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DJ LeMahieu is the Latest Sign the Yankees Have Changed

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Ralph Fresco/Getty Images

The Yankees signed DJ LeMahieu to a two-year, $24 million contract yesterday, all but guaranteeing that the team’s half-hearted pursuit of Manny Machado has come to an end. That realization prompted a fierce reaction among many Yankee fans on social media yesterday, a great deal of whom not only wanted to see the 26-year-old superstar don the pinstripes but had expected it since Machado was a teenager in Baltimore. The Machado connection is part of what makes analyzing the LeMahieu signing a more difficult exercise than usual, but it goes even deeper than that: it is a symbol of a changing relationship between the New York Yankees and its fanbase.

That is a difficult space in which to operate from an analytical standpoint. Consider, for instance, the baseball element alone: LeMahieu is an outstanding defender. Publicly-available advanced metrics consider LeMahieu worth several wins defensively and non-statistical methods agree with this assessment: he is a three-time Gold Glove-winning second basemen. That is no small reason to cheer the signing; the Yankees have many defensive question marks in their infield and LeMahieu will almost certainly be a defensive upgrade even if he moves off of second base with New York.

Offensively, he is but two seasons removed from winning the National League batting crown with a .348 batting average and even though that season was the only one in his career in which he has been a better than average hitter, there is ample evidence that he hits the ball hard and to the opposite field. Back in July, fans scoffed at the addition of Luke Voit, but the Yankees trusted that similar underlying metrics revealed a hitter who could thrive in New York, and they were right. The Yankees are a smart, well-run operation with access to proprietary data and statistics that external analysts simply don’t—and their track record is deserving of the benefit of the doubt. It wouldn’t shock me at all to see LeMahieu have unexpected offensive success.

Factor in that LeMahieu is a 2-3 bWAR player and a hidden star of Baseball Prospectus’ new metric and it becomes clear that his $12 million annual salary is a perfectly normal deal for a perfectly normal free agent. Average to slightly-above-average major league players have real (often forgotten) value, and LeMahieu fits that bill. He’ll even be replacing the non-vital role of Neil Walker and Ronald Torreyes.

In other words, it is easy to see how LeMahieu will fit on the team. Why, then, was the reaction so fierce?

That was mostly because his signing comes amid a turbulent offseason for the Yankees and their fans. You need no reminder that the Yankees and the long-coveted 2018 free agent class have a special relationship. Insert your preferred Star Wars analogy here: fully-operational Death Star, Evil Empire, etc. There were special free agents available, and the Yankees were expected to have a special offseason. LeMahieu, more even than the decision to pass on Patrick Corbin or the many nebulous comments offered by Brian Cashman, is the symbol that this expectation, so long held, won’t come to pass.

Never mind that when the Yankees sold important pieces in 2016, it was to build a young core that could be supplemented by one of the stars pending free agency. Never mind that that young core blossomed faster than anyone could have reasonably expected and became a fearsome core of extremely talented, young and (unfortunately, most importantly) team- and cost-controlled stars. Never mind that the Yankees cut $50 million in payroll after missing the pennant by a single game in 2017, finally coming under the luxury tax we’d all heard so much about. Never mind that both Bryce Harper and Manny Machado were both open about their desires to play in New York. Never mind that adding even one of them would position the Yankees not just to win the World Series in 2019 but many more after that. Never mind it all, because very little of it mattered in the end.

These are the realizations running through the heads of Yankee fans when they think about DJ LeMahieu, and that is why the reaction to his signing was overwhelmingly negative. The Yankees organization itself understood this: that’s why, just 16 hours before the signing was announced, the team’s television network featured a segment with the most trusted Yankee reporters belittling and mocking fans who dared want to cheer for the best possible version of their team. It’s also why team sources may have reached out to reporters, planting the idea that if it were only a slightly different set of superstars—ones who, coincidentally, will be on the market in two years—then it would have been different. Besides, we will hear, the Yankees are almost certainly going to start the season over the luxury tax threshold, and this will be used to discredit arguments that the Yankees are cheap.

These tactics are meant to soften the blow of passing on Machado and Harper, to give fans a new shiny object—this time, Nolan Arenado in 2019 or Mike Trout and Mookie Betts in 2020—to dream about. Speculation about Arenado aside, most fans understand that Bryce Harper and Manny Machado were once those shiny objects of free agent classes to come—until they suddenly weren’t.

