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?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)