Friday, February 24, 2012

Yankees Sign Burt Reynolds

From Our Friends Over at Bronx Daily Baseball



The Yankees have signed minor leaguer Burt Reynolds, according to Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus.
Reynolds is a 23-year-old who has played at the four corner positions in the infield and outfield. He was drafted in the 30th round by the Nationals in 2006. Since then he has never put together an impressive season and spent last year with the Neward Bears.
But he’s Robinson Cano‘s cousin and he’s got an awesome name. Since somebody has to play in the minors the Yankees signed him. I wasn’t even going to write about him, but I found this awesome picture of Burt, who was recently on my favorite show, Archer.

Spring Training Day 6

This has been the most boring day yet in Spring Training for the Yanks. The pitchers and catchers did their conditioning drills but did not throw bullpen sessions. The positional players checked in and we saw a couple live batting practice sessions.... Day 6 over. All of the players have reported to camp and the first full camp workout will be scheduled for tomorrow morning so I am looking forward to that. I am excited to see Bill Hall, Raul Ibanez, etc. show what they can do in Yankees pinstripes.

Martin's Extention Pt 2

My apologies, Mr. Martin

After speaking with somebody over at the Daily Sports Pages Yankees' forum, I've changed my tune on Russell Martin.

A few days ago I wrote that I was against an extension for Martin. I felt that he's starting to enter the downside of his career, he wasn't that potent with the bat, and Austin Romine would be an okay replacement.

First of all, it's not like it's unheard of for a guy to catch in his 30s. Brad Ausmus caught regularly throughout his 30s (he caught over 900 innings at age 38 with Houston, AJ Pierzynski was 34 last season and caught over 1000 innings for the White Sox, and Jorge Posada caught 100 games for the Yankees when he was 37 in 2009.

His offense wasn't bad compared to other catchers either. As for fWAR, he did come in 4th out of 9 AL catchers with at least 450 plate appearances last season. Bill James predicts a bump in batting average and on-base percentage, while maintaining pretty much the same slugging percentage (.256/.355/.400 with 14 HR).

As for Romine, he's not ready. He may have gotten into 9 games for the Yankees last year, but he's still got some work to do in the minors. And like Jorge Posada did with Joe Girardi, it wouldn't be a bad thing at all for Romine to sit on the bench and learn from Martin for a couple of years. This is weird as I'm normally the last person to count on a prospect like I did, and it took a guy that's big on prospects to point that out to me.

I guess I allowed my plan for getting Hamels and getting under $189 million in 2014 cloud my judgement.