There’s one thing that we never hear about when writers and teams talk about future free agent classes: we never hear about the DJ LeMahieus, the perfectly average free agents who will cost less and demand less years than their superstar counterparts. The decision to choose DJ LeMahieu and Troy Tulowitzki over Manny Machado to patch up the Yanks’ battered infield lays bare that the Yankees have changed. For the first time since the Yankees signed Reggie Jackson before 1977, the team is more interested in justifying passing on superstars than it is justifying itself as the Evil Empire baseball needs.

CORRECTION (by Mike): The YES Network video linked above (this one) was not intended to belittle and mock fans. It was a quick comedic intro that led to a baseball discussion about the Yankees, Machado, and his market. We misrepresented what the video said and apologize for the error.

The Yankees Will Miss David Robertson

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(Rich Schultz/Getty Images)

The Yankees have now said goodbye to David Robertson for the second time in the last four years. Robertson, drafted by the Yankees in the 17th round of the 2006 Amateur Draft, inked a two-year, $23 million contract (with a $12 million team option in 2021) with the Philadelphia Phillies on Thursday. Because Brian Cashman has made bolstering the team’s already dominant bullpen a top offseason priority, we can expect another top arm—but it’s also clear that the Yankees will miss D-Rob in 2019 and beyond.

The Yankees have had baseball’s best bullpen (judged by fWAR) in both 2017 and 2018, and David Robertson played a key role in that success since returning to the Yanks in a blockbuster deal midway through 2017. Robertson may have seemed less than his usual self in 2018, with a 3.23 (75 ERA-) in 69.2 innings, but a closer look at his peripherals shows that there are good reasons to assume that the Phillies just signed one of baseball’s best relievers.

While his ERA was a bit higher than we’ve come to expect, his peripherals remained as strong as ever: his K% (32.2), BB% (9.2), HR/9 (0.9), LD% (17.4), GB% (45.3) and FB% (37.3) were all in line with his career averages. Opponents hit .183/.258/.337 off of Robertson in 2018, again either in line with or lower than career norms. He did strand fewer men on base (67.5%) than normal (76.3%), but based on the underlying data, I think we can expect that to correct in 2019.

His stuff, too, remained as sharp as ever. Robertson embraced the Yankees’ anti-fastball approach, for the first time throwing more curveballs than fastballs in 2018, and gradually added a slider to his repertoire. That helped mitigate the fact that his fastball has become less effective over time—even as its velocity has increased (92.6 MPH average in 2018 compared to 91.2 MPH in 2008). This changed approach worked, and it ensured that D-Rob remained one of baseball’s most effective bullpen arms in 2018.

The ability to effectively make mid-career adjustments like this—especially for a reliever on the wrong side of 30—is a rare skill, and it goes a long way toward explaining why Robertson has managed to be so consistent over his 9-year career. He has thrown at least 60 innings per year since 2010 (he threw 43.2 in 2009, his first real year as a big leaguer), and during that stretch, he has not struck out less than 10 men per 9 innings, surrendered more than 1 home run per 9 or posted an ERA- above 90 (which is the highest of his career and, it’s worth noting, happened back in 2010). Amid the consistent success, he has posted 3 truly dominating years in relief in 2011, 2013 and again in 2017.

Consistent success out of the pen, too, is a rare skill. Think of Tommy Kahnle, who often looked unhittable in 2017 but was unplayable in 2018. There’s a reason that relievers are so closely associated with fungibility, which makes the most consistent and irreplaceable among them worthy of larger contracts—and as the league becomes increasingly bullpen-centric, that applies even for non-closers like Robertson.

While it is true that past success does not guarantee future success and also that relievers are consistent until they’re suddenly not, there is nothing in Robertson’s peripherals or past performance that suggests he will suddenly lose his effectiveness. He is about as safe a bet to log another above-average season as any reliever in baseball, and he is only one year removed from posting a 42 ERA-.

It’s also worth noting that Robertson’s contract structure, in which he will earn $10 million in 2019, $11 million in 2020 and, if Philly picks up his team option, $12 million in 2021 ($2 million buy out) means that he will earn the same salary in 2019 as Jeurys Familia and less than Andrew Miller. Robertson is a significantly better pitcher than Familia by almost any advanced metric and Miller, who was the best reliever in baseball for a recent stretch, has been plagued by injuries and ineffectiveness.

That suggests that Robertson, who represented himself in free agency, will likely be underpaid in Philadelphia. That itself raises questions about why the Yankees were not more aggressive in trying to retain his services. In fact, the two camps were barely connected at all this offseason, aside from a (conveniently-timed) story about Robertson denying clubhouse staff their typical postseason shares.

