September 1st, 2023: Bader, Donaldson, Cole, King, Mailbag

The Yankees won a series! World Series back on, baby. The Yankees are now 3-12-3 in their last 18 series and the three series wins came against the Athletics, Royals, and Tigers. Those three clubs have a combined .346 winning percentage. That’s a 106-loss pace in a 162-game schedule. Maybe MLB would move the Yankees to the AL Central? Just for a few years. Doesn’t have to be permanent. Anyway, here’s what I wrote about the imminent Jasson Domínguez and Austin Wells promotions, and here is today’s post as Anthony Volpe becomes the first 20/20 rookie in Yankees history (and the first 20/20 Yankee period since Brett Gardner in 2017).

1. Free Bader (no, really, he’s free, have him). The stinker that was the 2023 trade deadline got a little worse this week. The Yankees placed Harrison Bader on waivers Tuesday and he was claimed by the Reds on Thursday. The Reds, who are a game out of a Wild Card spot, get Bader and the $880,000 or so remaining on his contract, and the Yankees get nothing.

“(Excited to play) meaningful baseball,” Bader told Erik Boland after being claimed by Cincinnati. “... (Being a Yankee) just means so much, to be a New York City kid playing in the Bronx. No one can ever take the fact that I put that uniform on growing up in that city, which means a lot to me."

The last few weeks didn’t go well – Bader hit .219/.261/.308 (56 wRC+) in his last 76 games and he’s hit one home run since May – but Bader genuinely seemed to love being a Yankee, and he had his fair share of big hits in pinstripes. When he took Justin Verlander deep in Game 1 of the ALCS last year, I remember thinking the Yankees might actually beat the Astros this time (that feeling lasted approximately four minutes).

Bader wraps up his Yankees career with a .244/.285/.360 (80 wRC+) slash line – that’s split into a 38 wRC+ against righties and a 193 wRC+ against lefties – while playing 98 of 190 possible regular season games. He was awesome last postseason (10-for-30 with five homers) and is a top notch defender, but it still works out to only +0.8 WAR in those 98 regular season games.

“Being in the postseason as a New Yorker, I had nothing to lose,” Bader told Greg Joyce about his time with the Yankees. “Sept. 20th when I debuted as a Yankee and the first time I took the field, the game was about to start, on the line I told myself, ‘Everything from this exact moment on is just a cherry on top.’ Because it’s all good.”

A few weeks ago I noted the Yankees could still “sell” in August by putting their rentals – Bader, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Wandy Peralta – on waivers sometime before Thursday’s postseason roster eligibility deadline, and salary dumping them. Here’s what I wrote at the time:

For the Yankees, letting these guys go on waivers would be about saving cash and also creating opportunities for younger players. Let Peralta go and the Yankees could give, say, Clayton Beeter a look. Letting Bader go clears a path for Estevan Florial or Everson Pereira. There would be no excuse for keeping Oswald Peraza in Triple-A once Kiner-Falefa is gone. This would be the surest sign the Yankees have shifted their focus to 2024.

To be clear, I think there is zero chance the Yankees actually do this. Letting good players go for nothing on waivers after not trading them at the deadline would be thoroughly humiliating and a profound admission of failure, and the Yankees don’t operate that way.

The Yankees went ahead and put Bader on waivers and yes, it’s humiliating and an admission of failure. Joel Sherman reported the Yankees talked to the Phillies about Bader at the deadline, so they had an opportunity to trade him. Same with Wandy – I’m certain there was a market for a good lefty reliever – and maybe Kiner-Falefa too. Instead, the Yankees got nothing for Bader, and Kiner-Falefa and Peralta are still around to play out the string.

What could the Yankees have gotten for rental Bader at the deadline? I’m not sure. I mean, I can’t imagine any team would be stupid enough to trade a quality lefty who never misses a start for him, but two trades at this year’s deadline seem instructive:

• Tommy Pham, Mets: Traded to Diamondbacks for SS Jeremy Rodriguez, a pre-breakout 17-year-old in the Dominican Summer League.
• Paul DeJong, Cardinals: Traded to Blue Jays for RHP Matt Svanson, a 24-year-old high strikeout sweeper specialist bullpen prospect.

