Quick thoughts prior to Opening Day 2023

YES DTC update: The YES Network launched their direct-to-consumer streaming service Wednesday. You can buy it through the app. It’s $20 a month or $200 for the year if you sign up before the end of April, otherwise it’s $25 a month and $240 for the year. Pretty reasonable. NESN and MSG charge $30 a month for their DTCs. So, that has launched. Now let’s get down to business.

Later today the Yankees will take the first steps in a long journey that hopefully ends with them not embarrassing themselves in the postseason like last year. It will be a chilly afternoon in the Bronx but the weather is plenty good for baseball. Here are a few last minute thoughts before Game 1 of 162, and Game 1 of the Captain Aaron Judge era. I'm excited. Are you excited?

1. Opening Day roster finally finalized. The Opening Day roster had to be filed with MLB at 9am ET Thursday and the Yankees sent out a press release soon thereafter. They haven't tweeted out a fancy Opening Day roster graphic yet, so here's the lineup card instead:

There are 22 players listed there. Jhony Brito, Nestor Cortes, Domingo Germán, and Clarke Schmidt are the other four. They're on the Opening Day roster but not listed on the lineup card only because they're starting pitchers and won't pitch today.

Obviously a few things happened and a few moves were made between Tuesday’s post and the roster announcement Thursday morning. Let’s go through them one by one real quick.

Ortega opts out, Calhoun sent down

The Yankees informed outfielder Rafael Ortega he would not make the team Monday, according to Steve Adams, and he used his opt out to become a free agent. Ortega played in the Nationals Park game Tuesday (kinda weird?) and was officially released Wednesday. He has not yet signed with another team as far as I can tell.

Ortega, 31, played a lot this spring. He slashed .158/.327/.474 in 49 plate appearances (fifth most on the Yankees) and spent time in all three outfield spots. We talked about Ortega as a left field candidate over the winter, mostly because a) we needed something to talk about, and b) he looked like the best of several mediocre options. Desperate times, ya know?

The 28-year-old Calhoun authored a .294/.379/.392 slash line in 58 plate appearances with only six strikeouts this spring, and the small sample size combination of exit velocity (averaged 90.2 mph) and few ground balls (36.4%) is intriguing. In a vacuum, Calhoun had a good spring. For a bat-only guy trying to win a job on a World Series contender, he didn’t stand out.

Ortega is no longer with the Yankees. Calhoun at least stuck around. He’ll go to Triple-A, where he hit .264/.337/.437 (92 wRC+) in the hitter friendly Pacific Coast League last season, and try to get his career on track. If he does, there could be a place for him in the Bronx later this season. The Yankees could use a lefty hitter who doesn’t strike out excessively.

Yankees sign Cordero

The last bench spot goes to … Franchy Cordero? Franchy Cordero. Roughly 24 hours before the first game of the season, the Yankees signed Cordero to a one-year split contract, according to Jeff Passan. He gets $1M in the big leagues and $180,000 in the minors. The Orioles released Cordero a few days ago. He hit .413/.426/.674 in 46 plate appearances this spring.

Now 28, Franchy is a Statcast superstar who has ranked near the top of the league in both exit velocity and sprint speed pretty much every year of his career. Here are his 84 games and 275 plate appearances with the Red Sox last season:

Cordero is a career .221/.290/.386 (83 wRC+) big league hitter with a 34.8% strikeout rate and 17.2% swinging strike rate. Maybe the shift going away will help him (shifted 72% of the time in 2022), but the shift ban won’t help with the whiffs, and Cordero underperforms his hard-hit ability because his contact skills and approach are very bad (that spring batting line came with 11 strikeouts and no walks).

Can Cordero be this year’s Matt Carpenter? Probably not. Carpenter is an extremely disciplined hitter who doesn’t expand his zone. Franchy will swing at the rosin bag. Carpenter had a 17.8% chase rate last year and it was 16.5% the last two years. For Cordero, those numbers are 30.0% and 30.8%. The swing decisions are not in the same galaxy.

For whatever reason the Red Sox played Cordero at first base last year (in related news, the Red Sox finished in last place) but he’s an outfielder and not a great one. He’s below average in left and right fields (and awful at first base, understandably given his inexperience there). Although he doesn’t steal many bases (career 13-for-18), Cordero has rated as a solid baserunner overall. The raw tools are sexy. The baseball skills are lacking.