Jon Heyman reports that the Yanks would like to bring back Zach Britton, and they’ve been consistently connected with former Rockie Adam Ottavino as well. Both are fine options that would make the current version of the Yankees bullpen better, but it is worth noting that the Yanks had both Robertson and Britton last year. In other words, unless they sign both Britton and Ottavino, it is likely that the Yankee bullpen just got worse—yet again leaving fans to wonder if management actually wants to field a winner above all else.

The Yankees Can Afford to Sign Both Bryce Harper and Manny Machado

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(Keith Allison)

When Brian Cashman called the Yankees a “fully operational Death Star” during the Winter Meetings, he wasn’t lying: the team’s talented young roster is fresh off of a 100-win season and back-to-back postseason appearances. If you factor in the acquisition of the often-dominant James Paxton and the rumor that the Yankees are believed to be the frontrunners for 26-year old superstar Manny Machado, you’d be excused if you believe him. But a closer look makes it clear that the Yankees have operated at less than full financial capacity, their biggest competitive advantage, for quite some time—and that they can add both Bryce Harper and Manny Machado and still reinvest less revenue into player salaries than they did in the last decade.

Brett Borzelli of Pinstripe Alley wrote up a very astute analysis of the team’s financial situation and its league-wide implications a few days ago based on some newly-released data. You should read the entire piece and the underlying data yourself, but I think it’s important to pull out three key points:

1. Team payroll has decreased: The Yankees paid their players $226.2 million in 2004, and it remained relatively steady (in real numbers, not those adjusted for inflation) around that figure until last year, when it plummeted to $193 million.

2. Team revenue has increased: In 2004, the Yankees took in $264 million in revenue. That number climbed to $375 million in 2008 and reached about $620 million in 2017. Based on league revenue figures, attendance/ratings and overall team performance, it’s a safe bet that revenue increased again last year.

3. Therefore, the Yankees are investing less in the team than at any point in the last two decades: The best way to consider team spending is as a percentage of overall revenue, and by that standard, the Yankees are clearly failing. The 2004 team reinvested roughly 85 percent of its revenue into player salaries while the 2018 version, based on some crude calculations, reinvested less than 30 percent, less even than the Tampa Bay Rays.

To put this in context, consider this: had the Yankees simply maintained the 2004 salary as a baseline and stayed constant, their 2017 payroll would have been $300 million. Had they maintained the same ratio of revenue to payroll as that year (85 percent), their 2018 payroll would have been $526 million, more than double what it is now. Viewed in this context, the Jacoby Ellsbury albatross and the Alex Rodriguez extension have been far less financially inhibiting than we often think.

But instead, after the 2017 Yankees emerged out of nowhere to reach Game 7 of the ALCS, the Yankees cut $50 million in salary from 2017 to 2018 when factoring in the team’s luxury tax penalty. The high-profile acquisition of Giancarlo Stanton and his 10-year, $325 million contract—which, by the way, is less than he is worth and will likely prove to be a financial asset to the Yankees over the course of the deal—obscured this in the eyes of many fans and analysts, but the fact remains the same: the Yankees cut $50 million in player salary last year.

A well-coordinated PR campaign by Hal Steinbrenner and other team executives have helped shape a narrative that the Yankees are “still the Yankees” and will “spend when they need to” but that they “don’t need a $200 million payroll to win.” Some variation of that austerity platform has been deployed for at least the last five years, even as the team has suffered by letting some generational talents pass by.

Consider the 2014-15 offseason, when the Yankees didn’t even consider adding Max Scherzer—the type of pitcher we always hear the Yankees “need”—because his contract demands weren’t “realistic” under the team’s financial framework. Team President Randy Levine was characteristically blunt at the time: “The chances of us bringing in a guy for six [years] and $25 million or over, in my opinion, is virtually none.” That philosophy, to varying degrees, has applied to other top-of-the-rotation talents including Jon Lester, David Price, Yu Darvish and Jake Arrieta. (It even applied to the decision not to sign Yoan Moncada back when the farm system was starved for talent.)

The decision not to pursue Scherzer—who, by the way, has a  2.71 ERA (156 ERA+) and 11 K/9 in 878.1 innings pitched since signing with Washington—is clearly the most egregious, but it’s far from the only notable decision. In August 2017, the Yankees reportedly discussed Justin Verlander with the Tigers, but not in a serious manner because, according to Buster Olney (subs req’d), they “wanted [him] but had to let him pass by on waivers because they didn’t have the payroll flexibility to spend.” Verlander, of course, virtually eliminated the Yankees singlehandedly that October and sported a 2.52 ERA in 214 innings last season.

