January 17th, 2023: Montas, Arbitration, Jones, Mayea, Higashioka, Bowman

In case you missed it, I ran a poll Monday about the 2023 leadoff hitter. It closes at 8am ET on Wednesday, so go vote if you haven’t already. Now let’s get to today’s post. It’s a bit shorter than usual because I broke the leadoff hitter stuff out into the separate poll.

1. Montas dealing with shoulder issue. Spring Training is still a month away and the Yankees have already lost a key player to injury. Frankie Montas is expected to miss the first month of the season with shoulder inflammation, report Jon Heyman and Dan Martin. They say he’s 8-10 weeks behind in his offseason program, suggesting he may miss more than the first month.

Montas missed roughly two weeks with shoulder inflammation while with the Athletics last July, though he did not go on the injured list. The Yankees traded for him at the deadline, he made eight mostly ineffective starts (one was really good though), then he went on the injured list with shoulder inflammation in mid September. Montas was healthy enough to be on the ALCS roster as a reliever. He allowed a solo homer in his lone postseason inning.

“I know the first few times back out, he's building up his pitch count. I think we're comfortable with where he's at shoulder-wise,” Aaron Boone told Max Goodman after the trade.

You could’ve made the case Montas was going to be the best No. 5 starter in baseball in 2023 (before this news, the Yankees were the only team with five +2 WAR starters per FanGraphs projections), though that was predicated on him being healthy and performing closer to what he was with the A’s, not what he was with the Yankees. That’s out the window now, at least until further notice.

“At its best, you go in hoping that all of these guys can look up and (see) some of the most innings they’ve ever pitched in their careers. I think they’re all in a position to potentially do that,” Boone said on MLB Network Radio two weeks ago (via Bryan Hoch), presumably while being fully aware Montas is ailing and will miss the first month of the season. Sigh.

The Montas injury means Domingo Germán will yet again slide into the rotation. I imagine Clarke Schmidt will compete for the job in camp, even if only to push Germán, but I think you have to consider Germán the favorite at this point. Germán to the rotation and Schmidt to the bullpen is the most likely outcome, I think. The current rotation depth chart:

1. RHP Gerrit Cole
2. LHP Carlos Rodón
3. RHP Luis Severino
4. LHP Nestor Cortes
5. RHP Frankie Montas (will miss start of the season)
6. RHP Domingo Germán
7. RHP Clarke Schmidt
8A. RHP Jhony Brito
8B. RHP Randy Vasquez

Cole is a workhorse and as good a bet as anyone in the game to make 32 starts in 2023. The rest of the rotation carries injury risk, a lot of it really, though that’s true of most rotations. No team has five guys they can truly count on to take the ball every fifth day. And if the Yankees lose, say, Rodón and Severino for a long stretch, they’re in trouble with or without Montas.

Thanks to scheduled off-days, the Yankees will only need their No. 5 starter once in the first 20 games of the season, though they tend to be conservative with their starters out of camp, and I don’t think they’ll lean on the top four guys that much in April. Besides, April weather has a way of ruining pitching plans. I don’t think the Yankees will use the schedule to avoid their No. 5 starter the first few weeks just because Montas got hurt. I think this is a plug-and-play situation.

The Yankees gambled on their ability to find/develop arms and traded a lot of upper level pitching at the deadline last year. Ken Waldichuk and JP Sears went to Oakland in the Montas deal, and Hayden Wesneski went to the Cubs for Scott Effross, who almost immediately got hurt. There was also the Jordan Montgomery trade, though that made sense given the center field market.

The A’s (Shintaro Fujinami, Drew Rucinski) and Cubs (Drew Smyly, Jameson Taillon) have made moves this offseason that pushed Sears, Waldichuk, and Wesneski out of the rotation and back down to Triple-A, and if those teams aren’t willing to give them Opening Day rotation spots, there’s no chance the Yankees would have. Still, they’re not even available as depth now.

