November 16th, 2021: Vasquez, Seager, Athletics, Arbitration, Rojas, Boone

Reminder: I am planning to skip the regularly scheduled post on Friday, Nov. 26th. That’s next Friday and it’s the day after Thanksgiving. I will happily cover any breaking news, otherwise I’m going to lay low during the holiday weekend. Now let’s get to today’s post.

1. Vasquez and the Rule 5 Draft. Friday is the Rule 5 Draft protection deadline, so the Yankees have roster moves (plural) coming this week. Maybe not until right before the deadline Friday (I think the deadline is 5pm ET but I’m not 100% sure), but moves are definitely coming. Here’s my Rule 5 Draft preview from a few weeks ago.

There is some news on the Rule 5 Draft front: right-hander Randy Vasquez is not eligible this offseason. The folks at Views from 314 Ft. have the full explanation, but, long story short, the player’s age on June 5th prior to his signing determines his Rule 5 Draft eligibility, not his actual age when signing. Vasquez signed at 19 but was 18 on the June 5th preceding his signing, so he gets the extra year. It’s complicated, but it’s correct.

(Just in case you want additional confirmation, MLB.com listed each team’s Rule 5 Draft eligible top 30 prospects and did not list Vasquez even though he is No. 20 on their Yankees list. Pretty safe to say he’s not Rule 5 Draft eligible. My bad for saying he is. Stupid rules.)

So, when the Yankees don’t add Vasquez to the 40-man roster on Friday, don’t freak out. Turns out he’s not actually Rule 5 Draft eligible. This means two things. First, the Yankees will have to open one fewer 40-man spot. Vasquez obviously would have been protected had he been eligible, but since he’s not, there’s no need to clear a spot. There will be one less move now.

And second, the Yankees won’t have to carry Vasquez on the 40-man roster next season, when he’s unlikely to be a big league factor. Vasquez reached Double-A Somerset at the end of this season and made only four starts there. He’ll return to Somerset to begin 2022 and probably spend 2-3 months there, assuming he performs well enough to earn a promotion to Triple-A.

If you have to protect a prospect from the Rule 5 Draft, you protect the prospect, but carrying prospects on the 40-man who are not going to help the big league team limits flexibility. The Yankees did that this year with Yoendrys Gomez, Luis Medina, and Oswald Peraza. They were functionally operating with a 37-man 40-man roster. Vasquez would’ve only made it worse.

Even though the Rule 5 Draft will be postponed (or cancelled, I guess, but that’s unlikely) during the lockout, the protection deadline is this Friday, and teams have to proceed as if it will be business as usual. The fact the Yankees don’t have to protect Vasquez is good news. It gives them a little more 40-man flexibility, it delays the start of his minor league options clock, and allows the Yankees to keep someone they otherwise would’ve had to cut to clear a spot for Vasquez.

2. The case for Seager. The Yankees have made it no secret they want a shortstop this offseason and there are two top tier shortstops sitting in free agency: Carlos Correa and Corey Seager. Personally, I want Correa. He’s a great hitter and a great defender, and I’m not sure what more you could want in a shortstop. Correa was a central piece in my Offseason Plan.

There is a case -- a very strong one, in fact -- the Yankees would be better off signing Seager, and since I try to cover as many bases as possible here, I want to present the case for signing Kyle’s younger brother. Either way, Correa or Seager, you’re getting a great player. Picking between the two requires a certain level of nitpicking. Let’s make the case for Seager.

He’s what the Yankees need offensively

Specifically, Seager is a left-handed hitter with a low strikeout rate and the ability to hit just about anything. Velocity, breaking balls, lefties, righties, the works. Seager hit .306/.381/.545 (148 wRC+) with strong walk (10.1%) and strikeout (16.1%) rates the last two years. That’s split into:

• vs. RHP: .304/.394/.551 (153 wRC+) with 14.3 K% and 12.2 BB%
• vs. LHP: .310/.352/.533 (137 wRC+) with 20.1 K% and 5.5 BB%

Here are a few more 2020-21 numbers (MLB averages in parentheses):

Seager can hit just about any type of pitching and pull the ball for power, though he’s also adept enough to use the entire field and strong enough to drive the ball out the other way. On offense, the only real negative is Seager will get shifted because most of his ground balls are pulled ... 

… but he’s not an excessive ground ball hitter (43.0% the last two years), so that’s not too big a problem. When he doesn’t square up a pitch and drive it in the air, he rolls over on it. Guys are going to make outs, right? Seager tends to make his outs on the ground to the right side of the infield, so he gets shifted a bunch, and that’s frustrating. Overall though, this is elite:

Build a hitter in a lab and he’d look a lot like Seager. He barrels everything up, he doesn’t strike out much, he takes his walks, and he’s a lefty (and thus at the platoon advantage more often). Also, Seager has passed every intangibles test you could throw at a player. He was under the microscope as a top prospect, played in a big market, played in the postseason every year, etc.

Seager is a little older than Correa but he is still very young. He turns 28 in April (Correa turned 27 in September), so sign him and you’re getting several peak years, maybe even the very best years of his career. Bottom line, Seager’s on the short list of the game’s best hitters, and not just relative to his position. He’s close to a total package offensively and he’s in his prime.

The Yankees must improve their defense and baserunning this offseason, but don’t forget about the offense. They were tenth -- tenth! -- in the American League in runs scored this past season despite Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton staying healthy and mashing. The Yankees play in a home run ballpark and in a division with three other hitters’ parks. Offense is a must.

Hoping a few players (DJ LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres, Gio Urshela, etc.) bounce back next year is fine but they can’t be counted on to fix the offense. The Yankees must bring in offensive help from outside the organization and, given their roster construction (i.e. righty heavy lineup with a lot of strikeouts), I’d argue Seager would help the lineup more than any other free agent.

