February 1st, 2022: Paddack, Beltran, YES, Minor League Camp

Lockout, Day 62: Did you know George Steinbrenner tried to take the Yankees on tour? I knew he threatened to move the team to New Jersey, but Manny Randhawa has the story on Steinbrenner trying to take the Yankees around the country so they could play MLB games in non-MLB cities. It never happened and, frankly, it was a dumb idea, but it is a neat story. Check it out. Now let’s get to today’s thoughts.

1. Possible trade target: Chris Paddack. At an undetermined point in the future MLB and the MLBPA will agree to a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, and baseball will go on. I don’t know when it will happen but I can assure you it will happen. Baseball will not cease to exist. And whenever baseball does return, the Yankees have to find a new shortstop, first and foremost.

The Yankees could also use more pitching depth because every team could use more pitching depth, and ideally that pitching depth would be controllable beyond 2022. Jameson Taillon will be a free agent after this season and Luis Severino could be as well, should his performance and/or health warrant declining his $15M club option for 2023 ($2.75M buyout).

The free agent market has thinned out, so unless the Yankees sign Carlos Rodon, a trade is the only way to meaningfully improve the rotation. The Athletics are the obvious trade partner. Maybe the Brewers too. The Padres were so short on starters late last year that they had to sign Jake Arrieta and Vince Velazquez off the scrap heap, but they could be a match as well.

According to Dennis Lin (subs. req’d), San Diego dangled 26-year-old Chris Paddack during Max Scherzer trade talks with the Nationals last summer, and at the moment, he is on the outside of their rotation looking in. The Padres' rotation depth chart looks something like this:

1. RHP Joe Musgrove
2. RHP Yu Darvish
3. LHP Blake Snell
4. RHP Mike Clevinger (coming off his second Tommy John surgery)
5. RHP Nick Martinez (returning to MLB after a few years in Japan)
6. RHP Chris Paddack
7. LHP Ryan Weathers
8. RHP Reiss Knehr

That’s not great depth (we don’t know what Clevinger looks like post-Tommy John surgery nor whether Martinez’s success in Japan will translate), but it’s better than what San Diego had going into last season, when Weathers was their No. 5 starter on Opening Day. If nothing else, Clevinger and Martinez give the Padres options they didn’t have last year.

Dangling Paddack in trade talks for a guy like Scherzer does not mean the Padres are willing to give him away. It does tell us he’s not completely off-limits though, and that San Diego is open to moving him for the right piece. Do the Yankees have the right piece (more on that later)? Does Paddack even make sense for the Yankees? Let’s take a look.

He’s a changeup guy

And the Yankees sure do love changeups. Paddack has one of the best changeups in the game, a mid-80s downer that he throws with conviction and the same arm speed as his fastball. He’ll throw it 3-4 times in a row without ever showing the hitter a fastball to set it up, similar to Tommy Kahnle. This is a three-pitch at-bat from last June (GIF via Rob Friedman):

That was the third time Kevin Pillar saw Paddack in the game too, and he still swung and missed at three straight changeups. The pitch is that good. Not every pitcher on the staff needs to be a changeup guy, but the Yankees have shown a clear preference for the pitch, and Paddack has a great one. It’s pretty easy to connect the dots.

“I wouldn’t say that I choke the ball. If I choked it, the spin would be sideways and the hitter could pick it up,” Paddack told David Laurila about his changeup in 2019. “I’m a little looser with the grip, because I think that helps me locate it easier. I’m also trying to get that backspin rotation to follow my fastball command. Personally, I think the changeup is the hardest pitch to hit in baseball.”

The rest of his arsenal is iffy

Paddack has one of the 10 best changeups in baseball according to Statcast’s pitch values. The rest of his arsenal isn’t so great. He sits 93-95 mph with his four-seam fastball and has run it as high as 98 mph, but it’s an average spin rate pitch that has a steep vertical approach angle and doesn’t play well up in the zone. The numbers against Paddack’s fastball since 2020:

• AVG: .312 (MLB average: .257)
• SLG: .575 (MLB average: .459)
• xwOBA: .376 (MLB average: .352)
• Whiff rate: 21.2% (MLB average: 22.2%)

I’m a big dumb idiot who doesn’t know anything, but if you have a bad four-seamer like Paddack, why not switch to a sinker? He’s had issues with fastball movement in the past – “I was getting two-seam run on my four-seam fastball,” he told AJ Cassavell last spring – so why not just go all in on movement, and sink that sucker instead of trying to force a four-seamer?