Among 40-man roster players, Brito and Vasquez are the best starters the Yankees have slated to begin the season in Triple-A (the Yankees seem to prefer LHP Matt Krook as a reliever). Journeymen Tanner Tully and Ryan Weber are the non-40-man depth guys. Here are the best available free agent starters by projected 2023 WAR:

1. RHP Michael Wacha: +1.6 WAR
2. LHP Danny Duffy: +1.1 WAR (did not pitch in 2022 because of arm trouble)
3. RHP Zack Greinke: +1.0 WAR
4. LHP Mike Minor: +1.0 WAR
5. RHP Michael Pineda: +0.7 WAR
6. RHP Chris Archer: +0.5 WAR

Not great. There’s enough interest in Wacha that he’ll get a nice contract with a team willing to put him in the rotation no questions asked. I could see the Yankees having interest in Archer. He wasn’t good with the Twins last year (4.56 ERA and 4.49 FIP), though his slider has interesting characteristics, he’s smart and willing to learn, and his numbers the first time through the order were solid last season:

• First time: .208/.281/.391 (.295 wOBA), 22.2 K%, 8.9 BB%, 44.7 GB% vs. 225 BF
• Thereafter: .251/.354/.391 (.331 wOBA), 16.0 K%, 13.2 BB%, 42.6 GB% vs. 212 BF

Let him compete for the No. 5 spot in Spring Training because why not, but as a once through the order multi-inning reliever, Archer could be a weapon. That would also allow the Yankees to send Schmidt to Triple-A to remain fully stretched out as the No. 6 starter. That isn’t ideal because I don’t think Schmidt has anything left to learn at that level, but it is a viable plan.

(Archer signed a one-year deal worth $3.75M last offseason. I’m not sure he’ll get even that this offseason, and with such a low salary, it would be easy to cut bait if he’s ineffective. And no, the Montas injury doesn’t make it more likely the Yankees sign Trevor Bauer. They’re completely out on him.)

That all said, the Yankees usually don’t react to short-term injuries by going out and signing a free agent or making a trade. The shoulder has acted up on Montas three times in the last seven months now, so it’s fair to question whether this really is a short-term issue, but making a move to cover for an injury is not this team’s M.O. They are willing to give their in-house replacements a shot, and if they don’t work, then the Yankees go outside the organization to get help.

The nicest thing you can say about the Montas trade right now is it has not worked out as hoped. That also applies to the Josh Donaldson and Isiah Kiner-Falefa trade, and the Joey Gallo trade. The Yankees have made some real stinkers the last two years. I fully understand the “it made sense at the time” logic, but this is a results-based business, and the results of those trades have been bad. The organization is worse off now than it was before those trades.

So now we have to cross our fingers and hope Montas gets healthy, stays healthy, and returns a few weeks into the season to make an impact. With shoulder issues, there’s always a chance the pitcher returns in a diminished state (lower velocity, etc.). We’ll just have to wait and see how Montas comes out on the other end of this. For now, it’s just another bump in the road for a trade that has been a dud to date. (Lou Trivino’s been solid, but the trade wasn’t really about him.)

2. Arbitration filing deadline. The deadline for teams and their arbitration-eligible players to file salary figures for the 2023 season came and went last Friday. And, as usual, the vast majority of arb-eligible players signed before the deadline. Only 33 of 203 arb-eligibles actually filed salary figures, according to Ron Blum. The other 170 signed before the deadline.

The Yankees entered the offseason with 14 arb-eligible players. Tim Locastro was dropped from the roster, Lucas Luetge was traded, and Isiah Kiner-Falefa ($6M) and Lou Trivino ($4.1M) both signed 2023 contracts weeks ago. That left the Yankees with 10 unsigned arb-eligibles heading into Friday’s deadline. Let’s review the signings and the big picture impact.

Nine sign before deadline

The Yankees signed nine of their 10 arb-eligibles prior to the filing deadline and they all signed one-year contracts for 2023. No multi-year extensions or anything like that (as is often the case with the Yankees). Here are the nine players and their numbers:

Jon Heyman says Holmes gets an additional $25,000 each for 25, 30, 35, and 40 games finished (he finished 32 games last year). No one else has any bonuses as far as I know. Nestor took to Twitter to say how grateful he is for the contract. I’m happy for him. He’s come a very long way to get to where he is now.

Everyone is in the neighborhood of their MLBTR projection, and the difference between actual salary and the projection doesn’t mean the player is underpaid or overpaid, or that MLBTR’s model is wrong. The model just provides a ballpark number and is generally very good. The difference between actual salaries and projections for those nine players is $535,000, or 2% of the $26.8M projection.