Rodriguez is probably at the top end of what the Yankees could have gotten for Bader because Pham’s having a better year and has a longer track record. DeJong is similar to Bader as a great glove/meh bat player at an up the middle position, so maybe a possible bullpen arm like Svanson is the best the Yankees could have done.

Yeah, a Svanson type is better than nothing, but I could also understand the Yankees saying why bother? Let’s keep Bader and try to make a run. That’s what they did, except they got Bader no help. With all due respect to Keynan Middleton, the Yankees sat out the deadline and bet on the players they’d counted on all season, and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next.

Two things are true. One, waiving Bader is smart. The Yankees can’t unring the trade deadline bell and this was the best they could do at this point in time. Waive Bader, clear money (about $1.67M in real dollars when you factor in luxury tax), and open a roster spot for Jasson Domínguez. The Yankees made the best of the situation. (Waiving Bader confirms the Yankees weren’t planning to make him the qualifying offer, by the way.)

And two, this is another sign the front office is a few cards short of a full deck. Brian Cashman touted the team’s process after last season and that process had led them to a likely last place finish, likely a losing record, and to a place where they’re putting useful players on waivers and getting nothing in return. How Hal Steinbrenner can look this season (and really the trend of the last three seasons) and be okay with it, I do not know.

The baseball component is sensible. The Yankees determined they would not re-sign Bader (or believe they’ll be able to sign him as a free agent), and rather than string him along, they let him go to a contender while saving money and opening a roster spot. Rather than keep him and compound the mistake made at the deadline, the Yankees did the best they could given the circumstances. (Why didn’t they do the same with Kiner-Falefa and Peralta?)

The nicest thing you can say about the big picture component is there are lessons to be learned here (Lesson 1: Don’t trade a good starter for a player in a walking boot). The Yankees were at best indecisive and at worst negligent at the deadline because they were unwilling or unable to honestly assess their current situation. Do the Yankees understand why they are where they are*? Have they grappled with that reality? Because it’s hard to tell.

* The short answer is the Yankees built a high risk, high variance roster around many older and injury prone players, and bet on them staying healthy and performing. And when it didn’t happen, they lacked the depth to pick up the slack.

Putting Bader on waivers may have been the smart baseball move, but it never should have gotten to this point in the first place. The Yankees didn’t add at the deadline and make a real effort to contend, nor did they sell and set themselves up better in the future. Giving away a player who was tradeable a few weeks ago is a bad look for a team already heavy on bad looks. Good luck in Cincinnati, Harrison. I hope you get another chance to go crazy in October.

(Bader told Joyce he didn’t know he was placed on waivers until he saw it on ESPN. This is one of those things that, yeah, the team should probably give the player a heads up as a courtesy, but it never happens. The Yankees didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. This is standard behavior around the league. The player is told when he’s claimed on waivers and not a second sooner. Bader being placed on waivers got leaked. That’s the unusual part.)

2. Donaldson released. Earlier this week I laid out the case for releasing Josh Donaldson now rather than waiting until Sept. 14th, the day he was eligible to come off the 60-day injured list, and a few hours after that post went live, the Yankees released him. Every so often this blind squirrel finds a nut. (The Yankees only listen to me when I write about ways to save money.)

"I think we're just at a point where, with him having to go through a rehab assignment and then being back in the middle of the month, there weren't going to be opportunities," Aaron Boone told Dawn Klemish and Henry Palattella. "... Basically, it just kind of felt like it was the right thing to do. Give him the option or the possibility of catching on with someone."

All told, Donaldson slashed .207/.293/.385 (94 wRC+) with 25 home runs and a 27.0% strikeout rate in a spooky 666 plate appearances with the Yankees. He played 165 of 297 possible regular season games, and went 5-for-29 (.172) with 16 strikeouts last postseason. Donaldson’s third base defense was legitimately excellent, hence the +2.2 WAR despite a 94 wRC+.

The trade has been a disaster and that's been obvious since last year. As has happened too many times the last few years, Brian Cashman & Co. thought they were the smartest people in the room, and then they wound up in the corner with a dunce hat. They thought Isiah Kiner-Falefa would be a suitable stopgap shortstop (nope) and that Donaldson would stave off Father Time (also nope) because he still hit the ball hard in 2021.