Well, anyway, Paddack’s four-seamer is trash and his loopy curveball is a distant third pitch that sits around 80 mph with shockingly low spin. It looks pretty but hasn’t been all that effective. The Padres had Paddack toy with a cutter in 2020, though he didn’t throw it at all in 2021, so I guess that experiment is over. He’s a changeup guy with a show-me fastball and a show-me curveball.

His results have been poor

The last two years, at least. Paddack had an impressive rookie season in 2019, throwing 140.2 innings with a 3.33 ERA (3.95 FIP) and strong strikeout (26.9%) and walk (5.5%) rates. Paddack has always posted excellent walk rates and Baseball America (subs. req’d) said he has “pristine command in all four quadrants of the strike zone” with his fastball going into his rookie year.

Since that rookie season Paddack has a 4.95 ERA (4.22 FIP) in 167.1 innings, and his strikeout rate dipped to 23.7% in 2020 and again to 21.6% in 2021. He still isn’t walking anyone (4.8%) and his swinging strike rate (11.2%) is the same as his rookie year (11.4%), but he hasn’t gotten as many strikeouts and he hasn’t kept runs off the board either. Some more numbers:

• 2019: 40.2% grounders and 87.8 mph average exit velocity
• 2020: 47.1% and 90.9 mph
• 2021: 42.9% and 90.5 mph

Paddack’s not a ground ball pitcher nor is he a contact manager. He’s not striking out as many batters as he once did, so yeah, the results have gone south. Paddack has always been homer prone (career 1.52 HR/9 and 15.8% HR/FB) because his fastball runs into barrels and inevitably he hangs a few changeups, and a hanging changeup is a batting practice fastball. This progression is bad (full-size image):

I will say I think there was a little flukiness to Paddack’s 5.07 ERA last season. His 60.7% strand rate was second lowest among the 129 pitchers to throw 100 innings and well below the 76.9% and 75.4% strand rates he posted in 2019 and 2020. Statcast says the Padres played average defense behind him, so it’s not like they kicked the ball around when he was on the mound.

The league average strand rate hovers around 72% each year and pitchers only have so much control over it (high strikeout guys tend to have higher strand rates than low strikeout guys, and that’s about the only correlation). Paddack’s 60.7% strand rate in 2021 is the seventh lowest mark in the last five 162-game seasons and it just seems like a thing that won’t happen again.

Deserved Run Average, the all-encompassing pitching stat at Baseball Prospectus that adjusts for exit velocity and quality of competition and a million other things, estimates Paddack pitched at a 4.25 ERA pace last year. Not great, but not bad either, and certainly better than the 5.07 ERA he did post. Given the weirdly low strand rate, I can buy Paddack having some bad luck in 2021.

That said, Paddack’s strikeouts are going down and he’s not a ground ball guy, and limiting hard contact has never really been his thing. Even ignoring ERA, he has been getting worse since his impressive rookie year. Think of Paddack as the pitcher Gleyber Torres. He started his career so well and now he’s going backwards, and we’re left wondering who he really is.

Contract status

To their credit, the Padres didn’t manipulate Paddack’s (or Fernando Tatis Jr.’s) service time in 2019 and carried him on the Opening Day roster. He’s under team control through 2024 and is projected to make $2.1M through arbitration in 2022. Paddack also has all three minor league option years remaining, but I don't believe they have much value. If you trade for Paddack and have to send him down, something is going wrong.

His elbow is acting up again

This is a big deal. Paddack had Tommy John surgery in Aug. 2016 and elbow inflammation sent him to the injured list last Sept. 11th, ending his season. Tests revealed a slight tear in his ulnar collateral ligament and rehab was recommended. Paddack received a stem cell injection in late September and, at the time, the Padres said they expect him to be ready for Spring Training.

“Everybody I talked to says we’ll have a normal offseason,” Paddack told Kevin Acee following the injection. “... It could have been a lot worse. Thankfully, we caught it when we did.”

Partial ligament tears don’t always lead to Tommy John surgery (see: Tanaka, Masahiro) but they are a red flag. Having a normal-ish offseason doesn’t mean Paddack is out of the woods. He could feel renewed discomfort early in camp and have to go under the knife. It doesn’t help that the Padres have a pretty terrible track record with elbows (see: Lamet, Dinelson).