Under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement all arb contracts are fully guaranteed as long as the player signs before a hearing. In the past teams could release arb-eligible players in Spring Training and owe them only 30 or 45 days termination pay (depending when exactly they are released). That is no longer the case. Those nine guys are locked into those salaries, not that any of them were in real danger of being released in camp.

Yankees, Torres files salary figures

Gleyber Torres was the only arb-eligible Yankee to file salary figures this year. Aaron Judge filed salary figures last year, and before him, the last Yankee to file salary figures was Luis Severino in 2018. Torres is only the second Yankee to make it as far as filing in the last four offseasons. Here are the details on his salary figures, via Heyman:

• Gleyber filed: $10.2M
• Yankees filed: $9.7M
• Midpoint: $9.95M
• MLBTR projection: $9.8M

Filing salary figures does not necessarily mean the Yankees and Torres will go to a hearing. They can work out a contract between now and then, like Judge last year and Severino back in 2018 (that’s when Severino signed his extension). The $500,000 gap should be easy to bridge. They might not settle right away (Judge and Severino signed minutes before their hearings), but I bet the Yankees and Torres avoid a hearing.

Torres is in a unique service time class as a Super Two in his third year of arb eligibility. There are few comparable players at that level for contract purposes. Even if we widen the search to include all non-first base infielders at Gleyber’s service time level, we only get seven players in the last five years:

• Kris Bryant, 2020 Cubs: $18.6M (+25.0 WAR at the time)
• Trea Turner, 2021 Nationals: $13M (+15.5 WAR at the time)
• Anthony Rendon, 2018 Nationals: $12.3M (+17.9 WAR at the time)
• Didi Gregorius, 2018 Yankees: $8.25M (+12.6 WAR at the time)
• César Hernández, 2019 Phillies: $7.75M (+8.2 WAR at the time)
• Gio Urshela, 2022 Twins: $6.55M (+5.2 WAR at the time)
• Marcus Semien, 2019 Athletics: $5.9M (+12.8 WAR at the time)

Gleyber’s sitting on +11.5 WAR, so he’s a notch below Bryant, Rendon, and Turner and a notch above Hernández and Urshela. That makes Gregorius and Semien the best comparable players, at least according to WAR. (Semien did not yet have his MVP level breakout season when he was at Gleyber’s service time level. He was just about to enter it.)

The 2018 luxury tax threshold was $197M, so Sir Didi’s $8.25M salary was 4.2% of the luxury tax threshold. 4.2% of this year’s $233M threshold is $9.76M, pretty much exactly what the Yankees filed for Torres. Gregorius has the edge in WAR, though Gleyber’s WAR is held back a bit by the 60-game pandemic season, plus Torres has the edge in homers (98 vs. 67) and All-Star Game selections (2 vs. 0). Homers and All-Star Games pay in arbitration.

The gap is so relatively small (only $500,000) that I assume the Yankees and Torres will be motivated to reach an agreement and avoid a hearing. Split the difference between the two filing numbers like Judge last year and call it $9.95M. Easy enough. And the gap is so small that I don’t know who would have a leg up in the hearing. Both numbers are defensible. We’re talking about a ~5% difference. It’s nothing.

The Yankees don’t go to arbitration hearings often, but when they do, they win. They beat Dellin Betances in 2017, Chien-Ming Wang in 2008, and Mariano Rivera in 2000. Those are their last three hearings. Three in over two decades. The Yankees do their best to avoid arb hearings and I think they’ll get Torres signed soon enough. They just weren’t able to before the filing deadline.

2023 payroll estimate

With all but one arb-eligible player signed, we can now get a more accurate picture of the 2023 luxury tax payroll situation. Here’s what the Yankees have on the books:

• Guaranteed contracts (11 players): $220.95M
• Arb-eligibles (12 players): $47.635M
• Pre-arb players to fill out roster (5 players): $3.7M (estimated)
• Rest of 40-man roster: $3M (estimated)
• Miscellaneous: $18.2M (player benefits and pre-arb bonus pool)
• Total: $293.485M

The 11 players with guaranteed contracts: Harrison Bader, Gerrit Cole, Josh Donaldson, Aaron Hicks, Aaron Judge, Tommy Kahnle, DJ LeMahieu, Anthony Rizzo, Carlos Rodón, Luis Severino, and Giancarlo Stanton. I included Torres among the 12 arb-eligibles at his filing number, but if the Yankees beat him in a hearing, it’s only $500,000 in savings. Not a huge difference there.