Rather than cut their losses last offseason, the Yankees insisted Donaldson would rebound this year – “I think you’re crazy to think that a bounce back is not in there offensively,” Boone said in Spring Training – and of course that didn’t happen. The under-the-hood numbers suggested his bat speed was gone last year. It happens with 37-year-olds. Not Donaldson’s fault. Blame the Yankees for ignoring the obvious.

Also, Donaldson was a known agitator – remember his sticky stuff spat with Gerrit Cole? – and the Yankees tried to spin it as bringing an edge to a team that was a bit of a pushover. Not one person in the organization came to Donaldson’s defense following the Tim Anderson incident last year. He’s just an unlikable turd who was tolerated when he was putting up MVP numbers, which he didn’t in pinstripes.

I don’t think Donaldson is Cashman’s worst trade (Mike Lowell is hard to top) but it’s up there. Going from Gio Urshela to Donaldson was a huge vibes downgrade, plus Gio outperformed him the last two years (110 wRC+ and +3.1 WAR) at a fraction of the salary. Taking on Donaldson’s $50M allowed the Twins to sign Carlos Correa to a sweetheart one-year deal too. The Yankees got outfoxed by Minnesota six ways from Sunday.

(Please don’t tell me the trade was about dumping Gary Sánchez. The Yankees could’ve simply non-tendered Sánchez rather than make the trade to unload him.)

Donaldson cleared waivers and signed with the Brewers on Thursday. He will be postseason-eligible because he signed before the 11:59pm ET deadline. Milwaukee owes him the prorated portion of the league minimum and that saves the Yankees about $228,000 between salary and luxury tax. A drop in the bucket for a $7 billion franchise, but it’s a lot of real money.

The Donaldson trade was a mistake from Day 1 and the Yankees doubled down on that mistake when they brought him back this season. Sometimes good moves don’t work out, that’s just baseball, but this move looked bad from the start, and it somehow played out even worse than I expected. Good riddance to Donaldson. The Brewers come to Yankee Stadium next weekend, so we’ll have one last chance to boo him.

(The Donaldson and Harrison Bader situations are very different. The Yankees passed on the opportunity to trade Bader at the deadline and instead salary dumped him on waivers. He’s not great, but he is a useful piece for a contender. Donaldson is cooked. Salary dumping a good player vs. releasing a bad player. Apples and oranges.)

3. What’s left in the final month. Only one month remains in the 2023 regular season and the Yankees are not playing for anything. And not because they have a huge division lead and are in postseason preparation mode. They’re bad and they’re going to miss the postseason. It’s been a long, long time since the Yankees were out of race with so much season remaining.

Meaningless games are never truly meaningless, of course. The Yankees have 28 games to play and those 28 games are a chance to evaluate Jasson Domínguez, Everson Pereira, Oswald Peraza, Austin Wells, and others. The kids are the single biggest reason to tune into the final 28 games. The last few weeks have stunk, but at least the Yankees turned the page and brought up prospects.

What else is there to do in September? To do, to watch, etc.? The kids are the most exciting and most important part of September and I’m not going to waste time writing 500 words to point that out. You know it already. Here instead are four other things the Yankees can accomplish/reasons to tune in during the season’s final month.

Cole’s Cy Young chase

For the last 4-5 weeks last season, just about every post included an update on Aaron Judge’s pursuit of the American League single-season home run record. I repeated myself a ton, but I learned a long time ago to never pass up easy content. Besides, who didn’t like reading about Judge socking dingers? His home run chase was a blast.

This year I get the feeling every post the rest of the season will include an update on Gerrit Cole’s Cy Young chase (unless he doesn’t pitch between posts, I guess). Cole battled through six innings of two-run ball Wednesday and he currently leads the league in innings (174). He’s narrowly behind Sonny Gray in ERA (2.92 vs. 2.95) and ERA+ (150 vs. 146).