The second Tommy John surgery carries more risk than the first (but like the first Tommy John surgery, it isn’t as risky as it once was) and Paddack’s three years of control could become 1.5 years of production real quick if this stem cell injection and rehab plan doesn’t fix his elbow. There’s no mystery here. Paddack has a partial tear in his elbow, so he comes with significant risk.

Does he make sense?

The elbow complicates things but I do like Paddack as a buy low candidate, which he obviously is given the decline in performance and the elbow injury. The Padres won’t get nearly as much for him now as they would have last offseason, when they would have gotten less for him than they would have the year before. Paddack’s stock is trending down.

Look at the positives though. Paddack has an A+ pitch in his changeup and very good fastball command, and he’s been hailed as a dogged competitor. You can build on that. Paddack strikes me as a good candidate for a sinker, a pitch the Yankees emphasized with a good deal of success last year, so the “fix” is relatively straightforward (in theory).

Also, the Padres have had trouble finishing off the development of their young pitchers the last few years. They get them to Triple-A and MLB, then they stall out. Eric Lauer went to the Brewers and got better. Cal Quantrill went to the Guardians and got better. Paddack stalled out, Weathers stalled out, Joey Lucchesi stalled out, and MacKenzie Gore fell apart mechanically. It’s a trend now.

It used to be that you wanted to trade for Pirates pitchers because their one size fits all “sinkers at the knees” philosophy left a lot on the table. The blanket approach didn’t always maximize the player's talent, so you could trade for a Gerrit Cole or Tyler Glasnow, and get him to level up with a few tweaks. Maybe young Padres pitchers are the guys to target now?

The Padres dangled Paddack in Scherzer trade talks, so they’re willing to move him in the right deal, and since we’re talking about the Padres, we have to bring up Joey Gallo. Gallo is Padres GM A.J. Preller’s white whale. They overlapped a bit when Preller was in the Rangers front office and he tried to get Gallo at last summer’s trade deadline, but the Yankees beat him to it.

Is there a Gallo for Paddack framework that makes sense? In a vacuum I’d say yes. In the real world, where Paddack has a partial tear in his elbow and may be facing a second Tommy John surgery, I don’t think so. Gallo is a pretty safe bet to be a productive player in 2022. Yeah, he’ll hit .200, but you can reasonably expect him to get on base, play great defense, and hit nukes.

Can you reasonably expect Paddack to be effective in 2022? Or in 2023 or 2024 for that matter? Can you reasonably expect him to stay healthy? No, you can’t. That doesn’t mean you cross him off the trade target list entirely (buy low guys wouldn’t be buy low guys if they weren’t broken to some degree), it just means I’d hesitate to give up Gallo to get him. I’d want more.

The Yankees gambled on Taillon when he was coming off his second Tommy John surgery, so they are willing to do the buy low thing on an injury risk pitcher. Trading prospects for that pitcher is much different than trading an everyday player like Gallo though. San Diego is trying to win. I don’t think they’re trading Paddack for prospects. They’ll want immediate MLB roster help.

I guess the Gallo for Paddack framework is somewhat dependent on what the Yankees do next, right? If the Yankees intend to plug their outfield with, say, personal favorite Michael Conforto, or by trading for Bryan Reynolds, then moving Gallo would make sense. Still, it would have to be Paddack plus other stuff for Gallo. I wouldn’t like Paddack straight up given the elbow.

I do like Paddack as a buy low guy. He has arm talent and a great changeup – life is a little bit easier when you have that knockout pitch you can go to in sticky situations – and getting him away from the Padres could do wonders. The elbow is a concern and the risk will be factored into the price. Straight up for Gallo? Nah, but Paddack has my attention.

2. Beltran joins YES. It’s official: Carlos Beltran is the newest YES Network analyst. Jack Curry announced the news over the weekend. Beltran will do 36 games, filling the void created by Ken Singleton’s retirement and David Cone taking on a reduced workload with his move into ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball booth.

I don’t want to spend too much time on this because television analyst discourse can only be so interesting, but I have a few things to say about Beltran joining YES. First, Beltran has to address the Astros sign-stealing scandal at some point, right? MLB’s investigation identified Beltran as a ringleader and Yankees players haven’t been shy about expressing their anger with Houston.