11 guaranteed contracts plus 12 arb-eligibles plus 5 pre-arb players equals 28 players on the 26-man roster. The two extras are Scott Effross and Luis Gil, who will miss the season (or most of it, in Gil’s case) while rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. They’ll count against the luxury tax payroll while on the injured list. Both are in their cheap pre-arb years, but it adds up.

FanGraphs has the luxury tax payroll at $292.3M and Cot’s has it at $288.6M. The difference in our numbers comes down to the estimates made for pre-arb players and 40-man roster guys in the minors. Regardless, the Yankees are right around the $293M fourth luxury tax threshold, the highest penalty tier. It comes with a hefty 90% tax on the overage.

Several recent reports indicated the Yankees want to stay under the $293M threshold, though I haven’t paid much mind to them. I’m sure the Yankees want to stay under, but they’ve already incurred all the non-monetary penalties (moved next year’s first round back 10 spots, worse qualifying offer compensation, etc.). The only additional penalty at this point is money.

I could be completely wrong here, but I think staying under is a preference, and the Yankees will go over the $293M threshold to get help at the trade deadline or even add a player(s) before camp if need be. I don’t think Hal Steinbrenner has set $293M as a hard payroll limit, and if he has, it would suck, and it would be indisputable evidence he is prioritizing money over winning. I buy the Yankees wanting to stay under $293M. I do not believe it is a mandate.

3. The next great Yankees prospect: OF Spencer Jones. I am slowly piecing together my annual Top 30 Prospects List and spoiler, 2022 first rounder Spencer Jones will make it. If your most recent first rounder doesn’t rank among your top 30 prospects, you either drafted the wrong guy or have a farm system so stacked it’s unprecedented. Neither applies here. Jones is in.

Jones, the 6-foot-7 power-hitting outfielder from Vanderbilt, received a $2,880,800 bonus, which is full slot value for the No. 25 pick. After three rookie ball tune-up games, Jones was sent across the street to Low-A Tampa, where he slashed .324/.411/.494 (160 wRC+) with three home runs and strong strikeout (18.9%), walk (10.5%), and swinging strike (12.0%) rates in 22 games. Keep in mind the Florida State League averages were 26.8% strikeouts and 14.7% swinging strikes in 2022. The low minors have become very strikeout heavy in the build-a-pitcher era.

More important than the stats are the evaluations. In November, Baseball America (subs. req’d) wrote “scouts who saw him as a pro noted he’d done a good job learning how to manipulate the barrel and slowly minimize areas where he can be exploited.” Baseball Prospectus (subs. req’d) added “he exhibited a simplified, borderline effortless swing that allowed him to leverage his long levers and sensational bat speed” in December. This is easy power. Minimal effort.

Jones came out of a major college program but he is not very experienced. He was a two-way player in high school who missed much of his senior year with a broken elbow. The pandemic cut his freshman year at Vanderbilt short (14 games), then he blew out his elbow that summer and needed Tommy John surgery. It limited him to 34 games in 2021. Last year was Jones’ first full college season and his first fully healthy season since his junior year of high school.

Because of that, Jones is behind the 2022 draft’s other top college hitters developmentally. The typical first round college bat is a polished player with several hundred at-bats in a competitive, high level environment. That’s not Jones. The Yankees drafted a player with exciting raw tools and athleticism, and a lot to learn. That usually describes a high school kid or an international amateur free agent. Here it describes a player from Vanderbilt, a baseball powerhouse and a program that takes pride in developing players, not just winning games.

Jones is said to have already made improvements simplifying his swing, and he had a 29.9% chase rate with Tampa, below the 36% or so league average. Statcast says Jones swung and missed at only three fastballs in the zone in his 22 games with Tampa. You might see a player swing and miss at three heaters in the zone in a single game these days. (Joey Gallo did it in one at-bat in May!)

As a freakishly athletic 6-foot-7 hitter with effortless power, Jones has already been compared to Aaron Judge. “I think it’s cool more than anything else,” Jones told Joe Trezza in August about the Judge comparisons. Obviously the natural ability is special, but Judge became this thanks to an elite ability to make adjustments. We don’t know whether Jones has that ability too, though the super early small sample returns are encouraging. As good as we could’ve hoped, really.