Here is the updated Baseball Reference AL pitching WAR leaderboard. As I mentioned last week, the league leader in bWAR has won 10 of the last 14 Cy Youngs, and on two other occasions the leader was the runner-up. bWAR has been a pretty great Cy Young predictor lately:

1. Gerrit Cole: +5.3 WAR
2. Sonny Gray: +4.7 WAR
3. Shohei Ohtani: +4.1 WAR
4. Nathan Eovaldi: +4.0 WAR
5. Brayan Bello: +3.5 WAR

Not to diminish Cole’s excellent season, but he might win Cy Young by default. Eovaldi, Ohtani, and Shane McClanahan (and Félix Bautista) are all injured and will miss (or already have missed) significant time. Right now, it’s Cole vs. Gray, with Luis Castillo (+3.2 WAR) and Kevin Gausman (+2.5 WAR) lurking. That’s the Cy Young race.

The Yankees have a few off-days coming up (they’re off three of the next four Mondays) and we’ll see what they do with their rotation. Right now, Cole lines up to start against the Tigers (again), Brewers, Pirates, Blue Jays, and Blue Jays again. Five starts against teams with below average offenses in terms of runs per game. It’s about as favorable a schedule as you could ask for in a Cy Young race, at least on paper.

If they want, the off-days would allow the Yankees to squeeze in one more Cole start on the final day of the regular season against the very bad Royals, but come on. They’re not using off-days to rearrange their rotation so their $324M ace can start a meaningless Game 162. Cole will make his final start earlier that week and then shut it down for the season, and chill in the dugout. How often does the Cy Young race come down to a guy’s final start anyway?

The Yankees have not had a Cy Young winner since Roger Clemens in 2001. They’ve had a few close calls since then though:

• 2021: Cole was runner-up to Robbie Ray.
• 2017: Luis Severino was third behind Corey Kluber and Chris Sale.
• 2010: CC Sabathia was third behind Félix Hernández and David Price.
• 2006: Chien-Ming Wang was runner-up to Johan Santana.
• 2005: Mariano Rivera was runner-up to Bartolo Colon.
• 2004: Rivera was third behind Santana and Curt Schilling.

Cy Young voting in the 2000s was a hell of a thing, eh? Judge ended the Yankees’ MVP drought last year (first MVP since Alex Rodriguez in 2007) and Cole is in excellent shape to end the team’s Cy Young drought heading into the season’s final month. There’s still work to do and games to be played, but Cole is probably 75% of the way to the Cy Young? Maybe more? I hope he gets it. If nothing else, Cole makes the 2023 Yankees watchable every fifth day.

King as a starter

I am uneasy about the Mike King as a starter experiment because of his injury history, though I get why the Yankees are doing it, and he looked great Tuesday: 4 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 5 K against an admittedly bad Tigers team. King threw 61 pitches that night, his most since June 28th, 2021. That was back during his first stint as a starter, when he couldn’t get through five innings.

“He definitely has the weapons to do it. It’s just a matter of transitioning, and can he then hold the stuff in extended outings?” Aaron Boone told Peter Sblendorio. “... With what he’s been through now in his career, and the confidence he’s gained as a pitcher in this league, and I think a real good understanding of what he has and what he can use, I wouldn’t be surprised at anything he’s able to do.”

Tuesday’s start was notable because it was the first time since this experiment began that King worked on a five-day schedule. It was his third start, but the first two were kinda weird because the Yankees had a bunch of off-days, and they used King out of the bullpen between them. This was the first time he started on a proper schedule with the usual between starts work.

“It’s nice being on a five-day (routine),” King told Sblendorio. “Knowing that you have a full five days to really gameplan for a team, work on stuff in the bullpen instead of having to work on it while you’re out there. I remember that was a big thing when I became a reliever. In between outings, it’s not like I can really work on stuff because I need to be hot that next day.”

I am a big believer in a young pitcher learning how to get outs in the bullpen, and then using that experience as a starter. Does Severino become the pitcher he was in 2017 and 2018 without that stint in the bullpen late in 2016? I don’t think so. He learned how to get big leaguers out and developed confidence. King now is not the same King who labored through starts in 2021.

