Quick thoughts after the Yankees acquire Andrew Benintendi

Please be more Damon than Ellsbury. (Getty)

Trade season has arrived and the Yankees have landed a badly needed lefty outfield bat, albeit not the one I think we all wanted. Wednesday night the Yankees acquired Andrew Benintendi from the Royals for pitching prospects Chandler Champlain, T.J. Sikkema, and Beck Way. The trade is official. The Yankees announced it.

"Adding a guy like that will definitely give us a little pump-up, that's for sure," Aaron Judge said between strikeouts I mean after Wednesday’s game (I kid, I kid) (video link). "Bat to ball skills, speed, always works a good at-bat, and he can leave the yard. I've seen it many times at Yankee Stadium. He's a well-rounded player."

The Yankees and Royals begin a four-game series at Yankee Stadium on Thursday, so I assume Benintendi will join the Yankees right away (Hal Steinbrenner is probably thrilled to save on travel costs). I wrote about Benintendi as a trade target a few weeks ago, so I'll refer you back to that for a breakdown of his game. Now here are a few quick late night thoughts on the trade.

1. An upgrade over Gallo. Do I expect Benintendi to hit .320/.387/.398 (126 wRC+) the rest of the season like he has to date? No, mostly because hitting .320 is extremely hard. Benintendi is a .280/.352/.432 (110 wRC+) career hitter and I would sign up for that right now. The most important thing: Benintendi is better than Joey Gallo. He’s better than Gallo by a lot even if he settles in as a league average hitter the rest of the season.

191 players have batted at least 400 times since Gallo joined the Yankees at last year’s deadline. Here are his ranks among those 191 players:

• AVG: .160 (191st)
• OBP: .293 (170th)
• SLG: .371 (161st)
• wRC: 89 (166th)
• K%: 38.4% (191st)
• WAR: +0.9 (157th)

Gallo is a good defender and baserunner (it's a minor miracle he’s been above replacement level as a Yankee) but there is a minimum acceptable standard on offense, and Gallo wasn’t meeting it. Not even close and especially not as a corner outfielder. Something had to be done and that something is Benintendi, Gallo’s polar opposite at the plate (and a good defender himself).

The Yankees have an 11.5-game division lead (but only a two-game lead over the Astros for home field advantage in the postseason) so acquiring Benintendi is more about October than August and September. Could you imagine Gallo against postseason pitching? No thanks. Benintendi has been through the AL East wars with the Red Sox and he’s played (and played well) in October. That doesn’t guarantee he’ll be successful in the postseason this year, but it is reassuring.

I’m a little nervous about Benintendi because one BABIP lull and he’s another Isiah Kiner-Falefa at the plate, and you can only carry so many of those guys and expect to win. Benintendi was the best available rental outfielder though and the Yankees went and got him. He passes the better than Gallo test and should be a fairly significant upgrade now and in the postseason.

(Gotta say, trading four prospects for Gallo and then trading three more prospects almost exactly one year later to replace him is pretty, pretty brutal. Even if they’re not tippy top prospects, that’s a lotta capital and opportunity cost out the door.)

2. The lack of power. Unless Benintendi rediscovers his power stroke (he hit 17 homers last year) the Yankees are going to have four players in their lineup each night who might not hit 10 homers this season in Benintendi, Kiner-Falefa, Aaron Hicks, and the catchers. Homers aren’t everything but you absolutely need them – surely you noticed how hard it was to string together multiple hits in a single inning against Max Scherzer on Wednesday – and the Yankees have a lot of regulars who don’t provide them.

The Yankees aren’t oblivious to this and are banking on Benintendi either taking advantage of the short porch (he has seven home runs in 30 career games at Yankee Stadium) or continuing to hit .320, and making up for the lack of power with a deluge of singles. Either way, there are going to be times when the Yankees need that one big swing and nearly half the lineup won’t be able to provide it. It’s happened a bunch of times already this season and will only continue.

