Will Mother Nature Sweep the Yankees Today?...

Detroit’s “All Wet”…

It sounds as though it will be a soggy Saturday and, unfortunately, Sunday for the Yankees. Rain is forecasted the entire day with no potential breaks in the weather. The first game of the double-header planned for today has already been postponed but it will most likely be two games lost to Mother Nature.  

Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox keep winning. The Sox lead the AL East by three games over the Toronto Blue Jays after their destruction of the Baltimore Orioles yesterday, 10-3. The Yankees are five games back. For the Red Sox, it is the best start (12-2) in franchise history. They are averaging 6.14 runs per game with team ERA of 3.07. By comparison, the Yankees are scoring an average of 5.5 runs per game with team ERA of 4.78. Pitching, pitching, pitching.

With the postponement of at least one of today’s games, the Yankees will be forced to give up an off-day for the makeup. Depending upon the status of tonight’s schedule game, the Yankees will play at least nine and possibly eighteen innings of work on a day that should have been a day of rest. Mother Nature is not kind. Today’s games in Cleveland, OH and Minneapolis, MN have already been postponed.  

Credit: The late great Charles Schulz

Here are the common days off for the Yankees and Tigers. I have not analyzed the impact on the Tigers, but some of these would be very difficult for the Yankees. Best case would be a flight path near Detroit, however, none are ideal. It’s a bad situation all around for the Yankees.

• Thursday, May 24th: After finishing road game in Arlington, TX on the way home.
• Monday, June 4th: Traveling between Baltimore, MD and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
• Monday, June 11th: Between games in New York at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium.
• Monday, June 18th: Between two home series at Yankee Stadium.
• Monday, July 30th: Between two home series at Yankee Stadium.
• Monday, August 20th: After finishing home stand, en route to Miami, FL.
• Thursday, September 6th: Between road games in Oakland, CA and Seattle, WA.
• Thursday, September 13th: After finishing another road game in Minneapolis on way home.

I guess it could be worse. The Yankees could be playing like the Los Angeles Dodgers, who were pre-season World Series favorites. The Arizona Diamondbacks, with or without Brandon Drury, have the Dodgers’ number. The D-Back crushed the Dodgers yesterday, 9-1, to drop the Dodger Blue to 4-9 and six and a half games behind in the NL West standings. Arizona’s victory was their eleventh straight regular season win over the Dodgers. The D-Backs still feel the sting of the NLDS sweep by Los Angeles last October, but in the regular season, they own the Dodgers.

Photo Credit: Associated Press (Jae C Hong)

The San Diego Padres added to their collection of former Yankees yesterday. Their latest addition was former Yankees reliever Tyler Webb, claimed off waivers from the Milwaukee Brewers. The Yankees traded Webb to Milwaukee last year for first baseman Garrett Cooper (who has since been dealt to the Miami Marlins and is currently on the disabled list). I always liked Webb, a lefty, and I hope that he finds success in San Diego with Chase Headley, Bryan Mitchell and Jose Pirela.  

Nice job by the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders yesterday. They survived a four-run deficit to the Charlotte Knights (White Sox affiliate) and one of the best pitching prospects in baseball, Michael Kopech. In the seventh inning, after Kopech had departed with the Knights leading 5-1, the RailRiders struck for six runs on their way to the 10-5 victory. The RailRiders are 6-3 and share the International League North division lead with the Syracuse Chiefs (Nationals). I don’t want to take away anything from the other RailRiders who keyed the win (newly acquired L.J. Mazzilli had a bases-clearing double) but we’re clearly under a Gleyber Torres Watch right now. Torres was 2-for-5, with a run-scoring double during the six-run seventh inning. He had two doubles after Kopech had left the game and three RBI’s, and scored once. Torres is 14-for-36 with .389/.410/.583 batting line and .994 OPS in nine games. The dude’s on fire and is ready to take his game to the Bronx. We’ll see later this week if the Yankees make the move to bring the future star to Yankee Stadium or continue to wait a few more weeks. I think most Yankee fans are ready to see Gleyber in the Yankees lineup next Thursday.