The upcoming free agent class gets worse every time I look at it and the Yankees will need to bring in a starter this offseason. Maybe two. This is next year’s rotation outlook using only players currently under contract or team control in 2024:

1. RHP Gerrit Cole
2. LHP Carlos Rodón (mostly hurt and/or bad this year)
3. LHP Nestor Cortes (coming off two rotator cuff injuries)
4. RHP Clarke Schmidt
5. RHP Domingo Germán (under team control, but is he coming back?)
6. RHP Randy Vásquez
7. RHP Jhony Brito
8. RHP Clayton Beeter (I guess?)

You needn’t try hard to see how things could go sideways behind Cole next year. Another starter feels like a must this offseason. I don’t think King having a good September would eliminate that need for another starter, but if he has a few good starts here to finish the season, it would give the Yankees another option going into 2024. Options are good. Need a lot of ‘em.

Like I said, King’s elbow injury history worries me a bit, but during this meaningless final month, it’s worth finding out whether he can start. If he can, great. The Yankees will have a little more rotation depth going into next season, in theory. And if he can’t, that’s okay. King goes back into the bullpen and you’ve learned he can’t start, and that’s worth knowing too.

The worst case scenario is King gets hurt and it compromises his 2024 availability or long-term effectiveness. There’s also part of me that thinks if he gets hurt, he was probably going to hurt no matter his role. Pitchers break. It’s what they do. King turning into an effective starter would be a great outcome for all involved. I’m rooting for it these last four weeks.

“First and foremost, he’s confident,” Boone told Greg Joyce about King as a starter. “He’s got a great disposition about him. Kind of has that starter look to him and way about him. And he’s done it most of his life. It’s just a matter of, does it translate over the long haul? He’s getting more and more opportunities and you gotta be excited about what you’re seeing.”

Extend the winning season streak

I’m bringing this up again because it’s something I enjoy and it is in jeopardy. The Yankees have not had a losing season since 1992 and the 30-season winning season streak is the second longest in history. The 1926-64 Yankees managed 39 straight winning seasons, which is truly incredible. The current Yankees getting even 75% of the way to that record is impressive.

Extending the winning streak is not hopeless. The Yankees need to win at least 17 of their final 28 games and they have series remaining with the Pirates, Royals, and Tigers. Take care of business against those three teams, hold your own against everyone else, and a winning record is doable. And by winning record, I mean 82-80. I’m not talking 90+ wins here.

I understand the argument that the Yankees should crash and burn so ownership is compelled to make meaningful change, but eh. Is there really that big of a difference between going 82-80 and, say, 77-85? Do you really think the Yankees are going to go 10-18 in their final 28 games to finish at 72-90? It’s possible, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

The Yankees conceded the season when they called up Pereira and Peraza. They’re looking ahead to 2024 and I don’t think Hal Steinbrenner will use whatever happens in September to determine Brian Cashman’s fate. Realistically, that decision has already been made. Winning is fun. Go win some games and extend the winning season streak, please and thank you.

Play spoiler

I won’t go full Phillip Price – “I would rather see you lose than win myself” – but if the Yankees can’t get to the postseason, I want them to make life miserable for everyone else. They have several series remaining with postseason hopefuls:

• Sept. 1-3: 3 games at Astros (tied atop AL West)
• Sept. 8-10: 3 games vs Brewers (three games up in NL Central)
• Sept. 11-14: 4 games at Red Sox (6.5 GB of Wild Card spot)
• Sept. 19-21: 3 games vs. Blue Jays (2.5 GB of Wild Card spot)
• Sept. 22-24: 3 games vs. Diamondbacks (0.5 GB of Wild Card spot)
• Sept. 26-28: 3 games at Blue Jays (2.5 GB of Wild Card spot)

At some point this month you will hear David Cone or John Flaherty or Jeff Nelson or Paul O’Neill (or maybe all of them) say that when you’re out of the race, you’re motivated by beating the other team and making life hard on them. We’ve heard it in the past (when the Yankees played teams out of the race). Players are hyper competitive. They look for motivation wherever they can find it.

Now, playing spoiler doesn’t mean the Yankees will do something reckless, like push Cole to 125 pitches or use Clay Holmes for a two-inning save. They’ll still do what’s best for them. But yeah, the players understand their situation, and if they can’t get to the postseason themselves, they’ll do what they can to make sure the other team can’t either. That’s just how they’re wired.