It is clear by now that the Yankees do in fact have the “payroll flexibility” to do whatever they want and that they have actively chosen to inhibit themselves. There is no indication that this offseason will be any different: the Yankees are still beating the austerity drum. They passed on Patrick Corbin, not even extending an offer because the two parties were so far apart financially. And in the Manny Machado sweepstakes, it’s long been reported that the Yankees will not offer him a contract worth $300 million or more—if Machado, who is believed to prefer (subs req’d) the Bronx, really wants to be a Yankee, he’ll need to accept less guaranteed money. His superstar free agent counterpart in Bryce Harper, also believed to prefer the Bronx, is likely in the same boat.

But the Yankees can afford to pay both. Assume both of them receive $35m per year, the high end of what they’re expected to get. That would add $70m to the payroll, bringing it to about $260 million before adding supporting pieces and another bullpen arm. If we assume the final payroll ends up around $280-90 million, they’d pay about $35 million in luxury tax—bringing the payroll to a total of $320 million, right around the 2004 payroll adjusted for inflation (and a fraction of the team’s revenue, which has soared since then). There is even enough flexibility here to account for future pay raises for the Yankees homegrown stars.

Much can change in the course of a few weeks (here is the part of the article where I am supposed to bring up Bubba Crosby and Mark Teixeira), but it remains highly unlikely that they make a move to sign both superstars, even though there isn’t a single compelling baseball reason not to do so. But there is no excuse, financial or otherwise, not to add at least one of the two superstars, who have yet to hit their prime. In other words, the next few weeks serve as a litmus test for the new-age New York Yankees: is the organization more concerned with its bottom line than it is with producing the best possible on-field product? I still think that Manny Machado ends up in pinstripes, but that may just be wishful thinking: a survey of the team’s financial data and recent actions does not exactly inspire confidence.

Mariano Rivera Should be Baseball’s First Unanimous Hall of Famer

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G.O.A.T. (Getty)

There are four notable former Yankees eligible for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2019. Two will almost certainly never be elected. Andy Pettitte, a beloved fan favorite, simply doesn’t have the case and Gary Sheffield’s more compelling case is not translating into votes. Of the two remaining, Mike Mussina should already be enshrined—and 2019 may finally be his year. That leaves Mariano Rivera, about whose candidacy there is no doubt. He will be inducted in 2019, but for a player like Rivera, mere induction is not enough: he deserves to be the first player unanimously voted into the Hall of Fame.

Mike listed why he will not receive that honor a few weeks ago, and the reality is that he is right. Odds are a voter or two will strategically create a spot on their 10-spot ballot for a player who may need to clear the 5 percent threshold to remain on the ballot in 2020 by leaving off near-lock Mariano. But deserves to be and will be are different arguments, and on the merits alone, there is simply no compelling case to be made for leaving Mariano off of even a single ballot.

Rivera pitched 1,283.2 innings in his 19-year career (1996-2013), almost all of them in the 8th or 9th inning of close games. He was on the mound for the final play of an MLB record 952 games, recorded another MLB record 652 saves and compiled the best league-adjusted ERA (2.21 ERA, 205 ERA+, 49 ERA-) for any pitcher with over 1,000 innings pitched in the history of baseball. He walked only 2 men and allowed per 7 hits 9 innings pitched for a clean 1.000 WHIP, and, most impressively, gave up one home run every 18 innings pitched. All of this in the steroid-era against many of the game’s most fearsome hitters.

This translates to a 56.2 bWAR, which is the most WAR compiled by a reliever by a truly laughable amount. Jay Jaffe’s JAWS ranks him second, but that’s because Dennis Eckersley’s total is skewed by his years as a starter. As Mike wrote, among pitchers with 80 percent or more of their appearances in relief, Rivera is first in WAR—Hoyt Wilhelm is second at 50 WAR in more 1,000 more innings, and if you squint, you can see Goose Gossage’s 41.9 WAR in 3rd place. Rivera’s contemporaries in the top 30, Tom Gordon (34.9) Joe Nathan (26.7), Billy Wagner (27.7), Trevor Hoffman (26.7) and Jonathan Papelbon (23.5) are not even close.

That is especially noteworthy because of an obsession among baseball writers to anoint his successor, even when Rivera himself was still dominating. A Google search of “next Mariano” reveals that Roberto Osuna, Zach Britton, Joba Chamberlain, Craig Kimbrel, Kenley Jansen and Jonathan Papelbon have all been dubbed baseball’s next Rivera. The best of these comparisons occurred while Rivera was playing, and almost always ended in a humorous fashion.

