the creeps in the media?
• Cashman: Hey! You use those guys too. I know how you agents are.
• Close: Moi?
• Cashman: Well, tell Jeter I called and explained.
• Close: You didn't explain anything.
• Cashman: Oh..ahh...I was just talking. You know. It was a function. Didn't think it would become such a big deal.
• Close: You've just been talking all winter, haven't you? What's up with that? You had to state at the Soriano news conference the signing not being your idea? You trying to test those guys?
• Cashman: The media said I lied. I didn't want them to think I was lying. I talked to Levine and them about it first.
• Close: Well, at least you showed up, didn't think you would.
• Cashman: That's my job.
• Close: Yeah, you also called writers everywhere, who questioned your handling of Joba, stupid. Another good move.
• Cashman: Those butt wipes. Who do they think they are writing that kind of crap?
• Close: Only the butt wipes that keep up interest in your team, Brian. Why you biting the hand that feeds you?
• Cashman: Oh yeah. Good point. I'll have to soften that.
• Close: I have some Correctol in the cabinet if you want it.
• Cashman: Bite me.
• Close: And what's the deal with Joba anyway? Don't want to look like you don't know what you're doing?
• Cashman: Stick to being an agent and I'll run the baseball operations, okay?
• Close: It's your deal. Hey, you know the Captain isn't real happy about having to think about anyone named Soriano again.
• Cashman: Ha! That's a good one. So tell the big guy we're cool okay? He's our shortstop.
• Close: Yeah, I'll tell him. He's going to prove you all wrong and make you look like twerps, you know.
• Cashman: Well, if he does, we all win, so I hope he does.
• Close: You hope he does until the year before his contract is up, you mean.
• Cashman: Don't start with me. It wasn't me that had a crappy year.
• Close: I'll tell him that too.
• Cashman: CASEY! That's just between you and me. Don't make things worse.
• Close: No, I'll leave that to you. You're on a roll.
• Cashman: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, tell Jeter I'll talk to him soon.
• Close: Gotcha. Take it easy. Give Levine a kiss for me.
• Cashman: Bite me.