4. Rapid fire thoughts. Earlier this week Hal Steinbrenner told Mark Didtler the Yankees are "looking to bring in possibly an outside company to really take a look at the analytics side of what we do." The Yankees are going to give off the appearance of doing something without actually doing anything, aren't they? Yeah, sounds like it. Hal is going to great lengths to not fire Brian Cashman because that would mean having to conduct a GM search. He just wants to be left alone and collect his checks. Don't we all? … Similar to the Yankees and Harrison Bader, the Angels put all six of their rentals – Lucas Giolito, Randal Grichuk, Dominic Leone, Reynaldo López, Matt Moore, Hunter Renfroe – on waivers this week. They crashed out of the race in August and wanted to unload as much money as possible. The thought crossed my mind that the Yankees should claim Giolito and use September as an opportunity to get to know him (and vice versa) in advance of a potential free agent pursuit. Maybe Giolito and pitching coach Matt Blake really hit it off, and you know it’s a good fit. Or maybe Blake spends a month with Giolito and says “I can’t work with this guy.” That’s useful information too. Ultimately, Giolito went to the Guardians, so the Yankees never had a chance to claim him. I don’t think they would have anyway because it would've meant taking on $1.9M in salary plus another $1.71M in associated luxury tax penalties. My takeaway from all this waiver activity: putting good players on waivers to save money hurts the sport’s competitive integrity. Just bring back August waiver trades. I enjoy the chaos but this is getting very stupid … And finally, the Yankees released Spencer Howard earlier this week. They got him in a cash trade at the deadline and he got hurt in his third appearance with Triple-A Scranton. The Yankees have screwed up a lot lately and have earned plenty of criticism, but there’s not much to see here. They paid a few bucks for the chance to work with a former top 100 prospect and try to get him unlocked, and it didn’t work out. There are plenty of things to complain about with the Yankees. The Howard trade not working out isn’t one of them.

Mailbag Questions of the Week

Thomas asks: Should the Yankees trade Clarke Schmidt this offseason before he gets hurt again?

To start with the obvious, it depends on the offers, right? If a team blows the Yankees away with an offer, then yes, trade Schmidt. If the offers underwhelm, keep him. The Yankees have held on to a few young players too long and missed out on trading them at peak value (Estevan Florial, Clint Frazier, etc.), but also you can’t just trade everyone when their value is high. You do have to keep some players and build around them. Knowing who to keep and who to trade isn’t always easy. You do have to keep some though.

Let’s lay out the cases for and against trading Schmidt this offseason, shall we?

The case for trading Schmidt: As Thomas noted, Schmidt has a long injury history, and it’s all elbow problems. The best predictor of future injury is past injury and Schmidt’s elbow has told us several times it’s not up for this. Trade him before his elbow blows out again. Also, Schmidt’s trade value has never been higher and the upcoming free agent class stinks. Teams will line up to acquire an effective starter with another four years of team control. The stars have aligned in such a way to maximize Schmidt’s trade value, so the Yankees have a chance to be very opportunistic.

The case against trading Schmidt: Schmidt’s elbow injuries are not a secret. Other teams are aware of his history and will adjust their trade offers accordingly. Also, the Yankees are among the teams that would have interest in an effective starter with another four years of team control. It just so happens they’re the team holding that player in this situation. Trade Schmidt and you have to replace him, and this is not a good offseason to need pitching (or hitting). And of course it’s always possible things have truly clicked and Schmidt’s 3.84 ERA (3.86 FIP) in his last 18 starts is who he really is now. That would be neat.

The underlying numbers see Schmidt as a league average-ish starter this season (4.27 FIP, 4.13 xERA, 4.42 DRA) and that includes his early season struggles. I think there’s still room for improvement too because Schmidt’s stuff is so good and because he’s starting to command it better. The Statcast sliders say the contact quality should worry you …

… but I think fans largely underrate the capacity players have to get better, and overrate just how “sticky” those Statcast sliders are. Schmidt has demonstrated a lot of growth this season and his stuff certainty suggests he has the ability to miss barrels and limit hard contact. That 30th percentile hard-hit rate allowed isn’t locked in for the rest of Schmidt’s career.

