The New York Yankees were very aggressive this offseason on the trade market making every and any player available in the right deal. The names that were mentioned out loud to the media most often though were Ivan Nova, Brett Gardner and closer Andrew Miller. News broke this week, and I use the word "broke" loosely here, that the Yankees had a deal in place to trade at least one of them and they ultimately declined the deal at the end of the day.
The Houston Astros were looking for a closer for much of the winter and rumor had it that they at least had preliminary discussions with the New York Yankees about Andrew Miller. Ultimately the Astros ended up sending an impressive package of young players to the Philadelphia Phillies over the winter for their closer Ken Giles although before pulling the trigger an identical offer was made to the Yankees for Miller.
Houston ended up sending RHP Vincent Velasquez, RHP Mark Appel, RHP Harold Arauz, LHP Brett Oberholtzer and LHP Thomas Eshelman to Philadelphia for Giles. The Yankees reportedly wanted Lance McCullers Jr. in any deal involving Miller and ultimately turned down the deal from Houston.
I know I'm far from a GM at the Major League level but that would be an awfully hard deal to turn down if I were Yankees GM Brian Cashman. Velasquez was unproven at the time but had shown glimpses of brilliance in a small sample size with Houston in 2015 while Mark Appel is a former 1st round draft pick by Houston and 1st overall pick in the 2013 MLB Draft. Arauz and Eshelman are a pair of A-Ball pitchers with underwhelming stats overall while Oberholtzer is entering his fourth season in the Major Leagues and has yet to break out but this would have been an obvious deal for the future for New York.
Adding Appel to their minor league system alongside James Kaprielian while adding Velasquez to a young rotation alongside Luis Severino would have been great for the Yankees future but I am reserving judgement on whether it was a "good" non-trade or a "bad" non-trade at this time. There are a lot of moving parts here and a lot of young and relatively unproven moving parts in this deal as well. Velasquez could bomb, Appel could never reach his potential etc. etc. etc. These trades are a crap shoot.
Stay tuned for a "winner."