Photo Credit: MiLB.com (Ken Inness)

Although there’s rain in New York today and tomorrow, Tuesday night looks good for Giancarlo Stanton’s reunion at Yankee Stadium with his former Miami Marlins teammates. 

One of these days we’ll see Yankees baseball again. I am not optimistic about tonight’s game but we’ll see.  

Go Yankees!

And the Injury Bug Has Hit Yankees Camp…

It’s never too early for the injury bug to hit a team and unfortunately for the New York Yankees that bug has hit the club even before their first spring training game in 2017. According to Bryan Hoch of Yankees.com the Yankees will be without both Ronald Herrera and James Reeves for a few weeks after sustaining injuries during spring workouts.

Herrera, who was traded to the Yankees from the San Diego Padres in the deal for Jose Pirela a couple years back, will miss at least two weeks with shoulder inflammation while James Reeves, an underrated left-handed reliever that could have snuck onto the Yankees Opening Day roster with a strong spring, will miss at least 3-4 weeks with a left elbow sprain. Bummer.

Herrera is just 21-years old and is coming off a 2016 campaign that saw the right-hander put up a 10-7 record with a 3.75 ERA in 132.0 innings in Double-A with the Trenton Thunder. Herrera struck out 123 batters in those 132 innings but he also continued to show he was vulnerable to giving up hits which was evident by his nearly hit per inning ratio last season. Again though, he’s 21. He has plenty of time to put it all together and improve. That’s what the minor leagues are for.

Meanwhile Reeves was a 10th round draft pick in the 2015 MLB First Year Players Draft for the Yankees and is coming off a season with the High-A Tampa Yankees where he put up a 5-1 record with a 2.27 ERA mostly out of the bullpen. I say mostly because Reeves did start 12 of his 25 games that he appeared in last season but it still viewed as more of a reliever than a starting pitching prospect at this point in his career.

Get well soon boys and get back to the grind. We’re always rooting for you. 

Ranking Brian Cashman's November Trade/Acquisition History

Brian Cashman in the past has wasted no time preparing for the upcoming season as the Yankees GM so I decided to take a quick look at what he has done in the month of November in recent years. If the past is any indicator of the future should we expect a trade sometime soon this month?

2008 - Wilson Betemit, Jeff Marquez and Jhonny Nunez to the Chicago White Sox for Nick Swisher and Kanekoa Teixeira.

2014 - The Justin Wilson for Francisco Cervelli trade with the Pittsburgh Pirates definitely benefited both teams as both teams traded from a position of depth and power to fill a need. The way trades are designed to be.

2007 - Cashman sent Gary Sheffield to the Detroit Tigers for Humberto Sanchez, Anthony Claggett and Kevin Whelan. None of these prospects ever made the roster but Sheffield wasn't conspiring with Kenny Lofton about the "racist" Joe Torre either. Win/win.

2001- Cashman signs Melky Cabrera as a 16-year old out of Venezuela.

2015 - The Yankees sent John Ryan Murphy to the Minnesota Twins for Aaron Hicks and the team also acquired Ronald Herrera from the San Diego Padres on this day.

New York Finally Has a Second Baseman

How convenient is it, spoiler alert it's not a coincidence, to make a blog post about the New York Yankees finally finding a potential second baseman not only for the present but for the future as well while the last second baseman the team thought that about is in town for a three game series? After just two weeks of the MLB season, and after many rants from myself a self-professed Robert Refsnyder fan boy and his biggest fan, it seems like the Yankees may have finally found their second baseman to finally replace Robinson Cano in Starlin Castro.

