One of my personal favorite times of the year and one of my
most hated times of the year comes in the final week in July. Major League
Baseball’s hot stove is turned on full blast and so are the trade rumors,
speculations and high hopes for the fans of the contenders. Unfortunately with
those same trade rumors and speculations comes the false rumors, the
click-baiting articles and the banter on social media but you take the good
with the bad I guess. I have seen almost every notable trade target linked to
the New York Yankees already this season including Brandon Phillips, Johnny
Cueto, Cole Hamels and Mike Leake but a pair of interesting names have come up recently
in the Detroit Tigers ace David Price and power hitting outfielder Yoenis
Cespedes. The Yankees have the pieces to make a trade for these two, and when
it all comes down to it I feel like they ultimately won’t, but could you
imagine?
Adding Price to a starting rotation that already sports
Masahiro Tanaka and Michael Pineda at the top and some combination of Nathan
Eovaldi, Ivan Nova and CC Sabathia that’s not only a rotation that can go deep
into the playoffs and win the whole thing but that is a starting rotation that
should be feared by every team in Major League Baseball. An acquisition of
Price, who is a free agent at the end of this season, would finally and
presumably push Sabathia to the bullpen and Chris Capuano off the team for good
making both pitching departments supremely better. The Yankees would have a
true ace and an ace without innings or health question marks that would love to
take the ball in Game One, Game Four and Game Seven of every playoff series the
team would let him.
I’m not going to go over the multitude of ways the Yankees
could make room for Cespedes in right field while eating, moving or delegating
Carlos Beltran’s contract to a bench role because, again, I can’t see this
happening but could you imagine? A starting lineup that goes something along
the lines of Jacoby Ellsbury, Brett Gardner, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira,
Yoenis Cespedes, Brian McCann, Chase Headley, Didi Gregorius and Robert
Refsnyder (I’m still bitter dammit let me be) is not only the best offense in
the American League that is as close to a murderer’s row as you’re going to get
in this day and age. There is no breaks through the middle of that lineup and
while McCann and Headley are far from in their primes they easily become
arguably the best #6 and #7 hitters in the game right now.
So imagine this: a pitching rotation that can shut you out
four times in a seven game series, a bullpen that can throw up four or five
innings of shutout relief every single night and an offense that can score 10
runs a game. That’s 1998 Yankees right there. It won’t happen, but imagine if
it did?
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Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)