December 17th, 2024: Tucker, Bregman, Walker, Bellinger, ZiPS

Twenty-eight years and one day ago, 1996 World Series MVP John Wetteland left the Yankees and signed a four-year deal with the Rangers. Younger and dumber me thought letting Wetteland leave was a colossal mistake. Turned out the Yankees were in pretty good hands in the ninth inning. 1996 was the first Yankees’ World Series title of my lifetime and I can’t say I’m a fan of that being almost 30 years ago now. Anyway, here’s what I wrote about the Devin Williams trade and here is today’s post.

1. Latest hot stove news and notes. The Max Fried signing is not yet official, though that should happen soon with a press conference later this week (Devin William has a Zoom call later today). Fried wrote a goodbye to the Braves and their fans on social media, which is pretty good confirmation it’s a done deal. The Yankees just haven’t said so yet. Until then, here are the latest hot stove rumors and rumblings and happenings.

Tucker traded to Cubs

It’s funny, when the offseason started, I figured there was no chance – zip, zero, zilch – Kyle Tucker would get traded, and now here I am bummed out the Yankees didn’t get him. Tucker was traded to the Cubs for a three-player package Friday. Here is the rough Yankees’ equivalent:

• IF Isaac Paredes: IF Jazz Chisholm Jr. but with one more year of control

• RHP Hayden Wesneski: RHP Will Warren (back-end starter type)

• 3B Cam Smith: OF Jasson Domínguez (top prospect)

Wesneski is of course a former Yankees prospect. They traded him to the Cubs for Scott Effross at the 2022 deadline. Smith was Chicago’s first round pick this summer (14th overall) and he’s much closer to El Marciano than Spencer Jones or Ben Hess (the Yankees’ 2024 first rounder). That’s far from a perfect equivalent. That’s just me ballparking it. Either way, it’s a lot, which is what Tucker should cost.

“We certainly had many conversations with the Astros,” Brian Cashman told Peter Botte about missing out on Tucker. “Ultimately they made a big trade today with Chicago. So, at the end of the day, I’m glad Mr. Tucker’s not in the American League East or the American League at all.”

I can’t remember where I saw it, but it was reported the Yankees and Astros discussed Luis Gil, Ben Rice, and George Lombard Jr. for Tucker. Jon Heyman says the Yankees wouldn’t trade Gil and Lombard while Jack Curry says Gil was off-limits entirely. Lombard has popped up in several trade rumors the last few months (Jack Flaherty, Tanner Scott, now Tucker). Teams want him.

On one hand, I understand not wanting to trade four years of Gil for one year of Tucker. Gil just won AL Rookie of the Year and showed tremendous upside. Legit top of the rotation stuff. Also, you only have one chance to trade Gil, who might be the Yankees’ best trade chip at the moment. Trade Gil for one year of Tucker and now he’s unavailable to trade for multiple years of anyone else. 

On the other hand, Gil’s a high variance pitcher with poor control and an arm injury history. If you’re not willing to trade him for a player as good and as well-rounded as Tucker, then I’m not sure who you’ll trade him for. It’s one year of Tucker, I know, but Gerrit Cole and Aaron Judge aren’t getting any younger, and you’ve lost a lot of offense in Juan Soto. Tucker’s one of the few who can come close to replacing him.

It is much, much more likely we’re sitting here in a year saying “the Yankees really could have used Kyle Tucker this season” than we are “good thing the Yankees hung onto Luis Gil.” Rice or Lombard or whoever else aren’t moving the needle. It was Gil plus stuff for Tucker, and the Yankees bet on the pitcher over the impact position player even though, on paper, they have a bottom 10-ish offense right now. Dislike.

It’s possible the Yankees were never going to get Tucker, with or without Gil. The Cubs gave the Astros a pretty good package and Houston has coveted Paredes since the trade deadline (he’s perfect for the Crawford Boxes), and who knows how far Chicago was willing to go? They have a deep farm system with a lot of expendable prospects. It sounds like Gil was the key though. Without him, there was no chance.

The Yankees are likely to pivot to Cody Bellinger now – Bellinger for Will Warren is the framework floating around – and Bellinger is a good player who will help the Yankees in many ways, but he’s not Tucker, and frankly the Yankees could have used Bellinger and Tucker. Maybe the Cubs will fall out of it and Tucker will be available at the deadline. They have a way of underperforming. But I dunno man. Getting a Rookie of the Year season from Gil and then flipping him for Tucker is absolute best case scenario stuff. Alas.

(Last week I said an extension for Tucker would run closer to $200M than $300M, and five seconds after I hit publish, I realized how stupid that was. He’s clearly a $300M player.)