3. Out on Soto. So this takes the Yankees out on Juan Soto, right? I mean, they could still get him, the prospects they gave up to get Benintendi are not the kinda prospects the Nationals must have in a Soto trade, but c’mon. The Yankees have been going for second tier solutions at every turn the last two years and they refuse to trade their best prospects. Also, the Yankees kick and scream whenever they spend money on a good player. Do we really think they’ll take on Patrick Corbin’s contract?

Soto is a 23-year-old generational talent and I would have exhausted every possibility to get him before settling for Benintendi. And maybe the Yankees feel they did exhaust all possibilities. But as long as Soto is a National and the trade deadline hasn’t passed, there are conversations to be had. Hopefully Soto stays put at the deadline and the Yankees can try again in the offseason. I think jumping on Benintendi now, six days before the deadline, is confirmation the Yankees aren’t getting Soto. I welcome the chance to be wrong.

4. The defense and the lineup. Benintendi is a left fielder and has been a left fielder his entire career. He’s never played right field in the big leagues and he hasn’t played center field at all since 2019 or on any sort of regular basis since 2018. Benintendi is going to left, which means Hicks is either going back to center, or he’s going to right with Judge staying in center.

I think Hicks is going to right and Judge is staying in center. Judge is the best center fielder on the roster and the Yankees want him there. Hicks hasn’t played right since 2017, but he hadn’t played left since 2017 prior to this year either, and the Yankees stuck him out there. And he’s played left well. It was a seamless transition. Now I guess he’ll slide over to right with Judge staying in center. (Also, no more Matt Carpenter in the outfield is very good for the defense overall.)

As for the batting order, I could see Benintendi slotting in as the No. 2 hitter. He’s having a great year and the high on-base/low power approach fits best setting the table, not driving in runs. How’s this look while Giancarlo Stanton is sidelined:

1. 3B DJ LeMahieu
2. LF Andrew Benintendi
3. RF Aaron Judge
4. 1B Anthony Rizzo
5. SS Gleyber Torres
6. DH Matt Carpenter
7. RF Aaron Hicks
8. SS Isiah Kiner-Falefa
9. C Jose Trevino

I’d bat Judge second to give him a better chance at one extra at-bat in the ninth inning, but that lineup works fine. It puts two .380 OBP guys at the top, in front of Judge and Rizzo. As long as Aaron Boone doesn’t do something stupid like bat Judge ninth, which he obviously won’t do, the lineup will be fine. We could quibble with the order the rest of the season but it’ll be fine whatever it is. The Yankees are pretty sensible with lineups.

5. The 40-man spot. Gallo’s going to get designated for assignment to clear roster space for Benintendi, isn't he? The 40-man roster is full (none of the three prospects in the trade were on the 40-man) and the Yankees don’t have any obvious drop candidates like poor Ryan Weber. Maybe the Yankees will call up Luis Gil and put him on the 60-day injured list? He’d accrue service time but that’s no big deal. It won’t change his free agency schedule at this point.

The easiest move is designating Gallo. I explained this earlier this week: teams have seven days to trade, release, or waive players once they’re designated for assignment. Designate Gallo on Thursday and it’s six days until the trade deadline. The Yankees could designate him to clear 26-man and 40-man roster spots for Benintendi, and still have enough time to trade him before Tuesday’s deadline. This seems like the most straightforward move. I think it’ll happen.

And if it does happen, it means Gallo’s last act as a Yankee was the pinch-hit strikeout against Edwin Diaz on Tuesday, when Boone seemingly sent him up to plate to humiliate him. He was set up to fail. Gallo must be miserable as a Yankee between the on-field failure and the boos. How could he not be? He’s probably counting the days until he gets a fresh start elsewhere. I couldn’t blame him.

UPDATE: I goofed. The Yankees had an open 40-man roster spot after designating Shane Greene for assignment over the weekend, so Benintendi can slot right in. They will need to clear a 26-man roster spot, but can simply send Tim Locastro down to accomplish that.

