Game Thread: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim @ New York Yankees 6/5

The New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim begin a three game series this weekend at the Bronx tonight with what could become a great pitching matchup. The Yankees will send Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Nathan Eovaldi to the mound to face off with the Angels starter Jered Weaver. The game will be played at 7:05 pm ET and can be seen on the YES Network, MLB Network and MLB TV.

Get your Yankees tickets for tonight’s game or any game this series or home stand right here on the blog by clicking the Yankees Tickets link at the top of the blog. If you can’t make it live then join me on Twitter as @GreedyStripes makes his triumphant return to the Twitterverse tonight since the game isn’t being played in the middle of the night, I’m stoked.

Remember when the Angels were a thorn in the sides of Joe Torre’s Yankees? Yeah I don’t want to remember it either, let’s beat them tonight shall we? Go Yankees!

Could New York Have Acquired Mark Trumbo?

I don’t know if it’s just me or not but after every big trade that goes down I have to wonder if the New York Yankees could have pulled off a similar trade to improve the team. That was no different when I was checking MLB Trade Rumors and saw that the Seattle Mariners had acquired Mark Trumbo and Vidal Nuno from the Arizona Diamondbacks for catcher Wellington Castillo, a relief pitcher and two prospects I will not pretend to know anything about. Trumbo is a power hitting right handed bat that can play first base and the outfield and would make for an instant, and substantial, upgrade over Garrett Jones on the roster but could the Yankees have pulled it off?

The first thing that would work out in the Yankees favor is that Brian Cashman seemingly has a good working relationship with the GM of the Arizona Diamondbacks Dave Stewart. Cashman only seems to trade with certain teams, the Atlanta Braves, the Seattle Mariners, the D Backs, etc. so with that hurdle out of the way it would have come down to the package the Yankees could offer. You have to wonder if Seattle was genuinely interested in Nuno or if he was a throw in to offset some salary but for the sake of this post I’ll assume Seattle merely wanted him and the Yankees have little use for him leaving him out of any potential deal.

Arizona needed a catcher to replace the last catcher we traded them, Peter O’Brien, as he continues to struggle to throw the ball back to the pitcher and has been moved to the outfield and a catcher to back up newly called up Jarrod Saltalamacchia. Whether Austin Romine, Eddy Rodriguez or Gary Sanchez would have been enough or comparable to Castillo remains to be seen but even with Sanchez in the package you have to make the deal with Trumbo under contract for the 2015 and 2016 seasons. The Yankees have a plethora of young RHP arms that could have equaled or exceeded the relief pitcher Arizona acquired while New York at least matched the two lesser known prospects.

All in all in looks like New York could have matched Seattle in any package and made the deal for Trumbo. The costs probably would not have justified the means for what would become a part-time player in New York making the deal likely in the end but it still feels good to know that Cashman has the pieces in place to make a deal if he so wishes and if it makes the team better in the long run.

What If Brian McCann’s Foot Becomes a Long Term Problem

Brian McCann left the game with the Seattle Mariners on Thursday afternoon with a sore right foot, a foot problem that has caused him problems for a few weeks now. The team sent him to New York for an MRI as a precaution after x-rays came back negative on the injury. What would the Yankees do, if they could do anything, to replace McCann both behind the plate and in the lineup if the foot issue becomes a long term issue going forward?

The obvious choice for the starting catcher position would be John Ryan Murphy who is currently serving as the back up to McCann but who comes up to back up Murphy? Is it veteran Eddy Rodriguez who signed a minor league deal with the team to come out of retirement before the 2015 season? Is it Austin Romine who lost the backup catcher competition this spring training and has done little to make Joe Girardi’s decision look foolish? Or would it be a wildcard and a young prospect like Gary Sanchez who is currently tearing up Double-A pitching and making stride after stride defensively? The stats don’t tell all but they are a good place to start.

Romine:

Year	Lev	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
2015	AAA	37	153	136	22	33	10	3	16	14	19	.243	.320	.382	.703

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Rodriguez:

Year	Lev	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
2015	AAA	17	57	53	2	9	3	0	4	3	19	.170	.211	.226	.437

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Sanchez:

Year	Lev	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
2015	AA	39	172	158	21	41	7	6	23	4	11	37	.259	.314	.418	.732

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Basing it off stats alone you have to think that Sanchez would get it but based on reality he is the least likely of the three to get the shot. While Sanchez does have a leg up on the completion as he is already on the team’s 40 man roster you would have to think that Romine or Rodriguez would get the nod here. The team would likely call up Romine to see if he can improve on his spring stats if I were to take a guess but you never know. The most ideal situation would be that McCann’s foot is fine and the two days off did him a world of good. If not the Yankees offense is in big, big trouble.

Game Preview: Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim @ New York Yankees 6/5

The New York Yankees are well rested after their off day yesterday and come into tonight’s contest with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim boasting a modest three game winning streak. New York swept away Felix Hernandez, Robinson Cano and the Seattle Mariners earlier in the week before returning home to the Bronx to start this series. On the mound for the Yankees tonight is Nathan Eovaldi who will face off with the Angels starter Jered Weaver. The game will be played at 7:05 pm ET and can be seen on the YES Network, MLB Network and MLB TV.