"I just don't think it holds any value with me. You cheated and you didn't earn it," Aaron Judge told Marly Rivera about Houston’s tainted title. "It wasn't earned the way of playing the game right and fighting to the end. The biggest thing about competition is laying it all out on the line, and whoever's the better player, better person, comes out on top. And to know that another team had an advantage – nothing that you can really guard against – I just don't feel like that's earned."

Personally, I’ve moved on from the sign-stealing scandal. I was angry, I wrote everything I had to say about it, and that’s it. I think I’m in the minority though. Beltran’s cheatin’ Astros eliminated the Yankees in the 2017 ALCS and we saw what happened when the Astros came to the Bronx last year. A great many Yankees fans are still mad about the sign stealing. I totally get it.

I don’t think you can put Beltran on television and just sweep the sign-stealing scandal under the rug. This should be a Day 1 item. Like a first or second inning in the booth item, right? Beltran should address it right away, and be contrite. Say you did it and say it gave you an unfair advantage. Don’t say other teams did it or that it didn’t help much. Just own it and apologize.

The sign-stealing scandal emotions are still raw and in that respect, putting Beltran in the booth is no different from signing Carlos Correa to play shortstop. The Yankees are putting a major player in the scandal front and center, so they should make him be accountable, and tell everyone what happened and why. And do it on live television. Don’t make canned remarks in a press conference. Make sure everyone sees it.

Second, this is Beltran’s first job in baseball since being let go as Mets manager. He had to wait two years to get back into the game and, even as a player, Beltran never made it a secret that he wanted to manage one day. In all likelihood the YES Network gig is temporary. Remember when Joe Girardi spent one year with YES between managing the Marlins and Yankees? Like that.

Alex Cora and A.J. Hinch got managerial jobs as soon as their suspensions ended. I guess Beltran has to wait a little longer because he was an active player with the Astros and because he has no prior managerial experience? I dunno. But the sign-stealing scandal isn’t a deal breaker. It’s only a matter of time until Beltran leaves YES to join a team. I bet it happens within a year or two.

And third, the two traits I most want in a broadcaster are a) be funny and tell good stories, and b) teach me something about the game. A broadcaster who can point out things that aren’t obvious while making me laugh are the best. That’s why I loved Singleton and love Cone. They’re great at speaking intelligently about baseball while having fun and not taking it too seriously (they can also be serious when the situation calls for it).

Beltran will definitely teach us about the game. He’s a brilliant baseball mind, you could see it when he played and hear it when he spoke, so we’re in for some neat stuff. And you can’t play as long as Beltran did without picking up great stories*, so we’ll hear those too. Will he be funny? I think so. He had a good sense of humor as a player. I think he’ll be a great analyst and am looking forward to his broadcasts.

* I’m most looking forward to Beltran’s stories about the 2014-16 Yankees. I want to know all about Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira being goofs.

3. Prepping for minor league camp. We don’t know when big league Spring Training will begin but minor league camp isn’t too far away. Susan Slusser says non-40-man roster players are being told to report on or around Feb. 21st, so in less than three weeks. Usually it’s two weeks of workouts, then minor league exhibition games begin in early March.

The lockout has no bearing on the minor league season. It will be played as scheduled (Triple-A Scranton begins its season April 5th, the other three affiliates on April 8th) except without 40-man roster players. Those guys are locked out. Everyone else can play. Minor league baseball was played during every other in-season work stoppage in baseball history. This one will be no different.

The Yankees have several notable prospects on the 40-man roster who can’t go to minor league camp, and can’t go to a minor league affiliate (or even Extended Spring Training) should the lockout extend into April. Those prospects:

• Catchers: none
• Infielders: IF Oswaldo Cabrera, SS Oswald Peraza
• Outfielders: OF Estevan Florial, OF Everson Pereira
• Starters: RHP Deivi Garcia, RHP Luis Gil, RHP Yoendrys Gomez, RHP Luis Medina, RHP Clarke Schmidt
• Relievers: RHP Ron Marinaccio, RHP Stephen Ridings, LHP JP Sears

That’s the starting middle infield, most of the starting rotation, and three key bullpen arms for Triple-A Scranton. A guy like Miguel Andujar is no longer a prospect, but he’s another 40-man player who can’t go to Scranton. Florial, Peraza, and Cabrera figured to hit 1-2-3 in the RailRiders lineup. Instead they’ll have to wait until the lockout ends to play*.

