On the one hand, we have an unnamed American League scout: “In a few years, Melky will be playing in some independent league. Or in the Mexican League.” On the other hand, we have Tim Marchman’s urging us not to write off Melky so quickly. It’s the old numbers vs. scouting debate on display for all to see. The scouts don’t like what they see, but Marchman sees historical precedents for players exiled to the Minors who have managed to turn things around. As always, time will tell.
The decline and fall of Melky Cabrera
When April ended, a baseball lifetime ago, the three of us here at River Ave. Blues were eating our words a bit when it came to one Melky Cabrera. Long doubters of the long-term viability of the Yanks’ center fielder, we had just witnessed Melky put up a .299/.370/.494 line with five home runs and 12 RBI. Melky, it seemed, had finally emerged as a bona fide Major Leage hitter.
And then everything fell apart. On May 4, Melky hit his sixth home run of the season, and the two RBIs gave him 17 on the season. Since then, however, Melky’s season has been an utter abomination.
From May 6 onward, Melky managed 322 plate appearances. He hit .225/.273/.279 with 11 extra-base hits and 19 RBIs. He struck out 42 times, and many Yankee-watchers figured that his August benching and subsequent demotion came approximately a month too late. I, surprisingly, disagree, and as the teams have passed since Melky’s optioning to AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, I’m still trying to comes to terms with the Yanks’ decision.
By sending Melky Cabrera down to AAA, the Yanks are basically telling everyone — Melky, the 29 other clubs, the rest of the team — that they are giving up on him. Sure, Joe Girardi can tell us that Melky needs to “go work on some things,” and Cashman can proclaim Melky to be “a better player than this.” But that’s just lip service the Yanks are paying to the press and whatever remains of Melky’s self-esteem.
The truth remains that Melky Cabrera is a three-year Major League veteran and that in each of his three seasons, his offensive production has gotten progressively worse. Considering that he was never really an elite hitting prospects in the first place, it’s hard right now to envision him as a player with much long-term potential at the Major League level.
With this demotion, the Yanks have broadcast this belief and the reality of it all to any potential trading partner, and they’ve done so in a way that is designed to destroy Melky’s confidence. Is it any wonder, then, that as of Saturday night, Cabrera still hadn’t reported to AAA?
For the Yankees to turn Melky Cabrera into something worthwhile, they will have to package him in a trade this off-season. Once upon a time — two years ago — the Yanks could have built a trade around Melky Cabrera and, perhaps, another pitching prospect. But now, any team trading with the Yanks will view Melky as a throw-in and one that got demoted in the heat of a pennant race at that.
Make no mistake about it; Melky Cabrera did not deserve any more playing time as a starter in the Yankee outfielder. But any value he had to the team is long gone. What the Yanks plan to do to reclaim that value and rebuild Melky Cabrera is anyone’s guess.
Melky, Sexson out; Ransom, Gardner in
Saw this on MLB Trade Rumors a minute ago. It comes from a source we don’t enjoy citing, but the news is too big to pass up. Apparently, the team has waived Richie Sexson, and has sent Melky Cabrera to Scranton. Brett Gardner and Cody Ransom take their places. This is quite the strange turn of events. While I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the source jumped the gun on this, it would be a welcome change if true.
Melky on the bench
So the Yankees have Johnny Damon leading the AL in hitting, Xavier Nady with 6 HR, 17 RBI and a .344 batting average in 17 games with the Yanks, and Bobby Abreu manning right field. With Hideki Matsui on the rehab trail, I have to wonder about Melky Cabrera.
The Melk Man has played just three times in the last six games and has just six starts in August. He has three hits this month — all in one games — and on the season, he’s at .243/.297/.338 . While the Yanks won’t officially proclaim the Melky Cabrera Era over, Tyler Kepner writes today that Melky has lost the center field job. I wonder what, if anything, the Yanks can get for him in a trade this winter.
Melky returns, but for what purpose?
For the last four days, the Yankee lineup has been Melky Cabrera-free. The benching of Melky was a move a long time in the making and well overdue. But later tonight, in the O.C., the center fielder, three days shy of his 24th birthday, will resume his duties in the starting lineup, and I have to wonder to what end?
First, a history lesson: Since May 6, Melky Cabrera is hitting .225/.275/.281 over his last 309 plate appearances. As Mike pointed out a few days, those totals rank him as one of — if not, the — worst every-day player in the Majors.
Now, we’ve been fairly critical of Melky over the last two years. We want him to succeed, but right now, he just isn’t getting the job done. With three years of Big League experience under his belt, Melky should be showing improvement. Instead, his numbers are getting worse each year. That .260 batting average with a low-.300s OBP and little power since the start of 2007 is about what you can expect from Melky right now, and that just doesn’t cut it on the Yankees.
When the team benched Melky earlier this week, they did so under the guise of giving him a rest. Melky Cabrera, the man who has played, on average, 150 games per season in his pro career, needed a break. The Yanks intended to give Melky just two days off, but Joe Girardi decided to add on an extra pair of days to that non-benching benching.
But here is where things get a bit ugly. According to that Ed Price notebook, Joe Girardi still views Melky as his everyday center fielder. “I think Melky’s a better offensive player than he’s displayed. And I think that Melky can have a strong last 50 games for us, I really do,” Girardi said. “The important thing is that he gets on base, and that’s what we need him to do more of.”
Now, I know and you know that Joe Girardi isn’t going to come out and say that they’re benching Melky for good. We know he isn’t going to throw Melky under the bus. That would completely negate whatever residual trade value Cabrera has. But I’m beginning to fear that Girardi isn’t seeing the forest for the trees.