“Maybe deep in your head you’re going, ‘Okay, we’ve had Aaron and we’ve had (Giancarlo) Stanton, we’ve had some guys like that and they’ve done well.’ Maybe we’re pretty good at that,” scouting director Damon Oppenheimer told Mark Sanchez about Jones after the draft. “... He’s got big raw power. He’s got ability to use the whole field to hit. He can throw, he’s a plus runner, and he’s a good defender. The ease of the way he does things is pretty special.”

Oswaldo Peraza should graduate to the big leagues this summer and Anthony Volpe could as well. Once that happens, Jasson Domínguez will take over as the organization’s top prospect. The Mickey Mantle and Mike Trout comparisons were always ridiculous, and it seems like the prospect rankers have overcorrected in the other direction. Domínguez is now underrated. The kid is really, really good.

Among players currently in the system, Jones is the best bet to challenge Domínguez for the top spot in the Yankees’ prospect hierarchy. Austin Wells doesn’t offer much defensively, Roderick Arias is too far away, Everson Pereira is good but not really a top of the system kinda prospect, and various pitchers (Clayton Beeter, Luis Serna, Will Warren, etc.) aren’t at that level either.

Jones is far from a finished product, but he offers significant upside and all-around ability, and it seems he’s already improving. All the ingredients are there for an impact player. Jones had a strong pro debut and impressed those charged with evaluating players. He should move up to High-A Hudson Valley to begin 2023 and he’s poised to shoot up prospects lists too.

“I’m excited to get to work and show people what I can do,” Jones told Trezza. “... My strength is that I like to compete and I like to get out there and put a lot on the field when I’m there. I want to play baseball, and getting the opportunity to play every day is extremely special. So I’m taking advantage of it.”

4. Mining the news. Got a couple miscellaneous Yankees-related tidbits to pass along, so let’s get to ‘em.

Yankees sign Mayea

As expected, the Yankees signed Cuban OF Brandon Mayea (video) when the 2023 international signing period opened this past Sunday. He received a $4.35M bonus with an additional $100,000 for education*, per Chris Kirschner. It is the second largest bonus the Yankees have ever given an international amateur.

1. OF Jasson Domínguez, 2019: $5.1M
2. OF Brandon Mayea, 2023: $4.35M
3. SS Roderick Arias, 2022: $4M
4. 3B Dermis Garcia: 2014: $3.2M
5. C Gary Sánchez, 2009: $3M

Also, we finally have confirmation on his name. It is Brandon Mayea, though he goes by Brando with close friends and family (Brando is in his Instagram handle). Not sure what he intends to go by as a pro, so I’ll stick with Brandon for the time being. Brando is way cooler though. You’re not winning a World Series with Dave Smiths and John Millers in the lineup. Cool names are a must.

Anyway, the Yankees have a $5.284M bonus pool and gave most of it to Mayea, though they can trade for an additional 60% and max their pool out at $8.4544M. Just eyeballing MLB.com’s list of signings, the Angels, Cardinals, Nationals, and Royals have been fairly inactive and have yet to sign a player to a seven-figure bonus. They could be bonus pool trade partners.

Dominican OF Tony Ruiz is the best unsigned player according to the public rankings. Baseball America (subs. req’d) ranks him as the signing period’s No. 24 prospect and MLB.com has him at No. 30. The MLB.com report says “some have even gone as far as to compare (Ruiz) to Julio Rodríguez.” Here is Ben Badler’s more down-to-Earth scouting report (subs. req’d):

Ruiz stood out early on in the scouting process and looked to be in line for a bonus north of $1 million, though a broken leg that required surgery in 2022 slowed him down. He could still end up signing for a seven-figure bonus, though he is still doing tryouts for clubs entering Jan. 15. Ruiz has premium bat speed and power for his age from a fluid swing. Ruiz can punish a fastball and has a chance to grow into at least plus or better raw power with more strength projection left in his broad-shouldered frame. He's likely a corner outfielder who should have the arm strength for right field.

Yep, the broken leg will do it. That’s why Ruiz is still unsigned. He is the best available player, at least according to the public rankings, so if the Yankees swing a trade(s) for bonus pool money, here’s where they can spend it.

Badler reports the Yankees also signed Dominican OF Gabriel Lara, Dominican OF Richard Meran, Nicaraguan RHP Joshua Quezada, and Dominican SS Gabriel Terrero when the signing period opened. None rank among the signing period’s top prospects and I don’t have any additional information on them (bonuses, scouting reports, etc.). Sorry.