• Eovaldi is coming off a start in which he allowed a season-high 11 hits to an anemic Oakland Athletics offense in 4.2 innings of work. Eovaldi has faced the Angels twice in his career as a member of the Miami Marlins posting a 6.75 ERA with a 0-1 record.

• Weaver is coming off five straight quality starts after finding a mechanical issue in his windup early in May. Weaver fixed his delivery in a bullpen session and has been on a roll ever since which is never a good sign for the New York Yankees.

The solution is simple, the more the Yankees win now the less they will have to win in September and into October. The Boston Red Sox are primed to make more than a few additions at this year’s trading deadline while the Seattle Mariners are already adding pieces for a potential Wild Card run. New York needs to win games because as the great Yogi Berra once said about 5,000,000 times, it’s getting late early. We’re already into June and before you know it we’ll be in August and September. Win now, beat the Angels. Go Yankees!

The Youth Movement Has Begun

New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi can say the word “no” about six hundred more times if he’d like the next time he is asked if Jacob Lindgren is beginning a youth injection in the Bronx or not but I think we all know the truth, he is. When Girardi was asked if Lindgren was part of a youth injection that led to the DFA of RHP David Carpenter the Yankees manager responded with “no,no,no,no,no,no” and retorted with the fact that they liked what they saw from the young LHP this season. Girardi also touched on the fact that Lindgren can get both left handed batters and right handed batters out and has handled himself well in a limited sample size with the big league club but come on Joe, the youth injection is coming and Lindgren is just the start of it.

The Yankees have an aging roster which will naturally bring inconsistency and injuries to the ball club forcing the hand of New York to rely heavily on their depth signings and farm system. When Jacoby Ellsbury went down the Yankees inserted Slade Heathcott and when Heathcott went down they inserted Ramon Flores into the outfield rotation. When the Yankees needed a starting rotation arm they inserted Adam Warren, not Esmil Rogers, and when Masahiro Tanaka went down the team inserted Chase Whitley. When the team needed a relief pitcher this season we’ve seen Joel De La Cruz, Jose Ramirez, Bryan Mitchell, Branden Pinder and now Lindgren while the team cut ties with Scott Baker, Jared Burton and other veteran relief pitchers signifying that the youth movement is in full swing in the Bronx. 

With Robert Refsnyder biding his time him Triple-A and top prospect Luis Severino’s recent promotion to Scranton Wilkes-Barre the team has a ton of upside and youth on the way to the Bronx. That can be said with confidence without even mentioning the steps being taken by Brady Lail, Aaron Judge, Eric Jagielo, Mason Williams, Gary Sanchez and other top Yankees prospects that figure to put the pressure on the Yankees veterans currently in the lineup.

The youth movement is coming, are you ready for it?

TGP Daily Poll: Drew Makes June

Stephen Drew sucks! That doesn’t mean the team will pull a 2014 Brian Robert and designate him for assignment in the month of June. Drew will survive at least the month of June while Robert Refsnyder rots in Triple-A.

Vote in our prediction poll on Knoda.com

Weekly Check In: Robert Refsnyder

Robert Refsnyder spends another week down in the minor leagues while Stephen Drew gets to spend another week as one of the “best” 750 baseball players in the world, something seems wrong with that picture. Drew came up big in the Seattle Mariners series, don’t get me wrong, but Refsnyder has been coming up big for two seasons now while Drew has been either a free agent because nobody wanted him or he has sucked forcing nobody to want him. Well nobody but Brian Cashman but that is another discussion for another day and another blog, this blog is about Refsnyder. The Ref continues to hit at the plate and tear up Triple-A pitching while the defense continues to get fine-tuned and seasoned more and more with every passing game.

This time of the year in 2014 the New York Yankees were benching Brian Roberts before eventually designating him for assignment making many Yankees fans happy. Drew has been benched a few games these past two weeks signaling possibly a repeat of 2014? Just in case Refsnyder is on the way up let’s take a look at what we have to look forward to with our second baseman of the future.

Offense:

Year	Lev	G	PA	R	H	2B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
2015	AAA	47	209	20	51	12	2	18	5	22	31	.277	.357	.375	.732

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Defense:

Year	Age	Lev	Aff		G	Ch	PO	A	E	DP	Fld%	RF/G
2015	24	AAA	NYY	2B	44	250	102	137	11	27	.956	5.43

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

This Day in New York Yankees History 6/5: Manny Ramirez ties Roger Maris

On this day in 2001 the Red Sox outfielder Manny Ramirez is intentionally walked four times in one game to tie a major league record. The game lasted 18 innings and 5 hours and 52 minutes as Ramirez tied the Yankees Roger Maris in the history books.

Also on this day in 1992 the Mets first baseman Eddie Murray knocks in two RBI's to pass Yankees legend Mickey Mantle for most RBI's all time by a switch hitter. Murray's 1,509th RBI was knocked in at the old Three Rivers Stadium.

Finally on this day in 1939 the Yankees were shut out for the first and only time of the season when Tommy Bridges of the Tigers shut down the Yankees offense.