The Yankees need lefty bats but that doesn’t mean they should settle for any lefty bat. That’s how Rougned Odor got nearly 400 plate appearances two years ago. And Cordero feels similar to the Odor situation. The Yankees traded for Odor in the early days of the season because they didn’t address their bench in the offseason. Now they signed Cordero on Opening Day Eve because they didn’t address their bench in the offseason.

At some point Franchy will hit an absolute nuke (like this). Overall though, Cordero is a low AVG, low OBP, brute force masher who will strike out a ton and play detrimental defense. Is he better than Calhoun, Florial, and Ortega? Yeah, probably, though his skill set makes him a poor man's Joey Gallo. The Yankees are Cordero’s sixth organization in five years. Hopefully they pull the plug when Harrison Bader returns (if warranted) and don’t drag this out.

(FanGraphs says Cordero is out of options but I think he might have one left. Signing a split contract suggests he does. I’m not going to go through the hassle of counting his days in the minors to figure it out. If he has an option, neat. That would be nice for roster flexibility purposes. If not, who cares.)

Wait, Florial’s on the bench too?

Yep, Estevan Florial’s on the bench too. The Yankees are carrying 14 position players and 12 pitchers on Opening Day. That obviously won’t last, and Aaron Boone strongly implied the Yankees have a deal lined up for a pitcher before the game. I don’t know if it involves Florial, but it would make sense, no? Either way, expect the Yankees to get to 13 position players and 13 pitchers very soon, possibly by Game 2 on Saturday.

(The Athletics traded Cristian Pache, another no-hit/all-glove former top 100 prospect center fielder, for a fringe prospect Double-A reliever Wednesday. I would normally say that’s about Florial’s trade value, but Boone made it sounds like the Yankees have a deal in place for an MLB pitcher. The White Sox have a scout at Yankee Stadium on Thursday and they don’t have a true backup center fielder on the roster. Hmmm.)

Florial went 7-for-43 (.163) with 19 strikeouts this spring and figures to serve as a defensive replacement and pinch-running option (unless the Yankees don't use him at all to avoid injury before a trade). If the Yankees put Florial in the lineup full-time, it would be a mistake. If he performs well and earns more playing time, great, give it to him, but it seems his days on the roster are numbered.

Hamilton, Weissert sent to Triple-A

Ian Hamilton and Greg Weissert, the two guys thought to be in the running for the final bullpen spot, were sent to Triple-A after the Nationals Park game. Hamilton had an opt out Tuesday but agreed to push it back to April 5th, per Joel Sherman. The RailRiders begin their season Friday. The other minor league affiliates open their seasons next week.

Weissert, Matt Krook, and all the other 40-man roster pitchers must spend the minimum 15 days in the minors before being recalled. Hamilton is not on the 40-man roster and can be called up at any time. The 15-day rule doesn’t apply to him (it’s 15 days for pitchers now, remember, not 10). The April 5th opt out makes it seem like the Yankees told him “we’re probably going to put you on the roster, just give us another week.”

* The only optionable pitchers on the Opening Day roster are Jhony Brito, Nestor Cortes, Mike King, Jonathan Loáisiga, Ron Marinaccio, and Clarke Schmidt. Hamilton has a minor league option too if and when he’s put on the 40-man roster.

Injured list

Just to put a bow on everything, the Yankees put nine (!) players on the MLB injured list to start the season. No surprises here: Harrison Bader (oblique), Scott Effross (elbow), Luis Gil (elbow), Tommy Kahnle (biceps), Frankie Montas (shoulder), Carlos Rodón (forearm), Ben Rortvedt (aneurysm), Luis Severino (lat), and Lou Trivino (elbow). Not every roster is out yet but it looks like the Dodgers will be the only other team with as many as eight guys on the injured list.

Effross and Gil were placed on the 60-day injured list to clear 40-man roster spots for Cordero and Anthony Volpe. Everyone else went on the 15-day (pitchers) or 10-day (position players) injured list. Montas will go on the 60-day injured list whenever the Yankees need a 40-man spot next, plus Florial may be gone soon.

2. A little more on #VolpeningDay. When Anthony Volpe runs out to shortstop in a few hours, he will be the Yankees’ youngest Opening Day starter since Derek Jeter in 1996. He will also be wearing No. 11. Volpe wore No. 77 in Spring Training and said it’s meaningful to him because his grandfather loved Mickey Mantle, but he took Brett Gardner’s number instead. Tough break for everyone with a Clint Frazier jersey.

“Before I get that (No. 11), I’d want to reach out or talk to Gardy,” Volpe told Randy Miller earlier this week. Jack Curry says Volpe did indeed get in contact with Gardner and Brett gave him “his full approval and wished him all the best” with No. 11. Pretty cool. I hope Gardner comes back to Yankee Stadium to throw out the first pitch or something sometime soon.