* Just to answer the inevitable question, education packages are pretty standard for international signees and draft picks (the amounts differ though), and they don’t count against the bonus pool. Officially, it is called the MLB College Scholarship Plan & Continuing Education Program, and it’s essentially tuition reimbursement. The player goes to school and the team is billed directly. The team doesn’t give the player a chunk of money and say “here, use this for school, wink wink.” So if, say, Austin Wells goes back to Arizona to finish his degree, the Yankees will pay for it.

Higashioka heading to WBC

Buried in a recent Joel Sherman column comes word Kyle Higashioka has committed to USA for the upcoming World Baseball Classic. He is the third Yankee lined up for the WBC, joining Nestor Cortes (USA) and Wandy Peralta (Dominican Republic). J.T. Realmuto and Will Smith are the other catchers known to have committed to USA. Preliminary 50-man rosters were due earlier this month, and final rosters will be announced Tuesday, Feb. 7th.

The roster rules change every WBC and this year teams will have a 30-man roster with a 14-pitcher minimum. In 2017 they had 28-man rosters with a 13-pitcher minimum, and could add two pitchers to the roster after each round. As far as I know it’s a straight 30-man roster with no further additions this time around. I bet most teams will go with 15-16 pitchers.

USA carried three catchers in 2017: A.J. Ellis, Jonathan Lucroy, and Buster Posey. If they carry three catchers again, and without knowing who else is on the preliminary roster, Higashioka is a perfect fit for the Ellis role as the veteran No. 3 catcher (Ellis didn’t play at all in 2017, Lucroy and Posey played every game). He’s there for emergencies and is used to not playing for days at a time.

We’ll get official word on which Yankees are heading to the WBC in three weeks. Jonathan Loáisiga is the one to watch. Nicaragua went through the qualifying round in September and their roster was heavy on players from the Nicaraguan Professional Baseball League. With all due respect to Erasmo Ramírez, Loáisiga is the best Nicaraguan-born player in the world. They’re probably begging him to go.

(WBC sleeper: Anthony Volpe for Italy. Italy played Nick Punto and Daniel Descalso at short the last three WBCs, and unless there’s a distant relative situation with a big name we don’t know about, it appears Volpe is Italy’s best shortstop option. I’m sure Volpe would love to do it, though I seriously doubt he leaves his first big league camp when he theoretically has a chance to win an MLB roster spot.)

Harkey also going to WBC

Yankees bullpen coach Mike Harkey is also going to the WBC. He is on the Netherlands staff as the bullpen coach, it was announced. It was previously announced Yankees bench coach Carlos Mendoza will be Venezuela’s bench coach, so that’s two big league coaches heading to the WBC. A bunch of minor league coaches and coordinators will fill in and get a chance to work with the big league team this spring. Nice little opportunity for them.

Yankees re-sign Bowman

Welcome back, Matt Bowman. The Yankees have re-signed the righty reliever to a minor league contract, per the MiLB transactions log. Bowman, now 31, had Tommy John surgery while with the Reds in Sept. 2020. The Yankees signed him to a two-year minor league deal that offseason and he never did make it back to the mound. His last game action at any level was in 2019.

From 2016-19, Bowman was serviceable middle reliever with the Cardinals and Reds, pitching to a 4.02 ERA (3.67 FIP) in 181.1 innings. He isn’t a strikeout guy (career 19.3%). Bowman’s thing was ground balls (56.5%) and weak contact (85.6 mph average exit velocity and 3.6% barrel rate). Back then he was a low-to-mid-90s fastball/slider/splitter pitcher who kinda sorta modeled his delivery after Tim Lincecum (video).

“I tried it in college. It didn’t work out that well. He’s a special athlete and those mechanics are very unique and a little taxing,” Bowman told Mark Saxon about the Lincecum influence in 2016. “There are elements that I think are kind of similar. It’s mostly like the lean back and being an undersized righty that most people think of when they connect us.”

What does Bowman look like now, one Tommy John surgery, presumably at least one setback (given the long layoff), and more than three years since his last game action? Beats me, though the Yankees bringing Bowman back suggests he’s healthy and ready to pitch, or will be soon. The ground ball and exit velocity suppression tendencies are right up their alley.

(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.)