The Alex Bregman rumor

Soon after the Astros picked up Paredes in the Tucker trade, the “the Yankees can now swoop in and sign Alex Bregman” talk began. I don’t think the trade closes the door on Bregman returning to Houston (the Astros pursued Paredes at the deadline to play first base), but it does make it less likely. Brian McTaggart says the Astros offered Bregman six years and $156M. He’s said to be seeking $200M or so.

Most of the Yankees/Bregman stuff has come from national reporters (Jon Morosi, Bob Nightengale, etc.) rather than the local scoopsmen who are most plugged-in with the Yankees (Jack Curry, Jon Heyman, Joel Sherman, etc.). When the locals have it, then you’ll know it’s serious. Cashman confirmed he’s spoken to Scott Boras about Bregman, though it was the typical “we check in on everyone” stuff.

"We're going to vet every opportunity out there and see if that can match," Cashman said on a conference call following the Devin Williams trade. "(Bregman's) been a thorn in our side for years, along with other people's side. He's now into free agency. I'm sure he has a boatload of choices. Good players like him make a lot of money. I have had a conversation or two with Scott Boras with a lot of his clients, including Alex Bregman. I respect the player and his ability, and how much winning he's been a part of."

The Yankees have been very outspoken about Houston’s sign-stealing scandal – “I hate the 15-year (drought) thing because it completely forgets and discounts that some other organization cheated us,” Cashman said in October (as in this October, two months ago) – that I have a hard time believing they’ll sign Bregman, who was one of the most unapologetic Astros. Maybe I’m wrong and the Yankees are desperate enough to do it, but I dunno.

I’ll say this: Bregman fits the run prevention plan the Yankees are enacting. He’s a terrific third baseman (if there is such a thing as a clutch defender, he's it) and a very smart, very instinctual player. He has that Alex Rodriguez quality where it seems like he was put on this planet to play baseball. Always making the right play and the correct decision. A-Rod was like that. He was an unbelievably smart player.

Bregman is also a fascinating hitter because he’s a different hitter at home than on the road. At home, he’s a pull happy guy who takes aim for the Crawford Boxes. On the road, he uses more of the field. It has been this way for years …

• 2021: 53.2% pull rate at home and 51.0% pull rate on the road

• 2022: 49.8% at home and 46.7% on the road

• 2023: 44.4% at home and 40.9% on the road

• 2024: 42.7% at home and 37.5% on the road

The gap between Bregman’s pull rate at home and on the road has gradually widened and was 5.2 percentage points in 2024, which is significant. The pattern’s clear. Bregman pulls the ball more at home than on the road, which makes sense when you’re a right-handed hitter in Houston, and he is gradually pulling the ball less often overall. Not coincidentally, his offensive production is slipping.

Bregman is not an exit velocity guy. He’s never hit a ball over 109.2 mph as a big leaguer (even Jon Berti managed a 110 mph batted ball this year). The Crawford Boxes and Bregman’s pull heavy approach at home allowed him to max out his power output. And, you know, the cheating too. Bregman’s offense began to slip as soon as the sign-stealing story broke in Nov. 2019 (and as soon as the rocket ball went away).

The walk rate got cut in half last year, Bregman’s best contact is below-average and toward the big part of Yankee Stadium, and he doesn’t have the hard-hit ability to use the short porch (three opposite field home runs in the last four years). Bregman can play the hell out of third base and he’s a tough, battle-tested player, but do you really want to give this guy $200M going into his age 31 season? Feels Ellsburyian.

Bregman is very smart and very talented, and I would trust him to adjust his offensive approach to Yankee Stadium more than I would most players. I still don’t want the Yankees to go all-in on him though. Between the declining bat, questions about the Yankee Stadium fit, the $200M asking price, and the fact the fan base hates the guy, the Yankees should just pass on Bregman. You can fill second/third base another way, can’t you?

Yankees cooling on Walker?

On Yankees Hot Stove on YES last week, Jack Curry said the Yankees have cooled on Christian Walker, in part because they don’t want to surrender two more draft picks and international bonus pool money to sign another qualified free agent after doing so to sign Max Fried. Curry added the Yankees could circle back and restart talks, but things have been put on hold. The Yankees have been tied to Walker for weeks.

To me, this is textbook free agent posturing. Complaining about draft picks is a classic “you’re gonna have to lower the price” tactic. This did not sneak up on the Yankees. They’ve known Walker would require giving up draft picks since he rejected the qualifying offer on Nov. 19th, and really since further back than that. It wasn’t exactly a secret Walker would get the qualifying offer. He was a candidate for months.

Furthermore, the Yankees are not coming up with Plan B on the fly. If they were able to re-sign Soto, their offseason would go one way. If they weren’t, it would go another way, and either they would sign multiple qualified free agents or they wouldn’t. They have their plan and it either included Fried and Walker, or it didn't. Other teams have interest in Walker (Mariners, Nationals) but his market is not blazing hot. The Yankees are playing the game. That’s all.

