Friday, July 28, 2017

What About Dan Straily?


The New York Yankees are on the lookout for starting pitching before Monday’s July 31st trading deadline and while the hot stove is heating up involving the Athletics righty Sonny Gray and the Yankees it would be imperative for New York to have a Plan B in place. This such Plan B that I have in mind not only protects and improves the Yankees during the 2017 season but it could be made with the 2018 season and beyond in mind as well. Enter the Miami Marlins starter Dan Straily.

At the time of this writing Straily was posting a 7-6 record with a 3.84 ERA and 1.185 WHIP for the Miami Marlins, a team that is struggling in every aspect of the game in 2017 and looking to sell of pieces. Straily could be one of those pieces but unlike Gray who will cost some of the Yankees top prospects or pitchers like Yu Darvish who would be a true rental Straily would help the team beyond just the 2017 season. Straily is under team control through the 2020 season before hitting free agency for the first time in his professional career before the 2021 season.

Straily is 28-years old, the same age as Sonny Gray just as an FYI for those beating their chests about the Yankees and their youth movement, and comes with a repertoire that could be an instant upgrade in the rotation for New York. With every player you have pros and cons and one of the biggest cons for Straily is the fact that he is giving up 1.5 home runs per nine innings in 2017, that’s not going to play well inside Yankee Stadium. Period. If you’re looking for a bit of a shining light through the fog on this though Straily has also posted a 50.82 groundball rate this season along with a 17.62 whiff rate on his out-pitch, the slider.

Straily throws a fastball and a changeup along with his slider and could instantly solidify the back-end of the Yankees rotation for much less in terms of prospects than most starting pitchers out there currently. The Yankees have seemingly found an ace in Luis Severino and if Masahiro Tanaka figures it out soon the team will have probably the best #2 starter in the league at the top of the rotation. Adding in a Straily to pitch alongside Jordan Montgomery and CC Sabathia gives the Yankees a deeper rotation than they have had all season long in my opinion and, again, it protects the team when potentially 3/5 of their starting rotation leaves after the season.


Some deals are complicated and some are simple no-brainers and this one is leaning more towards the latter than the former to me. Leave your thoughts below in the comments section. 

1 comment:

  1. I was on a plane a few years ago, flying from Portland, Oregon to San Francisco, CA and Dan Straily's father was behind me on his way to see his son pitch for the Oakland A's. At the time, Straily was the strikeout leader in the Minor Leagues and I can still remember how proud his father was that day.

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