* The fun new rumor is MLB will punt April and make up the lost revenue by spending less on free agents, but that doesn’t pass the sniff test. MLB is a $10 billion a year industry. Conservatively assume $6 billion of that is generated during the regular season, and it’s still $1 billion a month. Free agency ain’t covering that. Teams spent $4.05 billion total on player payroll last year.

The potential lockout version of Triple-A Scranton’s roster isn’t without prospects, but it does lose a lot of luster. Here’s a possible non-40-man only version of the RailRiders roster:

There are four catchers on the roster (Brantly, Duran, Freitas, McDowell), the three non-catchers on the bench are organizational guys who bounced between levels last season, and the starting second baseman slugged .280 with Scranton last year. I imagine the Yankees will bring in a few more depth position players on minor league deals before Opening Day.

As for the pitching, the rotation other than Weber is fun and interesting, and how much would you like to bet at least two of those eight relievers pitch in the big leagues in 2022? You never think it’s going to happen, then before you know it Asher Wojciechowski makes a spot start, Sal Romano keeps coming back, and there’s a substitute pitcher in the bullpen. Pitchers, man.

I’m hopeful we won’t lose regular season games to the lockout, mostly because I don’t think MLB and the MLBPA want to lose more paychecks. But if it does, would the YES Network broadcast minor league league games? Could do Triple-A Scranton one night, Double-A Somerset the next, etc. What else would they show? Derek Jeter’s Yankeeography for the 800th time?

Minor league games on YES would be neat. I also think they would get old quick. The quality of play would be off-putting (folks, it’s bad), and non-prospects always outnumber the actual prospects. There’s a reason the final few innings of Spring Training games are more fun in theory than reality. When you’re used to MLB, minor league baseball isn’t all that entertaining.

Hopefully the lockout doesn’t last much longer and we don’t have to worry about what Triple-A Scranton’s roster will look like or how the YES Network will fill the hours. Minor league camp will start in three weeks though. Baseball’s on the way back, which means there’s only so much time remaining to work out a new Collective Bargaining Agreement before games are missed.

4. Remembering a random Yankee: Mike Zagurski. This week’s random Yankee comes by request and is a member of the “one game as a Yankee” club. Here’s the random Yankee archive. You can find links back to everyone we've covered there. Just FYI, I have a big backlog of requests. I promise I’m not ignoring you all. Keep sending those requests in.

Zagurski grew up in Omaha and wasn’t on the radar as a high schooler. He wasn’t drafted and wasn’t even recruited by colleges. Zagurski walked on at a junior college and spent two years there before transferring to the University of Kansas, where he set the school’s single season strikeout record with 112 as a senior in 2005.

In May 2005, Zagurski beat the University of Texas in front of scouts there to see Longhorns catcher Taylor Teagarden, and that helped get him drafted. The Phillies took Zagurski in the 12th round, moved him to the bullpen immediately, and two years later he was in the big leagues. Zagurski made his MLB debut on May 25th, 2007. Not even two full years after being drafted.

Zagurski appeared in 25 games as a rookie in 2007, missed the entire 2008 season with Tommy John surgery, spent most of 2009 rehabbing in the minors, then went up and down in 2010 and 2011. The Phillies sent Zagurski to the Diamondbacks in a (very) minor trade in Sept. 2011, then he signed with the Pirates as a free agent in Dec. 2012.

From 2007-12, Zagurski pitched to a 6.13 ERA (4.82 FIP) in 69 big league innings as a left-on-left matchup guy. Lefties hit .265/.333/.372 with a 25.2% strikeout rate against him those years while righties hit .295/.401/.555 with 20.1% strikeouts. Zagurski started 2013 with Pittsburgh’s Triple-A affiliate, then was called up to the big league team in May. He allowed 10 runs in six innings.

The Yankees had trade interest in Zagurski before the Pirates called him up (they later claimed David Huff off waivers to address their lefty bullpen needs) and they got their guy anyway The Pirates released Zagurski on June 17th and the Yankees signed him to a minor league deal two days later. He went to Triple-A Scranton and allowed 11 runs in 26 innings.

That was the first of Zagurski’s two stints in the organization in 2013. He used an opt out clause in his contract on Aug. 15th, signed with the Athletics a few days later, and allowed six runs in six innings with their Triple-A affiliate. Zagurski used an opt out clause in his contract on Sept. 1st and one week later the Yankees signed him again, this time to a Major League contract.