(You could argue the Yankees should sign multiple qualified free agents this offseason and stack the penalties in one year, giving up lesser draft picks each time, instead of signing one qualified free agent every offseason, and hurting multiple drafts and multiple international signing periods.)

Here’s my Scouting the Market post on Walker. He would look like peak Mark Teixeira compared to what the Yankee got out of first base in 2024, though there are some contact rate/fastball production issues that are red flag-y, plus he’s a soon-to-be 34-year-old first baseman. A great defensive first baseman, for sure, but still a player at the bottom of the defensive spectrum in his mid-30s who will require multiple years at big money. This isn’t a slam dunk.

I mentioned this in my Plan B post: My preference is to avoid position players in their 30s on big money multi-year contracts. Walker, Bregman, Teoscar Hernandez, etc. My preferred first base target is LaMonte Wade Jr., who would give the Yankees a needed lefty bat and the on-base/leadoff skills they currently lack, though there has been no buzz about him. Frankly, there’s been no buzz about the Yankees and any first baseman other than Walker.

Yankees sign Marinez during 2024 IFA period

As expected, the Yankees signed Dominican SS Stiven Marinez before the 2024 international signing period closed this past Sunday. Ben Badler says it’s a $1.65M bonus. The Yankees had $1,487,200 in bonus pool space remaining, then added another $250,000* in the Carlos Narváez trade with the Red Sox. That gave them $1,737,200 in bonus pool money and they spent most of it to Marinez.

* Bonus pool space can only be traded in $250,000 increments. The Yankees couldn’t trade for exactly what they needed to sign Marinez. $1,737,200 minus the $1.65M bonus equals $87,200 in unspent bonus pool space. Or maybe they gave it to someone else. I dunno.

The Yankees were expected to sign Marinez one way or the other. Either they were going to trade for bonus pool space to get him during the 2024 signing period, or they were going to wait until their bonus pool reset on Jan. 15th, and sign him as part of the 2025 signing period. The Yankees were able to get Marinez signed now, leaving them more money for the 2025 signing period (and Roki Sasaki?).

I don’t have any additional info on Marinez other than he’s a left-handed hitter, but $1.65M is a significant bonus. Get a seven-figure bonus and teams think you’re a player. We’ll get more information on Marinez next year, once players begin showing up to minor league camp. The important thing is the Yankees got him signed now, and will have an additional $1.65M to play with during the 2025 signing period.

Miscellany

Not gonna lie, I thought Bellinger would be a Yankee by now. Seemed like the Yankees would pivot quickly once they missed out on Tucker. Heyman says the Yankees are still haggling with the Cubs over money, and why not? Spring Training is still two months away and the Cubs seem determined to shed that salary, and if another team is in Bellinger, we haven’t heard about it. There’s lots of time to play hardball and try to get the price knocked down. 

2. The Yankees and 2025 ZiPS projections. Last week FanGraphs published their 2025 Yankees ZiPS projections and they’re already outdated. The Devin Williams trade went down a few hours later, so he's not included. The Yankees were the 13th team to get projected and that’s unfortunate. The later the better, because it gives us a more complete look at the roster. What can you do?

As Dan Szymborski explained in the intro, ZiPS is “estimating what the baseline expectation for a player is at the moment I hit the button, and then estimating where that player may be going using large cohorts of relatively similar players.” Every projection system will have misses at the individual player level, but in the aggregate, and ZiPS is very good. It’s my preferred system, but to each his own.

Here are the 2025 Yankees ZiPS projections and here’s the WAR graphic:

Hey, getting +0.6 WAR from first base would be a two-win upgrade! That Aaron Judge projection is bonkers too. Any projection system worth a damn will have Judge taking a step back in 2025 because how could he be better? He just had arguably the greatest season by a right-handed hitter ever. Still, ZiPS has Judge as a 180 OPS+ bat with 46 homers. I went back a few years and couldn’t find another 180 OPS+ or 46-homer projection. Judge’s three-year projection is a 171 OPS+. Sheesh.

On paper, the rotation is the strength of the roster and ZiPS agrees (four +2 WAR starters and a rounding error away from a fifth). Not gonna lie though, it makes me nervous. Teams built around pitching have a lower floor than teams built around offense because they’re so vulnerable to injury. Anyway, I don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole here because projections are only so interesting. Here are a few quick observations from the 2025 Yankees ZiPS.