He’s a good enough shortstop

Is he a Gold Glover? No. Is he an above-average defender? Also no. But Seager is a competent Major League shortstop who has posted -3 DRS and -1 OAA in over 2,200 innings since coming back from Tommy John surgery three years ago. Not great, not terrible, just about average, and average represents an upgrade for the Yankees at short.

Since his return from Tommy John surgery, Statcast’s estimated success rate says the average shortstop would have converted 76% of Seager’s plays (almost 1,000 of them) into outs based on the degree of difficulty (based on exit velocity, launch angle, etc.). How many did Seager convert into outs? 76%. Again, not great, not terrible. Just average. He’s an average defender.

Keep in mind defensive limitations can be mitigated with shifts, and the game is so strikeout and fly ball happy now that shortstops saw only 3.84 defensive chances per game in 2021 (3.52 for the Yankees). Maybe that goes up post-sticky stuff crackdown and with the Yankees gravitating toward sinkers and changeups, but that rate will only go up so much, you know?

Seager is definitely a hitter first and a defender second, and that’s fine. He’s not going to save his team a big number of runs at short, but he’s not going to kill them either. Seager is likely to wind up at third base within a few years, and since the Yankees have two pretty good shortstop prospects coming (Oswald Peraza and Anthony Volpe), that’s not the end of the world.

His injury history is not a dealbreaker

Seager broke in as a September call up in 2015 and played his first full season in 2016. From 2016-21, he played in 609 of 870 possible regular season games, or 70%. That includes only 26 games in 2018, 134 games in 2019, and 95 games in 2021. Here’s the injury history recap:

• 2017: Missed a month with an oblique strain.
• 2018: Needed Tommy John surgery in late April.
• 2019: Missed a month with a hamstring strain.
• 2021: Missed close to three months with a broken hand.

The broken hand occurred on a hit by pitch and I’m not going to hold that against a guy. Seager has not had any elbow trouble since Tommy John surgery, so it appears the new ligament fixed everything. The oblique and hamstring strains? Eh. Annoying and unfortunate, though they’re not chronic injuries. It’s not like he has hamstring trouble every year.

For what it’s worth, the Yankees cut down on their soft tissue injuries this past season, the first “normal” season under training staff head Eric Cressey. Judge and Stanton in particular dealt with numerous soft tissue injuries over the years, yet they mostly stayed healthy in 2021 (Stanton missed two weeks with a quad strain and Judge missed time while on the COVID list).

Is it reasonable to think Cressey could help keep Seager on the field? I mean, if the answer is “no,” when why’d the Yankees hire the guy? Seager’s injury history is worrisome, but I don’t think it’s a dealbreaker. This isn’t a player with, say, a chronic elbow problem (like Trevor Story) or a chronic knee issue (like Luke Voit). There’s no single thing that keeps popping up.

He might be cheaper than Correa

“Cheaper” is a relative term because Seager is going to get capital-P Paid. He’s a great player and he’s in his prime. He’s the kinda player who tends to move the salary scale upward for the rest of the league. Here are the contract projections, for discussion purposes:

MLBTR Correa: 10 years and $320M ($32M per year)
MLBTR Seager: 10 years and $305M ($30.5M per year)

FanGraphs Correa: 8 years and $240M ($30M per year)
FanGraphs Seager: 7 years and $196M ($28M per year)

The great unknown is the upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement. We have no idea how the new CBA will change the market, either by rewriting MLB’s economic structure or by condensing free agency into a 2-3 week window next spring following a lockout, or both. Not much more we can do other than wait to see what MLB and the MLBPA come up with.

Point is, Correa is expected to receive a larger contract than Seager, which is understandable. Correa is the superior defender and you’re getting his age 27 season. Seager is still going to get paid handsomely. Just slightly less handsomely than Correa, and every dollar the Yankees save on a shortstop is a dollar they can spend on something else (first base, center field, etc.)

There’s no baggage

Last week Brian Cashman said the fan base’s potential reaction to signing Correa following the sign-stealing scandal is “not going to enter my calculus right now,” and it shouldn’t. Cashman once said a general manager who worries what the fans think will find himself sitting with them before long, and it’s true. Ultimately, most fans are willing to forgive as long as you win.

The thing is, the sign-stealing scandal will be a distraction. Correa will be asked about, Aaron Boone will be asked about, Aaron Judge will be asked about it, every other player on the team will be asked about it. And not just on the first day of Spring Training either. When Correa slumps, when the team is in a rut (did he ruin their chemistry???), all throughout the season, really. It will be unavoidable.

Seager brings no such baggage. He’s a respected player throughout the league and he’s very low maintenance. He’s not even someone who will flip his bat or anything like that. The man is controversy free. How much does that factor into the decision to sign Seager or Correa? How much should it factor into the decision? I don’t know, but I don’t think the answer is zero.

My personal preference is Correa because he’s a bit younger than Seager, a comparable hitter, and a much better defender. If you’re going to spend top of the market dollars on a shortstop, it would be nice to get a no-doubt shortstop, you know? How Peraza and Volpe fit down the road is not something that should factor into this decision at all. Not even a tiny little bit.

That said, Seager is an excellent hitter who fits the lineup very well, and his defense being only average is not a dealbreaker. You might get a more team friendly contract too, and there are no sign-stealing headaches. I prefer Correa but would happily take Seager, and if the Yankees determine Seager is the way to go, I would understand it.