To answer the question, I say keep Schmidt unless market forces lead to trade offers that are so good, you just can’t pass them up. There’s a chance his elbow gives out again and the Yankees wind up with nothing, but there’s risk in everything in this game. The players the Yankees would get back in a Schmidt trade aren’t guaranteed to work out either. I say keep him. It’s a risk, but things are beginning to click. It’s starting to come together for Schmidt.

George asks: If Stanton has really reached Donaldson, completely cooked status, what do you think the Yankees would realistically do with him in 2024. They can't continue to have a sub .200 hitter play regularly. 1. Attempt a trade with his consent, eating a majority of his contract, 2. a wink, wink season with extended IL stints, 3. release him, or 4. conduct feel good interviews with Meredith about the players favorite colors.

It’ll be 4. I fully expect the Yankees to run it back with Giancarlo Stanton next year, and say they expect him to bounce back thanks to the new hitting coach, or after an offseason working with Sean Casey (if he’s retained). No one is taking Stanton in a trade without the Yankees eating a ton of money (Stanton has a full no-trade clause anyway) and I don’t see the Yankees releasing him yet. Maybe in a year or two, but not with four years remaining on his contract.

Stanton has hit .209/.291/.454 (108 wRC+) with 51 home runs in 791 plate appearances the last two seasons. Averaging 37 homers per 600 plate appearances is great!. The rest is not, especially when you factor in the poor defense (Stanton was a legit Gold Glove once upon a time, but not anymore) and negative baserunning value. And all the injuries. He’s gonna miss a bunch of time each year with some kinda leg injury. It is what it is.

I think Stanton is unfairly maligned, meaning he gets a disproportionate amount of blame for the Yankees’ current situation. That isn’t to say he isn’t a problem. He’s a problem, just not the problem, or even the biggest problem. The idea Giancarlo’s contract prevents the Yankees from doing other stuff annoys me to no end because Hal Steinbrenner chops $30M off payroll every few years. Not being able to afford other moves is a Hal problem, not a Stanton problem.

We just spent close to two years listening to the Yankees defend Josh Donaldson because he hits the ball hard, and therefore a turnaround must be coming. There are times this team seems to completely ignore the eye test. I fully expect the next year or two of Stanton to be similar to Donaldson’s last two years in that the Yankees will tell us over and over a rebound is coming, no matter how bad things look on the field.

I love Giancarlo. There’s nothing quite like his power and hot streaks – Stanton’s hot streaks are the stuff of legend, we’ve seen him put the Yankees on his back for weeks at a time – but I can love him and also acknowledge he is a liability more than an asset at this point in his career. Recent history suggests the Yankees will deny or ignore reality another year or two. A release before 2026 would surprise me.

Jon asks: MTPS, but what would it realistically take to land Mike Trout? MLB Trade Values have him and Stanton as similar values, but that seems unlikely even with the money attached. He's not the player he used to be, but he's still useful when healthy.

Useful when healthy is underselling it a tad. Trout hit .263/.367/.490 (133 wRC+) this season and it is by far his worst season. His worst season is a career year for most players. Trout turned 32 last month and the Angels owe him $35.45M per year through 2030. That’s seven years and $248.15M. Would Trout get that as a free agent now? I don’t think so. I think teams would push for something like four years at $45M a year. Short-ish term at huge annual dollars.

Trout’s situation would be similar to Giancarlo Stanton’s situation with the Marlins. He has a full no-trade clause and is in complete control, and only a few teams can afford the contract. The market would be very, very small, thus limiting Anaheim’s leverage. The Angels aren’t as desperate to unload Trout’s money as the Marlins were to unload Stanton’s, so Starlin Castro and some couch lint won’t get it done, but I don’t think it would take a big package at all.

Given the current situation, I don’t think the Yankees should trade for Trout even if he becomes available (he’s given no indication he wants to leave the Angels). It’s a lot of money and you’re taking on decline years in bulk. Granted, Trout’s decline is better than most players’ peak, but the current version of Trout carries more downside than upside for the Yankees. He’d be a great all-in move if they only needed that one final piece to get over the hump. The Yankees are much further away than that though.

