The Yankees opened their Grapefruit League season one week ago today, and so far they’re 2-5 and have been outscored 37-25. Doomed? Doomed! When in doubt, the Yankees are doomed. Anyway, I have some random thoughts on this beautiful Wednesday in New York.
1. I don’t get to many minor league games each year. Usually only a handful in Coney Island, where the Mets have their Short Season NY-Penn League affiliate, and maybe one or two in Trenton. Spring Training is definitely the best time for me to get eyes on Yankees prospects, and holy crap is Jorge Mateo exciting. You can read all the scouting reports and whatnat, but man, it’s something else to see 80 speed and sneaky power in action. I must have watched his triple ten times since last Wednesday:
2. The Yankees made it through the first week of Spring Training games with no injuries, thankfully. (No, I don’t believe in jinxes. Why do you ask?) Brett Gardner’s coming back from a bone bruise but that’s a preexisting condition, so to speak. He came to camp hurt. Aside from that, Nathan Eovaldi’s groin has been tight, though he’ll make his first start tomorrow, so it’s no big deal. Pete Kozma and Donovan Solano have been dealing with some back issues. That’s pretty much it. I always worry about injuries that first week of spring as players make the jump in intensity from drills to game action. So far, so good. The AL East might come down to which team stays healthiest this summer, and the Yankees do seem to have more injury risk than most teams. Getting through even one week of Grapefruit League games with no issues is a positive.
3. At this point I’m pretty convinced Bryan Mitchell will be in the bullpen come Opening Day. He’s making regular starts this spring and he’s been with the established big league players in workout groups, plus Joe Girardi has mentioned him by name as a candidate for the Super Utility Reliever role Adam Warren filled the last two years. (To be fair, Girardi mentioned Ivan Nova as a candidate for that role as well.) The Yankees have some Triple-A depth in case they need a spot starter at some point — Luis Cessa is on the 40-man roster and I figure he’s first in line for a call-up — so they can afford to carry Mitchell as a reliever. His ability to throw multiple innings is an obvious plus, though I really liked what I saw out of him in short relief last season, at least before he took the line drive to the nose. PitchFX has his fastball averaging 96.7 mph and topping out at 99.3 mph last year, and, well, this is his curveball:
Mid-90s gas and that bender is going to play in short relief. Mitchell has been unable to develop a reliable changeup over the years — he uses a cutter as his primary weapon against lefties — and this will be his final minor league option season, so he’s kinda running out of time. I get why he may be something of a long man out of the gate this year, but I am a Mitchell fan — I had him seventh on my Preseason Top 30 Prospects List, which is way higher than anyone else — and think he could emerge as a pretty good middle relief option behind the big three relievers by the end of the season. As soon as he realizes he doesn’t have to nibble because his stuff is good enough to overpower hitters in the strike zone, Mitchell could really be something.
4. Right now the rotation is lined up to go Masahiro Tanaka, Michael Pineda, and CC Sabathia come the start of the season. There are still a few weeks between now and Opening Day, so things can change, but Tanaka is lined up perfectly to start Opening Day and the other two guys are right behind him on the pitching schedule. That’s how things line up right now, and it makes sense because that’s the rotation the Yankees used to start last season. Eovaldi started the fourth game and Warren started the fifth game last year. This year it’ll probably be Eovaldi fourth and Luis Severino fifth. That’s fine with me. The Opening Day rotation order means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Bartolo Colon started Opening Day for the Mets last year and things worked out just fine for them. The rotation order at the end of the season and heading into the postseason is what really matters.
5. The Orioles agreed to sign Pedro Alvarez the other day — it’s a one-year deal at $5.75M with $1.5M in incentives, which is more than I thought he’d get at this point of the year — so they have yet another power bat in their lineup. Alvarez, Chris Davis, Adam Jones, Mark Trumbo, and Manny Machado could all legitimately top 30 homers this season. At the same time, the O’s have a lot of strikeouts in their lineup — Davis and Alvarez could combine for 90 homers and 450 strikeouts, like for real — but not the high on-base hitters to compensate. They were third in homers last year (217) but 26th in OBP (.307), which is why they finished only ninth in runs (713). Ninth is pretty good generally speaking, just not when you’re third in dingers. Alvarez and Trumbo aren’t going to help much in the OBP department. Between all the strikeouts — over the last three seasons Davis (31.0%), Alvarez (27.7%), and Trumbo (25.6%) rank second, fourth, and ninth in strikeout rate, respectively — and the guys with OBPs hovering around .300, it’ll be tough for the O’s to sustain rallies in 2015. They’re going to be the ultimate #toomanyhomers team. If they don’t hit the ball out of the park, they won’t score. They’ll have the offense people think the Yankees have.
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