(Jeff Passan recently reported “executives interested in” Seager and Marcus Semien believe it is increasingly likely they will sign before the CBA expires on Dec. 1st. Kinda sounds like Scott Boras (Seager’s and Semien’s agent) trying to sniff out a big offer from a desperate team, no? Maybe it’ll work, and hey, the Yankees are kinda desperate.)

3. The A’s as trade partners. The offseason is young and yet it’s already clear the Athletics will be an aggressive seller. They let manager Bob Melvin go to the Padres for no compensation even though he had a year remaining on his contract (their compensation was not having to pay him), then they declined their affordable $4M club option for reliever Jake Diekman.

“We don’t have an exact direction yet,” GM David Forst told Bob Nightengale last week. “But you look at our history, and we have three or four-year runs and recognize where we are makes it necessary to step back. But we have not gotten to that point yet with ownership. Until that plan is really there, it’s hard to sort of time everything out.”

Last week Ken Rosenthal (subs. req’d) reported the A’s will tear down their roster “possibly to the point of reducing their payroll to $40 million, according to major-league sources,” and yikes. Yikes yikes yikes. I feel bad for A’s fans. Ownership won’t invest in the team on the field and the franchise might follow the Raiders and (kinda) the Warriors out of town. What a bummer.

According to Cot’s, the A’s 2022 payroll is currently $81.2M. That includes arbitration projections but not pre-arbitration players, so the real number is closer to $90M, then you have in-season call ups and whatnot. Needless to say, getting payroll down to $40M will require very aggressive cost-cutting. I’m talking post-1997 World Series Marlins aggressive.

The Yankees are poised to increase payroll next season -- Brian Cashman said he has payroll “latitude” without elaborating last week -- making the Athletics an obvious trade partner. Who do the A’s have to offer? Who makes sense for the Yankees? Let’s dive in.

RHP Chris Bassitt
2B/OF Tony Kemp
1B Matt Olson

I acquired these three players as part of my Offseason Plan and wrote about each of them at some length there, so I will refer you to that. Olson is the big name here, obviously. He is a lefty hitting force with made for Yankee Stadium pull power and stellar defense. Olson is close to exactly what the Yankees need at first base. Bassitt is solid and Kemp would be a good role player.

SS Elvis Andrus

Contract status: $7M in 2022 ($7.75M luxury tax hit)

Next season will be Andrus’ 14th in the big leagues and he will be only 33 on Opening Day. He’s nearing the end of the line, hitting .243/.294/.320 (72 wRC+) this year and .255/.302/.360 (74 wRC+) in nearly 2,000 plate appearances dating back to 2018. Opinions are split on Andrus’ defense ( -19 DRS and +18 OAA since 2018). Either way, there’s not much value here now.

The Yankees need a shortstop this offseason but Andrus would really be scraping the bottom of the barrel. He’s a zero at the plate and probably closer to average defensively than Gold Glove caliber like he was earlier in the career. Also, Andrus needed a major leg and ankle surgery in September. Decent chance the surgery will cost him another step or two on top of age.

That said, Andrus could have value to the Yankees as someone who lowers the prospect cost to get another player. That $7M salary (and $7.75M luxury tax) listed above is what the A’s owe him. The Rangers are eating the rest ($14.25M actual salary next season). Take on that $7M in real dollars and you might not have to give up as much to get Olson or whoever else.

For the Yankees, taking on Andrus to lower the prospect cost for another player(s) would be a smart move. Actually playing Andrus would be the mistake (though there is some sense in hanging on to him in case there’s an injury in Spring Training). As a way to get a better deal, yes, Andrus is a good trade target. As an actual player on the field, no thanks.

3B Matt Chapman

Contract status: $9.5M projected in 2022 and arbitration-eligible in 2023

Like a few too many core Yankees, the 28-year-old Chapman has gone backwards offensively the last few years. 2018 was his first full big league season and since then his wRC+ has gone from 139 to 125 to 116 to 101. The last two years he’s hit .215/.306/.431 (104 wRC+) with 37 home runs (good!) and 11.4% walks (also good!), but 33.1% strikeouts (not good!).

The under-the-hood numbers are worrisome too. Chapman's average exit velocity went from 93.1 mph in 2018 to 92.7 mph in 2019 to 93.6 mph in 2020 to 89.7 mph in 2021. His hard-hit rate went from 47.8% to 49.0% to 51.7% to 41.7%. That’s the largest 2020-to-2021 exit velocity drop and second largest hard-hit rate drop in baseball. This is bad:

The good news is Chapman remains a stellar defensive third baseman. Arguably the best in the sport. Even as an average hitter, the defense makes him a 3-4 WAR player. Chapman makes difficult plays look routine and he’s confident and daring. There are times he takes an extra second to throw the ball, almost as if to create a bang-bang play so he can show off his arm. Like this (video link):

Third base is not a top priority this offseason. At the same time, the Yankees won’t dismiss any opportunities to upgrade at any position. Is Chapman an upgrade over Gio Urshela? I guess it depends on how much you believe in each player’s ability to bounce back. Chapman’s been on a downward trend the last few years. Gio has only really had one down season.

The thing is, even with a bounce back Chapman is a less than ideal fit as a righty hitter who will strike out. The Yankees have a bunch of those already. None except maybe Aaron Judge can play defense at Chapman’s level, but defense doesn’t matter in the batter’s box. It’s worth asking the A’s what they want for Chapman. I’m not sure he’s the best use of resources though.