“I think he’s ruled out until we say otherwise,” Brian Cashman told Andy McCullough about Boone Logan’s September elbow injury, which prompted the Zagurski signing. “If you go zero to 10 – zero being down and out, and 10 being fully recovered – he hit zero the other day. He’s still stuck at zero. I don’t think he’s made any progress.”

Zagurski, then 30, joined the Yankees with 18 games remaining in the season and I remember three things about his tenure. First, he was a big dude. It ain’t easy to be the heftiest lefty on the roster when CC Sabathia is your teammate, but Zagurski did it. We need more ballplayers with the Zagurski physique just to make me feel like I too could play pro baseball.

Second, Zagurski seemed to warm up every single game. I mentioned it in the season review post, so my memory isn’t playing tricks on me. Seemingly every night Joe Girardi had Zagurski get hot in case some lefty came up in a key spot. The guy led the league in bullpen warm up innings that month.

Despite warming up so much, Zagurski only appeared in one game as a Yankee. It was Sept. 15th at Fenway Park and the club’s postseason hopes were fading fast. The Yankees went into that game three games behind the second Wild Card spot (with two teams ahead of them) and having lost six of their previous 10 games. It was crunch time.

Ivan Nova and Adam Warren combined to allow six runs in 5.1 innings that night, and by time Zagurski entered the game, the Yankees were down 7-1. It was mop up time. Joba Chamberlain retired Jarrod Saltalamacchia to start the seventh inning, then Girardi went to Zagurski to face Stephen Drew, Xander Bogaerts, and Jackie Bradley Jr. A lefty, a righty, and a lefty.

Almost every MLB game since 2009 is on MLB’s official YouTube channels in its entirety (here’s how you can find any game). I say almost because many national broadcasts are not available, and Zagurski’s lone appearance as a Yankee came on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, so there is no free archived version of the game. I feel robbed. We don’t have video.

Anyway, Zagurski did his job and retired Drew on a fly ball, but then Bogaerts lined a center back up the middle, and Zagurski put his second pitch to Bradley between the numbers. The single and hit batsmen put two on with one out, and ended Zagurski’s outing. Girardi went to David Phelps to face Dustin Pedroia, and Pedroia doubled in the two inherited two runners.

The third thing I remember about Zagurski is that he made history! Obscure history, but history nonetheless. He was the 56th different player to appear in a game for the Yankees in 2013, setting a new franchise record. That record has been broken a few times since (58 in 2014 and 59 in 2021), but hey, it’s a nice footnote in Zagurski’s career. His career with the Yankees: 18 games on the roster, one appearance, three batters, one out, two runs.

Not including position players, 47 players have pitched in exactly one game as a Yankee, and the distribution of those 47 is pretty funny. It used to be one every few years. Nowadays there’s a few each season. Zagurski, Steve Garrison (two), and Walter Bernhardt (two) are the only three among those 47 to face three or fewer batters. Zagurski’s 54.00 ERA is tied for second highest (poor Art Goodwin had a 81.00 ERA as a Yankee).

The Yankees dropped Zagurski from the 40-man roster after the season and he became a free agent. He spent 2014 in Triple-A with Cleveland and Toronto, 2015 with the Hiroshima Carp in Japan, 2016 with the Yokohama BayStars in Japan, 2017 in Double-A and Triple-A with the Tigers, and then the Brewers gave him a minor league contract in 2018.

And you know what? Zagurski got back to the big leagues with Milwaukee! He spent most of 2018 in Triple-A but did appear in two MLB games in the middle of the summer, and allowed seven runs in one inning (10 batters and three outs). It wasn’t pretty but Zagurski was back in the big leagues with the 96-win NL Central champion Brewers. Here’s some video.

"It's certainly been a long time. It's great," Zagurski told Adam McCalvy about returning to the big leagues for the first time since his Yankees stint. "You compare things to the first time you were called up. It kind of takes you back to that day.”

The Cubs signed Zagurski, then 36, to a minor league deal in 2019. H was released at the end of Spring Training and that was it. He’s been out of baseball since. I have no idea what he’s up to these days (he’s not working for a team as best I can tell). Baseball Reference puts Zagurski’s MLB career earnings at $792,500, and he surely made six figures each of his two seasons in Japan.

(Send your requests for Tuesday's random Yankee series and questions for Friday's mailbag to RABmailbag at gmail dot com.)