You know the old saying “the devil you know vs. the devil
you don’t” well that sometimes applies to Major League Baseball as well as your
regular, everyday life. This is especially true when you consider teams who
play in huge media markets like the New York Yankees. Sometimes the devil you
know, the player who may be average or a solid player but can handle the bright
lights and big city, can be the better choice than the devil you don’t know, or
the player who lets the media circus and the fans constant cheering and boos
affect them. We’ve seen it far too many times, see Randy Johnson as an example
of someone who buckled under the pressure while we have players like Alfonso
Soriano and Brandon McCarthy who seemingly flourished in the Bronx, and we may
see it again here in a few seasons when the likes of Bryce Harper and Manny
Machado hit the free agency market. For the sake of this post we will focus on
the latter and not the former and ask the question, by the 2019 season will the
Yankees have the devil they “know” in prospect Miguel Andujar as their third
baseman or the devil they don’t in Machado on Opening Day?
Over the last two seasons Machado has put up an average
triple slash of .290/.351/.518 with 36 home runs, 91 RBI, 35 doubles and 104
runs scored. That’s an average… not the total. Only Mike Trout the 2016 AL MVP
Award winner, Josh Donaldson and Kris Bryant the 2016 NL MVP Award winner have
had a higher WAR in that same span according to Fangraphs. In a nutshell
Machado has been amazing over the past two seasons and he is somehow still just
24-years old. Any team would love to have a Gold Glove winner at shortstop that
is capable of playing shortstop in a pinch and any team would love to have
another big bopper in the middle of their lineup, which is going to make him
extremely expensive. Would New York dip their foot into the deep end of the
free agent market again for Machado in the winter before the 2019 season or
would they simply see what they have in Andujar and continue their youth movement?
Andujar had a pretty good 2016 campaign himself, albeit
while splitting time between the High-A Tampa Yankees and the Double-A Trenton
Thunder but still, putting up a .273/.332/.410 triple slash with 12 home runs
and 83 RBI in his age-21 season. Andujar, who enters his age-22 season in 2017,
did enough to warrant the Yankees adding him to their 40 man roster as the
organization now sees him as the third basemen of the future. Maybe. I say
maybe because Andujar is still considered raw by many accounts but almost every
one of the Yankees scouts have had nothing but exciting things to say about his
untapped potential and his attitude towards the game. Projections state that
Andujar, much like we see now with Machado, will hit for average, hit for power
and use the whole field when he reaches the Major Leagues and reaches his full
potential.
It is impossible to say with any certainty what the Yankees
are going to do two seasons from now as a lot can happen between then and now
and a lot can change as well. If the past is any indicator of the future though
it seems like Hal Steinbrenner and his fiscally responsible ways will be quite
confident with having Andujar, and not an extremely expensive Machado, at the
hot corner on Opening Day 2019. Just a hunch though.
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Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)