The second base hodgepodge

Caleb Durbin, who was part of the Williams trade, has an okay projection (92 OPS+ and +1.3 WAR). These things are inherently conservative, remember. They’re projecting 50th percentile performance, not the outlier in either direction, which is often what plays out on the field. As a baseline, that’s okay for Durbin. Here are the second base candidates still with the Yankees:

• Oswald Peraza: .233/.303/.371 (89 OPS+) and +1.7 WAR

• Oswaldo Cabrera: .239/.297/.386 (91 OPS+) and +1.3 WAR

• Jorbit Vivas: .224/.312/.330 (82 OPS+) and +1.3 WAR

Cabrera as an everyday player needs to stop and Vivas was given a fourth option, allowing the Yankees to send him back to Triple-A to further refine his game. Among in-house second base options, Peraza’s the obvious pick for me, and that was true before ZiPS. He has the highest offensive potential of the bunch and he’s far and away the best defender. This is another way of saying the Yankees should bring in a second baseman. (ZiPS has Gleyber Torres at 107 OPS+ and +2.6 WAR).

How would that Domínguez season be viewed?

ZiPS on Jasson Domínguez: .254/.324/.420 (108 OPS+) with 16 homers and +1.8 WAR. If Domínguez does that in 2025, I think it would be a good outcome for the Yankees (good, not great), though I also think it would be viewed as a disappointment given the prospect hype that has surrounded him. In reality though, a soon-to-be 22-year-old who’s had a weird development path (lost his first pro season to the pandemic, lost time to Tommy John surgery, etc.) putting up a 108 OPS+ as a rookie would be a good outcome. It would be great if El Marciano does that and is the Yankees’ third best outfielder, not their second best.

ZiPS really hates Rice’s defense

For Ben Rice, ZiPS sees a .226/.320/.430 (109 OPS+) line and 22 homers. That’s the team’s fourth best OPS+ projection and fourth best home run projection. ZiPS also has Rice at -13 runs defensively and -0.1 WAR overall. Zoinks. That’s about as bad a defensive projection as I can remember for a player who will be expected to play defense (i.e. not a full-time DH). Poor Ben. 

Using ZiPS to measure depth

ZiPS has 10 Yankees pitchers putting up at least a 100 ERA+ and we can safely assume Williams would be No. 11. Six others aren’t too far below that with a 95 ERA+ or better. This is nothing new. Every year the projections see the Yankees as having a hoard of competent arms. And we see this play out every season, right? The Yankees pull a Jake Cousins or a Cody Poteet out of nowhere and get good work every summer.

Anyway, I like to use ZiPS to estimate depth, and see how the Yankees stack up against other big market contenders. We only have 2025 ZiPS for two other big market contenders right now (Dodgers and Phillies), so it’ll have to do. Here are how many players those teams have at the +1 WAR (competent MLB player), +2 WAR (average big leaguer), and +4 WAR (All-Star) levels:

The Yankees are right there with the Dodgers and Phillies in terms of adequate MLB depth. Those unsexy +1 WAR players you need to get through the 162-game grind. They lag in top-end talent though, the +2 WAR and +4 WAR players who make a difference in October. Williams is not included in there (neither is Durbin and Nestor Cortes), so maybe it’s really seven +2 WAR players for the Yankees. Either way, they’re short.

And that’s alright. It’s the middle of December and Spring Training is still two months away. The Yankees are going to bring in another bat, probably two (hopefully three), and continue to fill out the bullpen. I don’t think it’s a surprise the Yankees don’t stack up well against the Dodgers and Phillies right now. They have holes at first base, second/third base, and in the outfield. Those other rosters are much closer to complete.

3. Rapid fire thoughts. Luis Gil, Anthony Volpe, and Austin Wells all received bonuses as part of MLB’s pre-arbitration bonus pool system. That’s a $50M pool split up between the top 100 pre-arb players based on WAR and awards voting. Bobby Witt Jr. led with a $3,077,595 bonus. Sal Frelick’s $232,549 bonus was the smallest this year. Here are the Yankees, per the Associated Press:

• Luis Gil: $1,098,628

• Austin Wells: $801,564

• Anthony Volpe: $418,864

Gil’s bonus is broken down into $750,000 for winning Rookie of the Year, plus another $348,628 based on the joint version of WAR the calculation uses. That bonus is the largest payday of Gil’s career. Volpe and Wells were both first round picks who got $2.5M+ signing bonuses. Gil signed with the Twins for $90,000 as an international amateur in 2015. Took him a decade to really cash in as a baseball player. Good for him. Each team contributes $1.67M to the bonus pool each year (1/30th of the $50M) and the players are paid their bonuses out of that. The bonuses come from MLB’s Central Fund, not the player’s team.

(Send your requests for Friday's mailbag to RABmailbag at gmail dot com. The random Yankee series is on hiatus, but feel free to send in requests for when it returns.)