The offseason is over. Yankees pitchers and catchers will report to Tampa for Spring Training today. Joe Girardi will hold his annual spring press conference later this morning — it’ll air live on YES at 11am ET, if you’re interested — and soon there will be photos and videos of players on the field preparing for the new season. Baseball’s back. Today is a good day. Here are some thoughts.
1. To me, the team’s two most important position players this year are Mark Teixeira and Jacoby Ellsbury. The Yankees are so much better offensively and defensively when those two are healthy and firing on all cylinders. Greg Bird was a more than capable backup plan for Teixeira, but he’s out now, so keeping Tex on the field is of paramount importance. As intrigued as I am by Dustin Ackley, I’m pretty sure the drop from Teixeira to Ackley is the largest of any starter-backup combo on the team. Ellsbury, as we saw early last year, can still be a hell-raiser at the leadoff spot. It felt like he was on base three times a game before tweaking his knee and stumbling to the finish. When Ellsbury and Teixeira are right, they’re impact players on both sides of the ball and they fill important lineup spots. The Yankees are a far, far better team when those two are performing like they did before getting hurt last summer. Keeping them healthy and productive is absolutely crucial to the team’s chances for contention in 2016.
2. That brings me to the issue of health, which has already dominated talk around Yankees camp. We’ve already seen near-daily updates about Masahiro Tanaka’s elbow, and Michael Pineda has come out and said his goals this year are 1) throw 200 innings, and 2) stay healthy. There’s no doubt health is going play a huge role in determining whether the 2016 Yankees can contend. Injury risk is something every single team deals with every season though. That’s just baseball. Do the Yankees have more injury risk than most? I think that’s fair to say. Five of their top six starters were hurt for some length of time last year — the best predictor of future injury remains past injury — and several key starting position players have a tendency to get banged up from time to time (Teixeira, Ellsbury, Brett Gardner). I wish I felt a little better about the team’s injury risk, but it is what it is, and I think the Yankees have a chance to be very good if they get through the season with good enough health. The more the Yankees stay healthy, the better they’ll be. I absolutely think they can contend — by contend I mean win the AL East, not just sneak into the postseason as a wildcard team again — as currently constructed. The only major question is health, and I’d rather that be the biggest question instead of talent level.
3. The more I think about it, the more I expect Aaron Hicks to play an awful lot this season. He could end up starting something like three out of every five games as he takes turns resting the starting outfielders. (Alex Rodriguez will also get days off, pushing Carlos Beltran to DH.) Hicks can play all three outfield positions and he’s a switch-hitter, so platoon matchups will not necessarily dictate when he plays like they did Chris Young last year. (Hicks is better against lefties though.) I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The Yankees have been saying they plan to play Hicks a lot all winter — “I think Hicks has a chance to help (the starting outfielders) in spelling them and keeping them healthy and strong,” said Girardi at the Winter Meetings — and they’ve been talking about resting their regulars more often since last season. Hicks is not lacking talent. He’s a former first round pick and once upon a time Baseball America ranked him a top 20 prospect in all of baseball. Hicks turned only 26 back in October. He’s still someone with a chance to develop into a strong two-way player and he’s not going to do that unless he plays regularly. The Yankees have a full outfield, but there still figures to be a way to get Hicks plenty of playing time in 2016, even if the starters stay healthy.
4. I like that the Yankees currently have three open bullpen spots. We all know they’re going to have a bullpen shuttle again this summer, swapping guys out on an almost daily basis to make sure a fresh arm is always available, but I doubt they’re going to have three shuttle spots. That’s overkill. Even two shuttle spots might be overkill, though it could be necessary at times. The three open spots suggests at least one of those relievers is going to get a chance to stick with a big league team for an extended period of time, and get a chance to show what he can do without worrying whether he’s heading back to Scranton the next day. That spot could go to … whoever. Bryan Mitchell, Jacob Lindgren, Nick Rumbelow, whoever. Whoever impresses in camp and has the most success early in the regular season. The guys are going to have to perform well to keep their roster spot. This is good. The competition is healthy. I do think it’s important to give one or two of those relievers an opportunity to stick around for a little while though. They need a chance to blossom.
5. The other day I was reading Ken Davidoff’s annual 30 questions for 30 teams column when something hit me: James Loney is going to be a Yankee this year. He’s in the last year of his contract (owed $9.67M) and he was very bad last year (88 wRC+), plus Tampa Bay has a ton of first base depth. Behind Loney they have Logan Morrison, Steve Pearce, Richie Shaffer, and even Corey Dickerson, who’s long been rumored to move to first. Loney is a sunk cost at this point and chances are the Rays will release him eventually. They’re stuck paying the money anyway. Might as well field the best team. The Yankees lost Bird to his shoulder injury and Teixeira hasn’t played a full season since 2011, so in all likelihood they’re going to need a first base fill-in at some point. Loney’s going to end up being that guy, isn’t he? He’s hammered the Yankees for years (career .339/.386/.465 hitter vs. the Yanks), he’s still a very good defender, and he’s a left-handed hitter who would ostensibly benefit from Yankee Stadium’s short porch. Oh geez. This is going to happen, isn’t it? This is Richie Sexson all over again.
6. And finally, who do you think will be the random player who comes out of nowhere to have a huge spring this year? It happens every year, without fail. Last spring it was Slade Heathcott, the spring before it was Yangervis Solarte, and the spring before that it was Ronnie Mustelier. You can keep going back as far as you want. There’s always someone who has an unexpectedly huge spring and folks start talking about him as a serious candidate to make the team. Solarte doing what he did a few years ago validated some of that chatter, though by and large these spring surprises are just fluky performances the player never comes close to repeating. Anyway, my pick for this year’s spring fluke is … Deibinson Romero. The 29-year-old has never played in the big leagues, but he’s a career .271/.372/.432 hitter in over 1,000 Triple-A plate appearances, and he’s a right-handed hitter who can play both first and third bases. There’s an obvious place for a guy like that in the bench. I can see Romero randomly hitting like .440 during Grapefruit League play and becoming a talking point.
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