(I am terrible with uniform numbers. I can’t remember who wears what to save my life, so distinctive numbers stick with me. No. 99 suits Aaron Judge perfectly, you know? Volpe would have stood out more with No. 77 than he will with No. 11, at least to me. Also, Volpe and every other rookie will wear a special MLB debut patch.)

Anyway, the Yankees have made a series of missteps at shortstop the last few years. Gleyber Torres did not work out there, they passed on all those free agents, they traded too much for Isiah Kiner-Falefa (their starting catcher, starting third baseman, and $50M in salary relief!) and then stuck with him entirely too long. It finally feels like the Yankees made the correct move at this position.

Julio Rodríguez hit .205/.284/.260 (61 wRC+) with a 37.0% strikeout rate last April. If Volpe does that this April, there will be calls to send him down and bring up Oswald Peraza. I get it. The Yankees are in a challenging division and they’re in it to win it, and that (plus being the New York Yankees) is not conducive to sitting through growing pains. That’s how it goes around here.

The Yankees did not give Volpe the shortstop job despite limited (and underwhelming) Triple-A experience just to pull the plug after a slow start though. They are all in on the kid and he will get a very long leash. That isn’t to say Volpe will stay on the roster all year no matter what. There is a point where a demotion would make sense, but I don’t believe that point is a Julio-esque April.

"He knows for better or worse we're committed to letting him handle that position, and we think he's not going to let us down," Brian Cashman told Bryan Hoch before the Yankees left Florida. "We think he's going to do really well for us in the short-term and in the long-term."

In the short-term, my expectation is there will be moments Volpe looks overmatched, otherwise I anticipate quality at-bats right from Day 1 and better defense that a lot of people seem to expect. I have no idea how this “Volpe’s not a shortstop” narrative came into existence but man, it’s wrong. Peraza may be the better defender, but Volpe will play the hell out of short.

In the long-term, I think Volpe finishes the season as the Yankees’ third or fourth best player and hitting at the top of the lineup most nights. His contact ability and extra-base power would fit well in a middle of the order spot, though the Yankees might stick with the veterans there. I could see the team’s end-of-season position player WAR leaderboard looking like this:

1. Aaron Judge
2. DJ LeMahieu
3. Gleyber Torres
4. Anthony Volpe
5. Anthony Rizzo
6. Giancarlo Stanton

Feel free to yell at me, but I don’t think the all-around shortstop out-WAR-ing a first baseman with a bad back and an injury prone DH is all that crazy. Besides, that list says more about how much I believe in Volpe than me being down on Rizzo and Stanton. The kid is really, really good and he is going to fill up the box score. I expect Volpe to contend for Rookie of the Year, basically.

As for Peraza, the Yankees will play him at second base and shortstop with Triple-A Scranton but not third base, which I don’t love. Josh Donaldson is the big league infielder most likely to play his way out of the lineup, and while LeMahieu and Oswaldo Cabrera could step in at third, why not create the possibility of an infield that includes Gleyber, Volpe, and Peraza?

"I know he's going to go down there and dominate. He just needs to wait for an opportunity to open up or force his way back up. He has a great deal of ability we still believe in,” Cashman told Hoch about Peraza. “... Peraza is a shortstop, but I do think that making sure we do have some flexibility with him will benefit us."

Judge had 670 Triple-A plate appearances when the Yankees called him up in 2016. Peraza has 460 plate appearances in Triple-A, so while I wish he was playing every day in the big leagues, going back to Scranton for a bit isn’t the end of the world. He’s not rotting on the vine down there (not yet, anyway). The Yankees will have to make room for Peraza sooner rather than later, and as it often goes in this sport, this will work itself out.

Volpe is the most I’ve been excited about a prospect since Torres, who hit .271/.340/.480 (121 wRC+) and had a +3.6 WAR season as a rookie in 2018. Would I sign up for Volpe doing that in 2023? Yes, absolutely. The Yankees made the right call at short, and even if there are growing pains initially, Volpe has the skills and makeup to be a difference maker this summer. I’m so happy he made the team.

“That's one of the reasons that we ultimately decided now's the time. Because we feel like he is, from a makeup standpoint, equipped to handle all that's gonna come," Aaron Boone told Marly Rivera. "There's gonna be bumps, and there's gonna be things that he's got to navigate that he's never experienced before, but I do feel like his makeup will allow him to handle it."