That’s because of almost superhuman longevity, which is worth detailing in a quick exercise by highlighting three seasons in the beginning, in the middle and very end of his career.

At age 26, Rivera logged what is one of the most dominant seasons in relief in modern baseball history. In 107.2 IP he pitched to a 2.09 ERA (240 ERA+) with a 1.88 FIP, 10 strikeouts per 9 innings pitched and surrendered only 1 home run. He was worth, according to Baseball-Reference, an absurd 5 wins as a multi-inning setup reliever and was a key player in the shocking 1996 World Series run.

In 2006, a decade later, 36-year-old Rivera posted another 4 win season. In 75 innings had a 1.80 ERA (252 ERA+) despite only recording 6 strikeouts per 9 innings (but walked only 1 per 9) and surrendered 3 home runs. This was hardly a notable season at the time; it was just another season of Mariano Rivera being Mariano Rivera.

Finally, at age 43 in 2013 (a year after a season-ending ACL injury), Rivera had 44 saves in 64 innings. His 2.11 ERA (190 ERA+), nearly 8 Ks per 9 and impeccable control (1 walk per 9) remained in line with his career numbers; he retired because of the travel, not because of any regression or diminished returns. This, more than anything else, is what separates Mariano Rivera from his peers—three seasons, each almost ten years apart, in which he was virtually unhittable.

But if Rivera’s regular season achievements have no comparisons, it is the postseason where the separation is most stark. There’s almost no point repeating the laundry list of achievements, but two things stand out: 1) Rivera got better across the board in October (he had a 0.70 ERA) and 2) in 141 postseason innings (two full seasons), Rivera surrendered only two (2!!) home runs. He won 5 World Series, was on the mound for the final out of four consecutive World Series and had some of the most heroic performances in the recent Yankee dynasty. The unfavorable endings of the both 2001 World Series and 2004 ALCS are so memorable not just because of their natural excitement, but because so much of the action came against Rivera—it’s as if nobody could believe their eyes.

All of this adds up to a simple, undeniable fact: we will never see another Mariano Rivera. He is, by any standard, the most dominant relief pitcher in baseball history, the baseline against which all other relievers are judged. His postseason heroics will never be matched, his longevity defies belief and, of course, he did it all with one pitch for two decades.

Tom Kelly, the manager of the 1996 Minnesota Twins, best summarized him after an early season matchup against the ’96 version of Rivera: “He should be in a higher league. Ban him from baseball; he should be illegal.” Voters now have a chance to actually put him in a higher league by making him baseball’s first unanimous Hall of Famer.

After all, if Rivera pitched without peers throughout his career, that is how he ought to be inducted to the Hall of Fame: a cut above the rest, having accomplished what nobody else could do, or will ever do again.

Gary Sanchez is One of Baseball’s Best Catchers

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That Gary, he sure is scary. (Getty)

This past week’s Winter Meetings were a dull affair. The Yankees did bring back J.A. Happ to fill out the rotation and it was reported that the team will meet with Manny Machado in New York in the coming days/weeks, but by far the most interesting Yankee rumor was their (brief) connection to Marlins’ catcher J.T. Realmuto. Originally a tool to coerce the Mets to send Noah Syndergaard to the Bronx, the Marlins also tried to manufacture Yankee interest in obtaining Realmuto themselves—a rumor that was never believable because the Yankees already have one of baseball’s best catchers in Gary Sanchez.

Gary is probably the most polarizing Yankee since Alex Rodriguez hung up his cleats three years ago. Fans either love him or hate him, with little room in the middle. He is accused of laziness and complacency and Joe Girardi’s occasionally tense relationship with the Yankee backstop was rumored to be a big reason why the Yankees elected not to bring him back after the surprise success of the 2017 campaign.

Gary’s abysmal 2018 amplified criticism of his defense and hustle, particularly after he failed to appropriately hustle in Tampa Bay in July and after a futile showing in Oakland (a showing in which Luis Severino surely deserves some blame) in September. Coupled with his .186/.291/.406 (89 wRC+) batting line, it appears at first glance that 2018 proved Gary’s doubters right.

But the problem with narratives like these is that they often obscure the broader context. That is especially true in baseball, a provincial sport in which most fans watch only their own preferred team, over and over—magnifying flaws and frustrations at the expense of other teams’ weaknesses. In other words, it’s important to zoom out and consider the whole league to properly evaluate Gary’s production and value.