CF Ramon Laureano

Contract status: $2.8M projected in 2022 and arbitration-eligible in 2023 and 2024

We know the Yankees and Cashman will “evaluate” center field this offseason, and Laureano is a center fielder. How good of a center fielder? That’s up for debate. His knack for highlight reel plays belies his overall center field defense, which rates closer to average. Laureano broke into the big leagues full-time in 2018. Since then:

• DRS: +5
• OAA: -3
• UZR: +6.3

The components of UZR say Laureano’s defensive value is mostly tied up in his arm, which is an absolute rocket. I mean, look at this. For his career, UZR has him at +12.9 runs throwing and -5.0 runs for range. That fits with OAA, which says Laureano struggles most going back on the ball. A great arm is really valuable! But Laureano’s defensive reputation is inflated a bit. (The A’s moved him to right after acquiring Starling Marte this summer.)

Offensively, Laureano is comfortably above-average. His worst season was last year, the bizarre 60-game season when a lot of guys had down years. Laureano hit .213/.338/.366 (103 wRC+) last year and rebounded to .246/.317/.443 (111 wRC+) this year. He’s not a big exit velocity guy, he’s not a burner, and he’ll strike out a bit (career 26.2%). A flawed but productive hitter.

We can debate Laureano’s exact fit with the Yankees as a good but not center fielder who would be another swing-and-miss righty hitter all offseason. Here’s the x-factor: Laureano got popped for performance-enhancing drugs this year. That in and of itself is not a dealbreaker. It creates some performance questions but plenty of guys have changed teams after testing positive.

The larger issue is Laureano still has 27 games to go on his suspension. The 80-game ban was handed down on Aug. 7th and he missed the final 53 games last year. If the Yankees were to trade for Laureano, he would not be eligible to play until Saturday, April 30th, the middle game of a three-game series in Kansas City. He’d miss April, basically.

How do you factor that into his trade value? Plenty of players have been traded after serving their suspension, but no one has been traded while serving the suspension. Aroldis Chapman was traded when his domestic violence suspension was pending, though that situation and Laureano’s situation are apples and oranges. It doesn’t help us any.

The suspension is a complication more than a dealbreaker. It’s just something the Athletics and interested trade partners will have to work through. Laureano’s defensive reputation is inflated but he is a solid center fielder, and he’s a productive hitter. He’s not an ideal fit as a righty who will strike out, but given the team’s needs, Laureano fits.

LHP Sean Manaea

Contract status: $10.2M projected in 2022

Stylistically, Manaea fits the Yankees very well as a sinker/changeup pitcher. It took some time but he’s fully regained his velocity following his 2018 shoulder surgery, so he now sits low-90s with the sinker and sells the mid-80s changeup well. He throws it with conviction and with the same arm speed as the sinker, and it’s a low spin pitch (1,376 rpm). He also has a slider.

This past season was Manaea’s first full season since shoulder surgery (he returned late in 2019, then last year was the pandemic season) and he threw a career high 179.1 innings with a 3.91 ERA (3.65 FIP) and strong strikeout (25.7%) and walk (5.4%) rates. He’s always been a low walk pitcher. Home runs can be an issue at times, but that applies to most pitchers in 2021.

Manaea turns 30 in February and the under-the-hood numbers aren’t great, and there is some question about his effectiveness outside Oakland. He has a career 3.69 ERA (3.81 FIP) at home and 4.05 ERA (4.13 FIP) on the road. Manaea’s not bad on the road, but he’s an above-average pitcher in the Coliseum and merely average away from the Coliseum.

Baseball Prospectus’ Deserved Runs Average metric, which adjusts for ballpark and quality of opponent and contact allowed and weather and countless other things, has Manaea as almost perfectly league average in his career. Average is valuable! A guy who can give you 150-ish average innings is well worth $10M. It’s just the 3.86 ERA is a little misleading.

Despite the sinker/changeup approach, Manaea is not a big ground ball guy (42.0% in 2021 and 44.0% career), and his career 14.3% HR/FB on the road is likely more representative of his true talent than his career 11.1% HR/FB in the spacious Oakland Coliseum. I see Manaea as a rock solid Major League pitcher who might not like pitching in Yankee Stadium regularly.

For the Yankees, Manaea might be more of a back-end guy than a difference-maker. They are hoarding these sinker-changeup guys though, so I’m sure he’s on the radar even though he might be their No. 3 target among Oakland’s three arbitration-eligible starters. This postseason was a giant pitching war of attrition. Even less than perfect fits can be helpful.

RHP Frankie Montas

Contract status: $5.2M projected in 2022 and arbitration-eligible in 2023

Montas is not a true sinker/changeup guy but he fits what the Yankees are building more than Manaea. He’s a sinker/splitter pitcher, and a splitter is similar to a changeup in that it functions as a change of pace pitch with tumble down below the zone. Montas fits better because he’s a power pitcher. He lives in the mid-to-upper-90s rather than the low-90s like Manaea.

The Yankees are targeting sinkers and changeups, but they’re power sinkers and changeups. Joely Rodriguez sits 96-97 mph with the sinker and 88 mph with the changeup. Wandy Peralta is mid-90s with the sinker and 88 mph with the changeup. Jonathan Loaisiga regularly touches 100 mph with his sinker and 92 mph with his changeup. This is nasty (GIF via Rob Friedman):

Montas, 29 in March, has a little baggage after being suspended for PEDs in 2019, though this year he threw 187 innings with a 3.37 ERA (3.37 FIP). The ground balls weren’t there (42.8%), but the strikeout (26.2%) and walk (7.2%) rates were really good, and Montas had basically no platoon or home/road split.

Montas at home: .239/.296/.363 (.288 wOBA)
Montas on road: .224/.292/.382 (.292 wOBA)

Montas vs. RHB: .238/.288/.380 (.290 wOBA) with 24.3 K% and 5.1 BB%
Montas vs. LHB: .225/.301/.364 (.290 wOBA) with 28.9 K% and 9.6 BB%

I’m a Bassitt fan but Montas is the better fit for the Yankees because a) he has that extra year of control, and b) he’s a power sinker/splitter pitcher. That’s the pitching staff they’re building these days. Also, Montas has a clean injury history. He had surgery to treat Thoracic Outlet Syndrome in 2016 and he’s been healthy since. Those 187 innings were ninth (!) in baseball this year.

