Yankees can’t navigate unruly pitchers market like they used to
Nothing in this trade market favors the Yankees.
The Yankees knew the Mets would not trade them Noah Syndergaard and would ask for more from them than others for Zack Wheeler. But they didn’t anticipate the already thin high-end starting pitching market would reduce further with Marcus Stroman going to Queens rather than The Bronx.
Throw in that the Yankees just had the worst rotation week in their history, even before having to place CC Sabathia on the injured list.
All of this has motivated sellers to set high and, so far, mostly unwavering prices at a time when the Yankees farm system is on a low due to a combination of graduation of its best youngsters such as Gleyber Torres, injury and downturn in performance.
Despite all of that, I have not spoken to an outside executive who believes Brian Cashman will not add arm(s) before Wednesday’s 4 p.m. deadline.
“He checks on everybody,” said one rival executive summing up the sentiment. “Says no to the price out of the gate, circles back later and makes the deal he wants. He’s good.”
But there is a belief that to solve his problems Cashman may have to move prospects for someone such as Arizona’s Robbie Ray that he wanted to save for a more sure-thing pitcher. There is desperation here, no matter how sturdily Cashman portrays his position — the Yankees pitching staff needs reinforcements.
There also is an internal realization by the Yankees of what they are holding. When Torres was in the minors, he was the kind of prospect who would top just about any club’s farm list. But the best of the Yankees currently, such as Deivi Garcia and Estevan Florial, would not. So it is harder for Cashman to tell teams to accept prospects further down the Yankees list.
With the Yankees system, beauty is in the eye of each club’s assessment. Those who like the system say that is inundated with hard-throwers and particularly youngsters out of their Latin America program, all of whom have high ceilings. Those who are less positive see those far away as lottery tickets with difficulty pinpointing which ones will pay off.
If you like Clint Frazier, you see him still as a guy who will hit fifth even in a good lineup. If not — in the words of one executive who has pitching to move — he “is damaged goods. He has had concussions, trouble with the media, trouble with defense, he already has more than a year of service time without establishing himself and he is 25 (in September) not 22.” Yet the Yanks insist Frazier will still not go in an insignificant deal.
The Yankees also are hurt by the fact Jonathan Loaisiga has stayed injury-prone, Miguel Andujar is missing the season after shoulder surgery, Chance Adams and Greg Bird have lost pretty much all value and Florial and Anthony Seigler have not made offensive strides.
In addition, many teams believe the Yankees are excellent at hyping their prospects. They have made a boatload of trades in recent years and, to date, perhaps the only player who has been as good or better than touted is Caleb Smith, who has become a strong starter for the Marlins.
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Cashman will need diligence and ingenuity to get a deal done. Can he sweeten packages by including Andujar from the injured list or sending Edwin Encarnacion to a team craving offense or bunch multiple 95 mph-plus low-minor arms to give a seller confidence that at least one will blossom.
“They do not have an elite system right now, but it is really deep,” an executive for a buyer said. “That gets lost in the shuffle. Some people only care about your top 10. I don’t, especially if you have players that are young, far away and interesting. You look up in two years and some of those guys have graduated to be really good prospects. You just need one or two and the Yankees are deep enough to have that. They lack a no-brainer but if you are a seller there is stuff to buy.”