When you do so, it becomes clear that Gary Sanchez is baseball’s most powerful catcher. 32 players have at least 750 at-bats with at least 75 percent of their games behind the plate since the beginning of 2016, and Gary is 3rd overall in home runs with 71, trailing only Yasmani Grandal (73) and Salvador Perez (76), both of whom had at least 300 more plate appearances. He has the highest slugging percentage of the group at .516 and the highest OPS by a considerable margin at .849. (The next closest is Wilson Ramos with a .826 OPS.) He is 6th overall in RBI (188), 11th overall in OBP (.333) and walks (110), 13th in batting average (.252) and 14th in doubles (49). Calling Gary Sanchez anything but one of the league’s most dominant offensive catchers is simply dishonest.

It’s also worth mentioning that even his atrocious 2018 had plenty of silver linings—and wasn’t that far off from league average. His 89 wRC+ was right in line with league average production of 91 wRC+ (leaguewide, catchers hit .237/.313/.385 in 2018), and he ranked 6th in home runs with 18. In fact, Baseball Prospectus’ new offensive metric, DRC+, actually ranks Gary as an above-average catcher last year. (As Friend of RAB™ Jarrett Seidler said on Twitter the other day, his season was valued about the same as Realmuto’s career average.) There is a convincing case to be made that Gary ran into considerable bad luck with balls he hit hard last year and it’s also important to consider that he may have been hobbled by injuries, even when playing.

But most criticism of Gary is based on his futility at blocking balls, which are both obvious to fans watching and often ugly to watch. Gary leads the league in passed balls by a wide margin, and that alone is enough for some fans. But passed balls are not the only defensive responsibility of catchers—they also throw runners out, execute analytical gameplans and frame pitches. And the data and anecdotes show that in every one of those categories, Gary Sanchez excels. Coupled with his dominant offense, the runs that Gary allows on passed balls only scratch the surface of his run-production (and yes, even his run prevention).

But despite all of this, Gary will be the center of controversy again in 2019. That will be true even if he meets (or exceeds!) his current 2019 Steamer projection of .245/.322/.482 (116 wRC+), which would again rank him as one of baseball’s dominant catchers. Some players just attract controversy—though it is worth noting that there are implicit reasons why—and he is one of them. That’s not likely to change.

But as we all cheer on the Yankees next year, remember to tune out the noise around the Yankee backstop, because the data is clear: Gary Sanchez is one of baseball’s very best catchers, and the Yankees are lucky to have him.

Signing Manny Machado is the Best Path to a Dominant Rotation

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They’re talking about winning the World Series in the Bronx. (Getty Images)

The Yankees did not sign this year’s top free agent starting pitcher: Patrick Corbin will instead have six tries to help the Washington Nationals win their first playoff series. Many Yankee fans, myself included, believed that Corbin represented the Yanks’ best path to creating a dominant rotation—but the reality is that he was never the only option. The Indians are reportedly “increasingly motivated” to move Corey Kluber (and another very good but not-to-be-named starter) and the Yankees should do everything they can to acquire him.

That will not be easy. The Yankees once stacked farm system has depleted significantly over the last several years—and even if that depletion was for all of the right reasons, it significantly complicates any effort to trade for an ace. But it is not impossible. If the Yankees decide to flex their financial muscles and sign Manny Machado, it will make available precisely the type of talent needed to trade for a pitcher of Corey Kluber’s status. Let’s break this one down step-by-step.

Signing Machado

Dreaming of NYC. (Maddie Meyer/Getty)

The case to sign Machado, of course, is a simple one to make. The 26-year-old should be one of the most coveted free agents in MLB history, boasting a career .282/.335/.487 (120 wRC+) line in just over 4,000 plate appearances. Like Bryce Harper (who they should also sign), he is just now entering his prime—meaning he should, in theory at least, be as good as he’ll ever be in the next four seasons or so.

That alone should put him on every team’s radar. The fact that he has posted a wRC+ greater than 130 in three of the last four seasons (with the fourth being a down year in 2017 that was clearly an outlier) ought to only sweeten the deal. In each of those seasons, he has hit at least 33 home runs. And last year, when he hit .297/.367/.548 (141 wRC+) with 37 home runs, was the most productive of his career.

Machado is about as good as it gets offensively. Defensively, the story is a bit murkier—but it doesn’t have to be. He switched positions from third to short in 2018 with mixed results. He struggled with the analytically-inept Baltimore Orioles but, if the data is to believed, he seemed to benefit from better positioning in Los Angeles. As a third baseman, though, Machado is as impressive a defender as I can remember seeing, an observation supported by most defensive metrics.