Other than Olson, Montas is the best fit among semi-expensive A’s players. It’s two years of a good pitcher with the sorta power stuff that tends to play in October. A package deal -- maybe taking on Andrus to lower the prospect cost -- makes all the sense in the world. Not sure there is a more sensible, impactful trade package out there given the Yankees’ needs.

OF Stephen Piscotty

Contract status: $7.25M in 2022 with $15M club option for 2023 ($1M buyout) ($5.58M luxury tax hit in 2022)

Similar to Andrus, the soon-to-be 31-year-old Piscotty has little to no on-field value. He’s been hurt and ineffective the last three years, hitting .237/.293/.385 (85 wRC+) while playing only 210 of 384 possible regular season games, or 55%. Part of that is injuries (wrist, knee, ankle), part of it is being benched. Also, he’s a right fielder only. Hasn’t played another position since 2016.

For the Yankees, Piscotty only makes sense as a salary dump guy to lower the prospect cost for another player. The fact Andrus fits the roster better as a shortstop is irrelevant, though maybe Piscotty has enough trade value to be flipped elsewhere for a lower minors lottery ticket arm or something. Piscotty doesn’t fit the roster but could fit as a way to make a more favorable deal.

UTIL Chad Pinder

Contract status: $2.8M projected in 2022

Four years ago Pinder, 29, had what looked like a breakout season, hitting .258/.332/.436 (115 wRC+) with 13 homers in 333 plate appearances while playing every position other than pitcher and catcher. In the three years since, Pinder has authored a .241/.294/.412 (91 wRC+) line with 21 homers in 664 plate appearances. Not 2018 good but good for a utility guy.

The Athletics have scaled back on the “play every position” thing and Pinder has mostly been a corner outfielder who occasionally fills in on the infield. Defensive stats have trouble with these multi-position guys and they say Pinder is adequate everywhere but great nowhere, for what it’s worth. He can fit on a contender’s roster as a righty bench bat (career 116 wRC+ vs. lefties).

I think Kemp is the more logical multi-position trade target as a high contact lefty bat (Pinder has a career 26.2% strikeout rate), especially since he has the extra year of control, but you can’t really nitpick with bench guys. They tend to be bad (if they were better, they’d start) and Pinder has been productive in the role. As a role player, he’d help the Yankees. Sure.

RHP Lou Trivino

Contract status: $2.9M projected in 2022 and arbitration-eligible in 2023 and 2024

Oakland’s veteran relievers all became free agents after the season (Diekman, Andrew Chafin, Yusmeiro Petit, Sergio Romo) and Trivino is their only arbitration-eligible reliever (other than Deolis Guerra, who is a non-tender candidate). Trivino won’t make too much in 2021, but when you’re cutting costs, you leave no stone unturned.

Trivino, 30, is an unusual pitcher. He’s had a 21.4% strikeout rate in the last two 162-game seasons, so roughly average. He’s never had a sub-10% walk rate in a season of any length, and his career 46.1% ground ball rate is solidly above average. Here’s a piece of the average exit velocity leaderboard since 2018 (min. 600 balls in play):

19. Jacob deGrom: 86.5 mph
20. Lou Trivino: 86.6 mph
21. Max Fried: 86.7 mph

The Yankees believe in exit velocity as an evaluation tool, both hitters who have it and pitchers who limit it (I noted that when they signed Darren O’Day), so in that sense Trivino fits. He is a rare reliever in that he throws five pitches at least 10% of the time each (sinker, four-seamer, cutter, changeup, curveball), and he might benefit from focusing on his 2-3 best pitches only.

The results indicate Trivino would be best off as a sinker/cutter guy, which is just a variation of the sinker/slider approach, really. He’s a workhorse (221 appearances since 2018 are 14th most in baseball and that’s despite starting 2018 in Triple-A) and he’s pitched in just about every role (he saved 22 games this year and even opened a game in 2018). He’s appealing.

At the moment the Yankees have nine relievers for eight bullpen spots: Aroldis Chapman, Chad Green, Clay Holmes, Mike King, Jonathan Loaisiga, Lucas Luetge, Wandy Peralta, Joely Rodriguez, and the out of options Albert Abreu. Cashman said they are getting calls about their relievers though, so moving one or two (or three) in the coming weeks is possible.

Is there a scenario in which the Yankees trade Green, then bring in the cheaper (and with more years of team control) Trivino to replace him? Sure. The current version of Trivino is just okay. Not great, not terrible, just okay. His arsenal is deep enough to suggest there are tweaks to be made to improve his effectiveness though, so I’m interested (at a reasonable price).

With the A’s seemingly set to tear things down, the best fits for the Yankees are clearly Olson No. 1 and Montas No. 2. Everyone else is behind them. Bassitt, Chapman, Laureano, Manaea, Pinder, and Trivino would all make sense under the right circumstances. Andrus and Piscotty should be salary dump types to lower the prospect cost for someone else and nothing more.

Bottom line, there is a team with good players aggressively cutting payroll this offseason, and the Yankees are in position to capitalize. They’re going to add payroll, which makes them pretty unique these days, and anytime money can be leveraged instead of prospects as a trade chip, the Yankees should be all over it. The A’s are a natural trade partner this winter.

4. MLB’s arbitration proposal. The Collective Bargaining Agreement expires two weeks from tomorrow, and over the last few weeks MLB and the MLBPA have traded economic proposals. I’ve heard they’ve made progress on non-economic matters (universal DH, other rule changes, etc.), but ultimately the money will determine when a deal is reached.