3. The remaining few who played across the street. The last couple years I’ve kept tabs on the few remaining players who played in the old Yankee Stadium. There aren’t many left. Here are the players on 2023 Opening Day rosters (active roster or injured list) who played in the old Yankee Stadium:

1. David Robertson: 13 games at the old Yankee Stadium
2. Miguel Cabrera: 9
3. Evan Longoria: 6
4. Zack Greinke: 4
5. Ian Kennedy: 4
6. Nelson Cruz: 3
7. Joey Votto: 3
8. Justin Verlander: 2
9. Johnny Cueto: 1
10. Rich Hill: 1

Ten players. That’s it. This list included 20 names last year and I asked whether it would be even 10 players deep this year, and we barely made it (Kennedy made the Rangers as a non-roster invitee). Cabrera has already said he will retire after this season and chances are one or all of Cruz, Greinke, Hill, and Votto walk away too. I’m not sure this list has five names next year.

Robertson and Verlander are the favorites to be the last players standing from the old Yankee Stadium. Robertson turns 38 next week and he’s still a viable late inning reliever. He should have a few more one-year contracts coming his way. Verlander turned 40 last month and has said he wants to pitch until he’s 45. Whichever one stays healthiest will win this race. Verlander is a Hall of Famer, but the last active player to play in the old Yankee Stadium should be someone who played for the Yankees, so I’m pulling for Robertson.

This is Year 15 of the new Yankee Stadium. The Braves and Rangers started talking about a new stadium in Year 15 of their old stadiums (Turner Field and the Ballpark in Arlington). When will we begin to hear rumblings the Yankees want a new park? Not anytime soon, I don’t think. They’re in The House That Jeter Built for the long haul. I don't think I'll be around to list the last few active players who played in the current Yankee Stadium.

4. The AL East and the early season schedule. It is a long, long season and a great start is welcome but not imperative, and that’s good because the Yankees have the toughest first week among the five AL East clubs, at least on paper. Here is each team’s first two series of the season with PECOTA’s projected winning percentage:

• Blue Jays: 3 at Cardinals (.526) and 3 at Royals (.393)
• Orioles: 3 at Red Sox (.492) and 3 at Rangers (.489)
• Rays: 3 vs. Tigers (.401) and 3 vs. Nationals (.379)
• Red Sox: 3 vs. Orioles (.460) and 3 vs. Pirates (.444)
• Yankees: 3 vs. Giants (.494) and 3 vs. Phillies (.548)

The Rays get the Athletics (.401) in their third series of the season too. They might come out of their first three series with a 7-2 or 8-1 record. The schedule is more balanced now and it’ll all even out but damn yo, in a week the Yankees might be 3-3 and three games back in the division. Tampa is set up for a hot start. The Orioles and Red Sox too if one sweeps the other.

I don’t want to spend much time on this because we all know any team can beat any other team on any given night in this game. We’ve seen countless “easy” and “tough” stretches of schedule go the way no one expected. I never did get around to an AL East preview and that’s my bad. Here are the PECOTA projected standings:

The Blue Jays scare me the most. They have so much high-end talent and, unlike the Yankees, they diversified their righty heavy lineup with a few quality lefty bats (Brandon Belt and Daulton Varsho, most notably). That said, Toronto scared me the last two years too. Their ceiling is very high and they’ve not come close to reaching it. There’s something holding that group back.

The Rays are the Rays. They’re annoying more than great, and for as much as I’ve complained about the Yankees not upgrading their offense, neither did Tampa. They were 15th in wRC+ and 21st in runs per game last season, and they scored no more than one run in 12 of their final 18 games (!), postseason included. Teams built around mixing and matching spare parts (Brewers, Giants, Rays, etc.) only go so far. Good players win games, not good value.

Earlier this week the Orioles sent Grayson Rodriguez, arguably the top pitching prospect in the sport, to Triple-A after strongly hinting he would make the Opening Day roster all offseason and all spring. There’s a non-zero chance they saw the Yankees name Volpe their shortstop, realized Rodriguez is less likely to get a full year of service time by finishing in the top two of the Rookie of the Year voting, and decided to send him down to steal the extra year of control.

Baltimore has a lot – A LOT – of young talent the Red Sox have a knack for out of nowhere great seasons. I will worry about them when the standings say I have to worry about them, and not a second sooner. I see the Blue Jays and to a lesser extent the Rays as the biggest threats in the AL East. No doubt though, this division is a bear. Even the bad teams aren’t that bad.

(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.)