6. On the prospects. The Yankees dipped in their reserve of second and third tier pitching prospects to make this trade. They have about a dozen more guys like Champlain and Sikkema and Way, that live-armed lottery ticket in Single-A. They’re the kinda prospects the Yankees seem to pull out of the woodwork and should never hesitate to trade, because there’s always a new Champlain and Sikkema and Way next year.

I wrote about Sikkema earlier this week and he’s the only one of the three who will be eligible for the Rule 5 Draft after the season, so this trade doesn't do much to clear that logjam. He was in line to be a bubble 40-man roster candidate and now that is Kansas City’s problem. Sikkema has been quite good this year. He also missed 2020 (pandemic) and 2021 (lat) and has yet to get out of High-A at age 24, so yeah.

Champlain, last year’s ninth round pick, is having a “hey he’s throwing harder than ever and wow look at that new slider” breakout season. I wrote about him a few weeks ago. Champlain has a 4.30 ERA (3.69 FIP) with a 30.5% strikeout rate with Low-A Tampa this year. He’s good but he’s not even the best late round breakout from last year’s draft (that’s eighth rounder Will Warren).

The Yankees have now traded two of their three 2020 draft picks: Way and Trevor Hauver, who went to the Rangers in the Gallo trade last year. Only first rounder Austin Wells remains. (The 2020 draft was shortened to five rounds and the Yankees forfeited the second and fifth rounders to sign Gerrit Cole, hence only three picks that year.)

Way has a 3.73 ERA (4.36 FIP) with 27.6% strikeouts in 72.1 innings with High-A Hudson Valley this year. All three guys were top 30 prospects in the system for me before the trade (Beck was No. 25 on my preseason list) and you could argue them in any order. Beck was the best of three? Okay, I can buy it. Sikkema? Champlain? Sure, put them in any order and it’d be hard to argue. (I think I like Champlain the most?)

The larger point is the Yankees gave up three good but not great prospects for Benintendi. Three pitching prospects who were expendable because the Yankees have an assembly line of these hard throwing dudes who spin the crap out of the ball. You can’t keep ‘em all, and the Yankees used these three to get big league outfield help. No qualms with the prospects given up. Good deal. Less than I expected Benintendi to cost, honestly.

7. About the money. Benintendi is making $8.3M this season and my back of the envelope math says the Yankees absorbed roughly $2.5M in salary and luxury tax obligation. FanGraphs has the luxury tax payroll at $264.8M with Benintendi, leaving the Yankees with a little more than $5M in wiggle room under the $270M third threshold. That’s the threshold that knocks next year’s first round pick back 10 spots.

The Yankees treated the third threshold as a hard cap in 2019 and 2020 (pre-pandemic) and boy, doing it this year would be extremely dumb. Who cares about moving a pick back 10 spots when you're atop the standings? Would you rather give up additional/higher quality prospects to get the other team to eat money like last year’s trade deadline? No! Just go over the threshold and move the pick back 10 spots.

That said, the Yankees have given no hints about their payroll plans this year. Last year they made it very clear they would not exceed the $210M threshold. We have no idea what they’re thinking this year. With only $5M in wiggle room, they’ll have to go over the $270M threshold to do anything impactful. We’ll see. I think they’re going over, but I can’t say that for certain.

8. On playing in Toronto. I don’t think the Yankees make the trade without assurances Benintendi will be able to play in Toronto. He didn’t make the trip with the Royals earlier this month and there’s a chance the Yankees see the Blue Jays in the postseason (they have one regular season series left in Toronto). The Yankees want Benintendi available for all postseason games and I’m sure they squared this away before saying yes. I would be very, very surprised if this is a problem down the line. (For what it’s worth, Jon Heyman and Marly Rivera both say Toronto won’t be an issue for Benintendi.)

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