Last week Jeff Passan reported MLB’s latest proposal included an alternate arbitration system in which player pay was directly tied to performance. Performance has always had an impact on pay, I mean duh, but now the league is pushing a full-fledged “you produce this much, you get paid this much” system. From Passan:

Here's how it would work, per sources: Players with less than six years of service would be paid based on a formula agreed upon by both sides. For purposes of the presentation, the league chose wins above replacement as calculated by FanGraphs. A player with more than three years would multiply his career fWAR by $580,000, and the resulting number would be his salary that season. The multiplier for a second-time eligible player would be $770,000, and a third-time player would receive $910,000 for each fWAR gathered in all his big league time. There would be slight adjustments to salaries based on how the player fared in the previous season, but generally the system would pay players based on the fWAR formula.

Beyond that, the minimum salaries would jump to $600,000 for first-year players, $700,000 in their second seasons and $825,000 for their third. Gone would be Super 2 players -- those with the most service time in any given class who receive an extra year in the arbitration system -- replaced with an "Elite 2" plan, in which players who earned All-MLB honors would get a third-year salary bump from $825,000 to $2.5 million.

No negotiations allowed, just a straight “you produced this much so you get paid this much” calculation. Why bother hiring an agent and paying all those agent fees before you reach free agency? fWAR is far from perfect -- Dave Cameron didn’t even use it to fill out his Cy Young ballot in 2015 -- and there’s no good way to use one single stat to represent player value.

To see how this system would play out in practice, let’s lay it all out using Aaron Judge as an example. He’s a great player who’s accrued a lot of fWAR, though not as much as he would have had he stayed healthy from 2018-20. Also, he’s entering his final year of team control, so we have a full arbitration period to compare. Here is the Judge comparison:

* Prorated for August call up.
** Judge triggered the “Elite 2” salary as an All-Star.
*** 60-game season stats prorated out to 162 games, per Passan.
*** MLBTR’s projection.

Judge would have come out way ahead! An extra $15M or so in his pocket. This is just one example, of course. Here’s a player who would have gotten royally screwed by MLB’s proposed pay per performance system:

That’s Cody Bellinger using his prorated 2017 salary (for a late April call up), the "Elite 2" salary, and his 2021 MLBTR projection. Bellinger’s salary under the proposed system is more than $16M behind his actual salary with two more years of team control remaining (2022 and 2023). He would have to put up roughly +25 WAR in 2022 to break even before free agency.

The Bellinger example, not the Judge example, is MLB’s end game. Bellinger’s $11.5M salary in 2020 was a record for a player in his first year of arbitration-eligibility, and salaries like that move the salary scale up for everyone else. Realistically, there’s an upper limit to how much WAR a player can produce in a single season, and MLB’s proposal acts as a de facto salary cap.

The union could negotiate annual increases to the salary multiplier, though the minimum salary system tells us that would be a negotiated increase, not an increase tied to revenue. The minimum salary increases each year but never quite catches up to the revenue increase, hence the growing disparity between league revenues and player payroll.

MLB wants to eliminate arbitration, a system that allows players to negotiate a salary using multiple statistics, and replace it with a system tied to performance that won’t scale at the same rate as revenue. This proposal is effectively a cap because it has a set multiplier and guys can only produce so much WAR, and once arbitration is gone, free agency will be the next target.

There’s basically no chance the MLBPA goes for this -- once you give up the ability to negotiate salaries, it’s gone forever, you’re never getting that back -- but the proposal shows where the two sides are at the moment. That is: very far apart. MLB is still in the “wish list” phase and not presenting the union with something that has a chance to be accepted.

Past labor deals (including last year’s return-to-play) tell us negotiations will be ugly and there will be “this is a disaster for baseball” rhetoric, then there will be a lot of progress in a very short period of time. MLB and the MLBPA will go from being on the verge of never playing again to having an agreement in, like, 36 hours. The next CBA will surely play out the same way.

Not one person inside baseball believes there will be an agreement prior to 11:59pm ET on Dec. 1st. I’m hopeful the two sides reach a deal early enough that Spring Training is not cut short or, at the very least, regular season games aren’t missed or postponed. I think assuming they will magically reach a deal in February is a dangerous game though. The calculus changes once work stops. It’s much easier to dig in at that point.

On one hand, this next CBA is going to cover tens of billions of dollars in revenue, and you have to get that deal right. You can't rush into it just to meet this Dec. 1st deadline. On the other hand, it’s hard to believe MLB is negotiating in good faith when they put proposals like this revamped arbitration system on the table so late in the process. It’s a non-starter and a time-waster. The two sides have done a lot of talking about economics but don’t seem to have gotten anywhere.

(My guess is the next CBA will look a lot closer to the current economic system (pre-arbitration, arbitration, free agency, etc.) than what either side has proposed to date, but that’s just a guess.)

5. Remembering a random Yankee: Deion Sanders. This week’s random Yankee comes by request and is the only person to play in both a Super Bowl and a World Series. Here’s the random Yankee archive. You can find links back to everyone we've covered there.

Sanders grew up in Fort Myers, Florida, and (not surprisingly) he was an exceptional multi-sport high school athlete, so much so that he was named to the Florida High Association All-Century Team in 1985. The Royals drafted Sanders in the sixth round in 1985, though he did not sign, and instead played baseball, football, and ran track at Florida State.

On May 16th, 1987, both the baseball team and track team were in South Carolina trying to win the Metro Conference championship. Sanders played in the first game of the baseball team’s doubleheader, then ran the 4x100 relay, then played in the second game of the doubleheader. The Seminoles won the conference championship in both sports.