Everyone loves Melky Cabrera’s supposed enthusiasm and love for the game. They love his energy, his center field prowess and his cannon arm. But it’s laughable to think that his presence in the starting lineup helps the team. For Girardi to say that “we need him to do more of” getting on base ignores reality. Melky, for the better part of four months, has gotten on base at a .275 clip. For the last two seasons, he has an OBP of .315. That’s not a sample size issue; that’s a full-blown trend.
What you see if what you get. If the Yanks choose to see boundless energy and youthful enthusiasm, they should know that those traits won’t win games. If they see Melky as a fourth outfielder capable of giving Johnny Damon, Xavier Nady or Bobby Abreu a night off but don’t want to damage a young player’s psyche or trade value, then so be it. But as Melky returns to the starting lineup tonight, I worry that the Yanks will use him everyday, and that does not a playoff team make.
Now isn’t the time to trade Melky
To the pro-Melky contingent on RAB, our stance on the Yanks’ young center fielder tends to raise some eyebrows. We’ve burned plenty of pixels urging patience when it comes to Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes, but we’re more than ready to send Melky packing.
We aren’t the only Yankee fans ready to wave good bye to Cabrera. In today’s Sun, Steve Goldman pens a piece urging the Yankees to trade Melky sooner rather than later. He writes:
Cabrera is a bundle of contradictions: a functional defensive center fielder with a great arm but unexceptional range; a mostly inoffensive hitter whose hot streaks are outnumbered by deep slumps; a young player with a better future in front of him, but not a great future, and a switch-hitter who has almost no offensive value against left-handed pitchers. Taken together, these competing facets make Cabrera a difficult player to get a fix on.
If you saw him at midsummer last year, when he batted .325 AVG/.375 SLG/.482 OBP from June through August, or this April, when he hit .299/.370/.494 with five home runs, you could have been forgiven for thinking that he had taken a dramatic step forward and was now on his way to becoming a two-way impact player and a 10-year All-Star. If you saw him last April (.200/.238/.213) or September (.180/.236/.220), or this season over the last eight weeks (.231/.280/.308 in 47 games), making outs while attempting to slide into first base, you might be wondering why he’s not been sent to Double A for a refresher course in basic baseball 101.
Unfortunately, the latter Cabrera appears for more often than the former.
That, in essence, is our case against Melky. We were patient with him, but we’ve seen him play now for parts of three seasons in the Bronx. While one might expect a player to get better over time, Melky has, in fact, put up worse numbers in each of his three seasons. As Joe noted early, since his aberrant April, Melky has managed to hit just .231/.280/.308 in nearly 200 plate appearances. If the young pitchers aren’t showing signs of improvement after such an extended look, well, then their supporters and the Yanks will just have to move on.
However, I have a bone to pick with Goldman’s piece. The Pinstripe Bible scribe believes that the Yanks should attempt to package Melky for some pitching come the trade deadline. In principle, I agree, but now does not strike me as the time to trade Melky. With this two-month slump fresh in everyone’s mind, Melky’s stock as at a near-low. The Yanks should have attempted to move Melky last winter when teams were still interested. Now, they’re somewhat stuck with him unless they want to sell low.
So the team finds itself in something of a Catch-22. They shouldn’t be playing Melky because he’s not producing, but if they want to move him, they need to play him in the hopes that he can catch fire for three weeks and raise his trade value. Perhaps in three weeks, we’ll be singing a different tune, but if the Yanks want to get a return on Melky — or see if he actually improves — they’ll have to hold him for now.
Open Thread: Melky vs. Gardner
Melky Cabrera has a special place in the hearts of Yankees’ fans. We watched him (and his .322 OBP) jump from Double-A all the way to bigs as a 20 year old in 2005, then watched in horror as he looked overmatched at the plate and misplayed routine flyballs into inside-the-park homers in Fenway Park. He returned the following season because of injuries, and has since established himself as a passable everyday centerfielder. He’s one of our own; he’s paid his dues and earned a job.
This season though has been a tale of two Melky’s. His Opening Day homer gave us all hope that he was in line for the breakout season that many predicted was coming, and as recently as May 4th it looked like the breakout was legit. After hitting .291-.359-.505 with a team leading six longballs through his first 31 games, Melky has become an offensive blackhole. The numbers aren’t pretty: .257-.293-.284 with a whopping three extra base hits (all doubles) in his last 30 games. A few days ago he misplayed a potential double play ball, and if nothing else a routine line drive hit right at him, into a bunch of unearned runs. Today he weakly grounded out to first to kill the Yankees’ 9th inning rally against Royals’ closer Joakim Soria, sliding into the bag after being told for two full seasons now not to slide into first.
Enter Brett Gardner. The Yanks’ third round pick in 2005 has spend the first two-and-a-half years of his professional career terrorizing the opposition, whether it be by working counts (.387 career OBP), spraying hits to all fields (.290 BA), or running wild on the basepaths (141 SB). He’s added another much needed element to this game this year: power. Through 60 games he’s already tripled his homer total of the previous two season combined, and is slugging at a .454 clip, almost 80 points better than his career output coming into the year.
Having seen time in both left and centerfield this year, as well as a handful of pinch hit & run opportunities, Gardner is poised to take over as an extra outfielder in the big leagues this year. He’s every bit as capable as Melky when it comes to running down balls in the outfield, and while his arm isn’t as strong, his speed and on-base skills make him a much deadlier offensive player. It is worth nothing that Gardner is just about a full year older than Melky.
While it’s hard to believe that Gardner couldn’t be a viable extra outfielder right now, we’re not here to discuss a bench job. Is it time to take Melky Cabrera and his limp noodle bat out of the lineup and replace it with Gardner’s speed demon game on a full-time basis? Could he perform any worse?
Discuss it here, and play nice.
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