The Yankees tried multiple people at the position including Brian Roberts, Yangervis Solarte, Kelly Johnson, Martin Prado, Brendan Ryan, Jose Pirela, Dustin Ackley, Robert Refsnyder and Stephen Drew before finally settling on Castro after an offseason trade. The Yankees seem to be a fan of having Castro at the position and Cano himself does to as he revealed in an interview this weekend. Cano said Castro was "fun to watch" in an interview with Chad Jennings of LoHud.

Castro is still new to the second base position, I think a lot of people forget that defensively, and is still just 26-years old despite playing in his 7th MLB season in 2016. Castro already has surpassed the 1,000 hit plateau for his career and has already made three All-Star Games in his career with the Chicago Cubs. Castro may not even be into his prime yet and he currently sits here with some impressive stats and achievements already in his career.

Castro may be the second baseman of the present and he may be the second baseman of the future. He may grow out of the position and grow into the third baseman of the future and his bat seems good enough to possibly be the Alex Rodriguez type DH of the future. Either way Castro has a future and the Yankees may have finally found a second baseman after Robinson Cano left via free agency for Seattle and it's finally a beautiful thing to say out loud.

Old Faces in New York Spring Training Places

The New York Yankees have seen a lot of turnover over the past few seasons and especially during the 2016 offseason so I thought now would be a good time to see how those former Yankees faces are doing in different spring places. Not that spring stats mean much of anything at all but it can still be fun to look at to see if the team “won” a specific transaction or not.

Adam Warren:

Tm	GS	W	L	ERA	G	GS	GF	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	WHIP	H9	HR9	BB9	SO9
CHC	1	0	0	5.14	4	1	2	7.0	7	6	4	1	0	5	1.000	9.0	1.3	0.0	6.4

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Stephen Drew:

Tm	G	PA	R	H	2B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
WSH	16	37	4	9	3	1	8	0	4	8	.273	.351	.455	.806

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Brendan Ryan:

Tm	Age	G	PA	R	H	2B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
WSH	34	17	30	5	11	2	0	3	0	1	5	.379	.400	.517	.917

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Rookie Davis:

GS	ERA	G	GS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	WHIP	H9	HR9	BB9	SO9
0	4.50	1	0	2.0	2	1	1	0	1	1	1.500	9.0	0.0	4.5	4.5

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Chris Capuano

Tm	GS	W	L	ERA	G	GS	GF	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	WHIP	H9	HR9	BB9	SO9
MIL	0	0	0	1.69	7	0	1	10.2	9	2	2	0	3	8	1.125	7.6	0.0	2.5	6.8

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Chris Young:

Tm	Age	G	PA	R	H	2B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
BOS	32	14	37	4	7	3	2	6	1	3	6	.206	.270	.471	.741

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Jake Cave: 

Tm	Age	G	PA	R	H	2B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
CIN	23	22	54	5	11	1	1	3	1	5	11	.229	.302	.313	.614

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Jose Pirela:

Tm	Age	G	PA	R	H	2B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
SD	26	21	52	5	18	5	1	4	0	1	8	.353	.365	.510	.875

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Familiar Faces in Different Places

The New York Yankees did not add a single major league free agent to their team this offseason and much of the reason why was the fact that New York did not have much coming off the books in terms of players and dollars. While the Yankees did add Aroldis Chapman and Starlin Castro is separate trades the team remained virtually the same from 2015 in many key areas. The Yankees lost three free agents this season in Chris Young, Stephen Drew and Chris Capuano while the team also lost Jose Pirela, Adam Warren, Brendan Ryan, Rookie Davis, Eric Jagielo and others in the Castro and Chapman deals. We've seen the new faces don Yankees pinstripes on Yankees photo day and today we look at those familiar faces who are sporting uniforms in different places. As painful as it may be please try to enjoy.

Adam Warren - Cubs

Justin Wilson - Tigers

John Ryan Murphy - Twins

Jose Pirela - Padres

Brendan Ryan - Reds

Chris Young - Red Sox

Chris Capuano - Brewers

Chase Whitley - Rays

Rookie Davis - Reds

Stephen Drew - Nationals

Jake Cave - Reds