Even though he prefers shortstop (his natural position), Machado is reportedly willing to shift back to the hot corner if it meant playing in the Bronx. That is exactly what the Yankees should insist, and not just the Yanks are loaded with groundball pitchers and struggle with infield defense. Doing so would also allow the Yankees to slide Gleyber Torres to short until Didi Gregorius returns while slotting Machado in at third—opening up Miguel Andújar to be the centerpiece in a package for a top-shelf starting pitcher like Corey Kluber.

Saying Goodbye to Miggy Mantle

Don’t worry: you’ll be reunited at the ASG. (Jim McIsaac/Getty)

The case to trade Andújar, unlike signing Machado, is a bit more difficult to make. Miggy Mantle burst onto the scene in 2018, hitting .297/.328/.527 (128 wRC+) with 27 home runs in just over 600 plate appearances. His ability to make hard contact on almost any pitch and drive it is a rare offensive skill—and it is the reason why he hit so many balls for extra bases in 2018. Andújar quickly became one of my favorite Yanks, and it is hard to imagine what the 2018 squad would have been like without Andújar’s steady performance.

But that does not mean that it would not make sense to say goodbye. Andújar’s defense is a work in progress to put it kindly, and that was enough to have him be replaced in the 6th (!) inning of the Wild Card Game this October for defensive reasons. That the team didn’t start or pinch hit him in the deciding game of the ALDS suggests that these worries may run deep in the front office—even if that decision, in my opinion, was an obvious tactical blunder.

Andújar will start 2019 at age 24—but Machado will begin the season at age 26. In fact, replacing Andújar with Machado is one of the few ways where the Yankees would get a significant defensive upgrade in the infield without sacrificing any offensive value, and Machado is an even better hitter than Andújar to boot.

Miggy’s trade value figures to be about as high as any player in the league—any 23 year-old who put up those offensive numbers at the league minimum salary will get teams interested. Even with his obvious defensive warts, another team may see a way to improve his defense at the hot corner, or perhaps they see a future for him in left field ala Ryan Braun or at first base. But in any case, Andújar is the type of talent who commands a large return.

Welcoming Corey Kluber

His number has some meaning. (Sean M. Haffey/Getty)

The pertinent question, now, is if a package based around Andújar would be enough to entice Cleveland to say goodbye to one of the best pitchers in baseball. The 32-year-old ace has won two of the last five AL Cy Youngs—finishing no lower than 3rd in overall voting with one win in the last three years—and it is clear why. Since 2014, Kluber has posted a 2.85 ERA (152 ERA+) with a 2.84 FIP over 1091.1 innings. He has struck out more than 10 batters per 9 in that with less than 2 walks per 9 innings across that stretch, with a WHIP just barely over 1. There are few signs of decline: he is just one of the best pitchers in the league.

If Cleveland will be cheap enough to ship him off in a trade while in the middle of their own (alleged) title run, then the Yankees should simply do everything they can to bring him to the Bronx—even if that means trading one of the league’s most exciting young pieces. Cleveland has a very good infield as it is, but they did just trade for Josh Donaldson last year, so they have been willing to add offense to that infield as recently as last summer.

On the Yankees side, the need is obvious. Adding Kluber as the final piece of a rotation that already includes Luis Severino, James Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka and CC Sabathia would position the Yankees to have a truly dominating staff in 2019 and 2020. To me, that’s easily worth the haul it would take to get him, which would likely be Andújar+. Always trade your prospects for dominating starting pitchers. Just look a bit to the north to see why.

Will it Happen?

To sum up, this plan involves shelling out a significant sum of money (likely more than $300 million) on Manny Machado and then turning around and trading one of their most exciting young (and thus cheapest) players. It still isn’t clear that the Yankees are willing to take on that much salary—though Kluber would be a steal at his current contract, especially compared to Patrick Corbin.

But what is clear is that this path is out there and isn’t that far-fetched. The Yankees have always had interest in Machado, and he’d take all of the sting away from losing Andújar. Meanwhile, the team would be in a position to get a starting pitching upgrade beyond any of our wildest dreams even eight weeks ago.

As Yankee Twitter’s Thought Leader and Official Friend of RAB™ put it the other day, a path like this is really the easiest and most straightforward way to create a roster that would likely be the World Series favorites on Opening Day. And if the Yankees spend as they can, they have the chance to add two prime-aged generational talents alongside one of the league’s best starting pitchers to their already loaded roster. It’s been a decade since the Yankees have won the championship, and now the only thing standing between them and their best shot since 2009 is Hal Steinbrenner’s willingness to spend.