"If I can stay with baseball it will help me bargain like it did Bo (Jackson)," Sanders told Brian Schmitz that day. "I'm thinking about that big money."

Even though Sanders made it no secret football was his first love, the Yankees selected him with their 30th round pick in 1988 because George Steinbrenner craved stars. Sanders signed a contract that also allowed him to play football, and he hit .284/.323/.379 in 28 minor league games (including five at Triple-A) before returning to school for football season.

On April 23rd, 1989, the Atlanta Falcons selected Sanders with the No. 5 pick in the NFL draft. “Football is number one with me. This would be a different conversation if we were sitting in Yankee Stadium right now. But to miss half the NFL season for (minor league baseball), that's crazy,” Sanders told the Albany Times Union following the NFL draft.

The Yankees brought Sanders to big league camp in 1989 and assigned him No. 71, a typical Spring Training umber for a minor leaguer, and he didn’t like it. He had one of his agents, Eugene Parker, request a single-digit number. Sanders wore No. 2 at Florida State and was initially given No. 30, the lowest available number and Willie Randolph’s old number. Veteran players didn’t like that, so Sanders again changed his number, this time to No. 44. It had not been issued since Reggie Jackson left in 1982.

"It isn't Florida State. I don't make the rules, but I don't think that he should have gotten the number (No. 30),” Ron Guidry told Craig Barnes. “I don't think anybody around here is capable of carrying the burden of that number on their shoulders yet."

The Yankees sent Sanders to Double-A Albany to begin 1989 and he hit .286/.380/.361 with six home runs and 17 stolen bases in 33 games. He was called up to the big leagues on May 31st, in an obvious attempt to lure him away from football. ''You get motivated just walking in the gate here. I was pretty pleased with what I did,” Sanders told Joe Sexton after going 1-for-4 and driving in a run in his debut. He wore No. 24.

''It's just something I wanted to do to add some juice, shake things up,” Yankees manager Dallas Green told Sexton about the decision to call Sanders up. ''We don't want to put up with less-than-productive people. He may stay five days, 50 days, or 150 years.''

Sanders’ initial stay with the Yankees lasted nine games. He went 7-for-33 (.212) with a home run in those nine games before being sent to Triple-A Columbus when Roberto Kelly came off what was then called the disabled list. With Columbus, Sanders hit .278/.333/.436 with five home runs and 16 stolen bases in 70 games.

“'Everybody knows that I love football and like baseball, but baseball is growing on me,” Sanders told Michael Martinez prior to being sent down. Not coincidentally, he was in the middle of contract talks with the Falcons. Parker added: “Some interesting things have been going on. I think it's fair to say the Yankees have made a serious move on Deion and Deion is listening.”

Sanders rejoined the Yankees as a September call up and, on Sept. 5th, he went 3-for-5 with two doubles and a home run against the Mariners. Two days later he signed a four-year, $4.4M contract with the Falcons and left the Yankees to go play football. That weekend he ran a punt back for a touchdown (video). He hit an MLB home run and scored an NFL touchdown in the same week.

“I'm very excited, but I'm also very disappointed to be leaving the Yankees at this moment,” Sanders told Martinez after signing with the Falcons. In 14 big league games in 1989, Sanders went 11-for-47 (.234) with two home runs. He did it mostly on athleticism given how little proper baseball development he’d had up to that point. Pretty remarkable. Also, Deion’s contract was … unique. From Don Pierson:

The Yankees are paying Sanders the minimum of $68,000, but they also have loaned him $300,000. As long as he’s playing baseball, the Yankees will pay back the principle in $50,000 chunks May 1, July 1 and Sept. 1. Sanders is responsible only for the interest.

Sanders finished the 1989 NFL season with the Falcons, then reported to Spring Training with the Yankees in 1990. Baseball America (subs. req’d) ranked him the 53rd best prospect in the game that year (Bernie Williams ranked 77th), and the Yankees carried Sanders on the Opening Day roster as an extra outfielder. He went 0-for-7 in eight games (one start) in the team’s first 16 games (and wore No. 21). Eventually he was sent to Triple-A.

In late May the Yankees called Sanders up again and briefly made him their regular left fielder. He started well enough, going 7-for-29 (.241) with a home run in his first seven games. A very deep slump followed and pushed Sanders back to the bench. He went 7-for-61 (.115) during a span of 44 team games (Sanders appeared in 30 and started 17).

Sanders was involved in a dispute with Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk on May 22nd. He drew a dollar sign in the batter’s box, then didn’t run out an infield pop up. The Yankee Stadium crowd booed and Fisk yelled, “Run the fucking ball out, you piece of shit!” according to Rhiannon Walker. Next time up, Sanders drew another dollar sign and told Fisk, “Hey, the days of slavery are over.”

“He comes up and wants to make it a racial issue. There's no racial issue involved,” Fisk said after the game. “I don’t care whether you are black or blue or pink or red. If you don’t start playing this game right, I’m going to kick your butt right here. There’s a right way and a wrong way to play this game. It’s the Yankees pride and the Yankees pinstripes involved here. Some of these guys have got to be turning over in their graves. I play for the other team, but that even offends me.”

On July 17th, Sanders was involved in one of my most favorite baseball highlights. He hit a little humpback line drive to shallow center, which Royals center fielder Bo Jackson missed on a dive, allowing the ball to go to the wall. Sanders to race all the way around for an inside the park home run. Sanders hitting an inside the park homer against Bo Jackson*. How cool is that? Here’s the video.

“When I'm involved with something people make a big deal about it. It's always something,” Sanders told Martinez following the home run.