Stan asks: Hi Mike, read recently that Jeff Passan said one of Cashman's regime's worst downfall has been poor drafting. How much do you agree with that? Where would you rank Cashman's draft record against the rest of the league in that same timeframe?

Oh, the draft track record is very bad. The Yankees always pick late in the first round, which is important context, but even then their draft record is not good. Down on the Farm posted this graph in June, so it’s a little outdated, but it gets the point across. This is WAR drafted by each team since 2010, which is a good starting point when looking at drafted players who impacted (or should have impacted) the 2017-23 Yankees:

We have to apply some nuance here – for example, Eric Jagielo and Blake Rutherford are busts in the traditional sense, but the Yankees traded them in deals that were massive wins – but the Yankees are 30th in drafted WAR since 2010. At the end of the day, they have gotten the lowest amount of value from their draft picks over a long period of time. That’s bad in any context.

Damon Oppenheimer has been the Yankees’ scouting director since 2005, which is an absurdly long tenure regardless of performance. Some of these job titles don’t make it exactly clear who is in charge of what, but as best I can tell, the next longest tenured amateur scouting director is the Rangers’ Kip Fagg. He’s been at it since 2010. Just about every other team has changed scouting directors since 2016.

Think about it. If you’re a successful amateur scouting director, someone eventually hires you to be an assistant GM, and you keep working your way up the ladder. And if you’re not successful, you get replaced. Despite that, Oppenheimer has been on the job nearly two decades. It’s a position with a lot of natural turnover and yet the Yankees have stuck with the status quo since 2005.

Aaron Judge was a massive hit and perhaps Clarke Schmidt and Anthony Volpe are a sign the Yankees are beginning to do a better job in the first round. The Yankees have been much, much better in the middle rounds in recent years, particularly with pitchers, though that speaks to the player development folks as much as the draft people. It’s difficult to untangle who is responsible for what because they all work together to identify draft targets.

Ultimately, Cashman is the general manager and he’s responsible for overseeing scouting and player development and analytics and every other department. The M in GM gets overlooked. Cashman is just a manager who manages the people working for him. He’s not in the draft war room making picks himself. The buck stops with him though. The team’s draft track record since 2010 has not been good and it reflects poorly on Cashman and the people he’s hired (and continues to employ) for certain roles.

Chris asks: I was thinking back over the last several seasons and realized that the last 4 have been mired by second-half collapses! In 2020 and 2021, the Yankees narrowly made the playoffs, and in 2022 they somehow got off to such a good start that it didn’t matter. Do you attribute this to anything (having injury-prone players, bad clubhouse managing, apathy, something else?), or am I reading too much into this?

I’m inclined to ignore 2020 because it was a bizarre 60-game season. Chris is right though, the Yankees faded and limped to the finish in 2021, 2022, and now 2023 as well. This is the third straight year we waited for the Yankees to get themselves on track in the second half and finish strong, and they didn’t do it. I don’t think Chris is reading too much into this at all.

When something like that happens once, okay, maybe it’s just a bad year, and you get to work figuring out what happened and how to avoid it in the future. When it happens three years in a row, it suggests there’s a deeper organization problem somewhere. Is it the players? The manager and coaching staff? The front office? The answer is yes. They’re all culpable.

Not much more to say here. The three-season streak of being unable to compete for a full 162 games is a symptom of a larger problem within the organization. When the intensity ramps up and games become more important, the Yankees keep wilting.

Will asks: What kind of numbers will it take for Ohtani to get into Cooperstown?

I think he would get in right now? Shohei Ohtani doesn’t have the 10 years necessary to appear on the BBWAA’s Hall of Fame ballot, but hypothetically, put him on the ballot today and I think he would get in. He’s that transcendent a talent and his career has been that incredible, especially the last three years. Ohtani more than satisfies the “fame” component of the Hall of Fame.

For his career, Ohtani has a 148 OPS+ and a 143 ERA+. This is an unfair comparison because Ohtani hasn’t had his decline years yet, but he has the same career OPS+ as Mike Schmidt and the same career ERA+ as Roger Clemens. Doing those two things at the same time for a few years is Hall of Fame worthy. I would vote for Ohtani right now and I suspect most of the voting body feels the same way.

(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.)