The Yankees Should Not Let the Chance to Sign Bryce Harper Pass Them By

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Right ballpark, wrong uniform. (Presswire)

The Yankees and the 2018 free agent class have something of a special relationship. It has long been apparent that this year’s group would be a unique collection of talent and the Yankees have predictably been expected to make a major splash. The available talent was even used to justify the team’s sudden penny pinching, and for good reason: it is not often that players of Bryce Harper or Manny Machado’s quality hit free agency. Now that the highly-anticipated offseason has arrived, the Yankees should not pass up the opportunity to bring Bryce Harper to the Bronx.

We all know Harper’s backstory. Back in 2009, at the age of 16, he was dubbed baseball’s chosen one by Sports Illustrated—putting him in the same category as athletes like LeBron James. He soon announced that he would skip his junior and seniors year of high school, instead electing to get his GED and attend junior college so that he could reach the Major Leagues sooner. He was drafted first overall by the Nationals in 2010 and made his MLB debut in 2012 after just 536 minor league at-bats (and only 231 above A ball), hitting .270/.340/.477 (121 wRC+) as a 19-year-old rookie.

If it feels like Bryce Harper has been around forever, that is why. But despite his larger-than-life presence in the baseball world, he is younger than Aaron Hicks, Giancarlo Stanton and even Aaron Judge; he is only ten months older than Gary Sanchez. Harper will play the entire 2019 season at age 26—just about the age we’d expect him to enter the most productive years of his career. He will not finish his age 30 season until 2023.

It is worth reflecting on Harper’s career to consider what that might mean in terms of production. In just about 4,000 Major League plate appearances, Harper boasts a .279/.388/.512 line (140 wRC+) with 385 extra base hits (184 home runs), meaning 42 percent of his 922 career hits have been a double or more. (For a sense of perspective, that’s just about the same percentage of extra-base hits as Miguel Andújar, who was rightly lauded for this skillset last year, but in 3400 more PA.) He is a patient hitter, walking at roughly the same rate as Judge and striking out considerably less.

And we have a sense of what prime production looks like for a player like Bryce Harper. After all, he hit a ridiculous .330/.470/.649 (197 wRC+) with 42 home runs in his 10-win, age-22 MVP season and put up another .319/.413/.595 (155 wRC+)  line just two seasons later at age 24. Even though he’s had some comparatively down seasons—though it’s worth mentioning that a 111 wRC+ is the worst he’s ever posted—it is clear that he can produce at nearly unparalleled levels.

Advanced defensive metrics suggest that he’s not the world’s best outfielder, but they are most favorable to him as a left fielder, bringing us to his fit on the Yankees. It seems to be conventional wisdom that the Yankees outfield is full, but it only appears that way at first glance: Brett Gardner is more suited to a 4th outfielder role at this stage in his career, nobody expects Jacoby Ellsbury to play even when he is healthy and there is no chance a player like Clint Frazier would ever block Bryce Harper.

Moreover, that same conventional wisdom held true last spring—and yet the Yankees were forced to trade for Andrew McCutchen following a slew of injuries and weeks of Shane Robinson. With Hicks in center and the trio of Stanton/Judge/Harper for the corner positions, the Yanks could simply slot one of them into the DH role each day. Despite how it initially seems, making Harper fit on the roster is quite simple.

Offensively—in case that wasn’t clear already—there is no question of Harper’s fit. He is a patient and powerful hitter that fits right in with the Yankees offensive style, and he has the added benefit of hitting from the left side. Stacking right-handed batters is not a problem when they’re of the caliber of Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton or Gary Sanchez, but the Yankees are obviously short on left-handed hitting (even more so with Didi Gregorius sidelined for months). Slotting Harper between Judge and Stanton in the 2/3/4 spot has the potential to create a lineup as deadly as any in recent memory as well as mitigate any opposing platoon advantage. And that is without salivating over imagining a left-handed bat like Harper’s, who tends to pull the ball, play 81 games in Yankee Stadium.

That doesn’t mean he is a slam dunk, per se. There are risks and potential downsides to every signing, and for Harper, that includes a somewhat long injury history and a tendency to be a streaky hitter. That might be enough for some fans to argue that he isn’t worth his huge payday or that the Yankees “don’t need another streaky hitter.”

But it is clear Harper is deserving of a huge contract. He is just now entering his prime and you can count on one hand the players capable of producing as he has. On the Yankees side, they’ve reset their luxury tax and have the money to spend in any case. There is no telling when the next time a player like Harper will be available in free agency, and if the Yankees are smart, they will not allow this generational talent to pass them by.