* Jackson hit three homers the same night (video), all against Andy Hawkins. Imagine a pitcher these days being left in to face a guy a third time after he took him deep twice earlier in the game?

The late 1980s and early 1990s Yankees were a circus. The team went 74-87 in 1989 and 67-95 in 1990. George Steinbrenner was under investigation for hiring Howie Spira to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield, and Sanders was essentially a sideshow act on the field. A football player masquerading as a baseball player. “Football is my wife and baseball is my mistress,” he famously said.

Contract talks with Sanders were a persistent cloud hanging over the 1990 Yankees. The Falcons wanted him to repay part of his $2M signing bonus for missing an offseason mini-camp -- “Not unless I've got to knock a wing off my mother's million dollar house. They can take a garage,” Sanders told Malcolm Moran -- and he wanted a $1M salary to stay with the Yankees in 1991. That would have made him one of the highest paid players in baseball.

Sanders was leveraging the Falcons against the Yankees and the Yankees grew tired of it. They cut off contract talks on July 30th. Sanders left the team, went on vacation -- “I needed the rest,” he later told the New York Times -- then joined the Falcons for training camp on Aug. 14th. They fined him $37,000 for missing 18 days of camp.

“Under no circumstances could we offer Deion that kind of salary for the 1991 season,” Steinbrenner said in a statement, referring to Sanders’ $1M salary demand. “Even so, we still would like Deion to continue with the Yankees and wish him well in whatever he chooses to do.''

(A few hours later Steinbrenner was banned for life by commissioner Fay Vincent. He was of course reinstated two years later.)

''They threw a lot of money at me,” Sanders told Moran after leaving the Yankees. “(I’ll miss) the challenge of the game. And leaving on not a great note. Leaving on a bad note. People will say, 'He was no baseball player.'”

Sanders hit .158/.236/.271 with three home runs and eight stolen bases in 57 games and 149 plate appearances in 1990. All told, he authored a .178/.247/.306 line with five homers and nine steals in 71 games and 199 plate appearances in pinstripes. On Sept. 24th, the Yankees cut ties completely and put Sanders on waivers. He became a free agent a week later.

“We know he has big ability,” GM Gene Michael told Phil Pepe. “But this wasn’t the best atmosphere for his learning. Because of the situation it created here, this is just better for everybody. It’s better for him and better for us.”

Sanders signed with the Braves in Jan. 1991 and spent the next few years playing baseball in the summer and football in the fall. He had some good years with Atlanta, most notably hitting .304/.346/.495 (130 OPS+) with 14 triples in 325 plate appearances in 1992. Sanders had a monster World Series that year, going 8-for-15 (.533) with two doubles and a homer, though the Braves lost to the Twins.

From 1991-95, Sanders played both sports -- he was named NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 1994 and won Super Bowl XXIX with the San Francisco 49ers -- before focusing on football full-time. Comeback attempts with the Reds in 1997 and 2001 didn’t go very well, and Sanders retired from baseball after 2001 as a .263/.319/.392 hitter parts of nine MLB seasons.

Sanders continued playing football through 2005 -- he played 188 NFL games and 641 MLB games -- and was voted into both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and College Football Hall of Fame in 2011. Post-playing career he’s done television and coached his son’s high school team, and these days he’s the head football coach at Jackson State in Mississippi.

6. Rapid fire thoughts. The first big signing of the offseason went down yesterday: Eduardo Rodriguez joined the Tigers on a five-year, $77M contract. He was the youngest starter in free agency (29 in April) and Boston’s terrible infield defense gave him an inflated 4.74 ERA. The various estimators (3.32 FIP, 3.50 xERA, 4.18 DRA) all believe he pitched much better than that. Nice get for the Tigers. Anyway, this is relevant to the Yankees because a) it weakens the Red Sox (though they have an entire offseason to replace Rodriguez), and b) it shows the Tigers are indeed ready to spend. They badly need a shortstop and Carlos Correa is a natural fit given his age and connection to manager A.J. Hinch. Detroit will be (the top?) competition for those top tier shortstops … As expected, the Yankees have named former Mets manager Luis Rojas their new third base coach, the team announced. Here’s the press release. I don’t have anything to add to what I said last week. Rojas is well-regarded within baseball and he has a long track record in player development. Seems like a good third base candidate to me. The Yankees still need a first base coach and (at least one) hitting coach … According to Brendan Kuty (subs. req’d), the Yankees reached out to Eric Chavez about a position on their coaching staff. It’s unclear whether he’s interviewed, whether he’s interested, etc. Chavez, now 43, played two years with the Yankees (2011-12) and retired following the 2014 season. He worked as a special assistant to Brian Cashman in 2015 and has been with the Angels as a special assistant since 2016. Chavez did a little Triple-A managing on an interim basis in 2018 and interviewed for managerial jobs with the Angels and Rangers in recent years. Seems like the quickest way to get a coaching job these days is to be a respected former player with front office experience, and Chavez checks both those boxes. We’ll see where this goes … And finally, Ken Rosenthal (subs. req’d) reports the Yankees were in contract extension talks with Aaron Boone in Spring Training last year, before the pandemic shut everything down. They usually don’t talk about extensions until the person’s contract up, which is an arbitrary and archaic policy, though the Yankees might be getting away from that. Following the 2019 ALCS, I wrote it was an appropriate time for Boone to approach the Yankees about an extension (back-to-back 100-win seasons, entering the final guaranteed year on his contract, etc.), and apparently he agreed. And the Yankees were willing to listen. Every so often I remember the Yankees brought Boone back this offseason and it bums me out. They had reasons to move on and the perfect opportunity to do so, but nope. Oh well. Give him better players next year and make the roster as idiot-proof as possible. What else can the Yankees do?

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