August 27th, 2021: Chapman, Gallo, Taillon, Prospects, Mailbag

Make it 12 straight wins for the Yankees. This is their longest winning streak since a 13-gamer in Sept. 1961, when Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle were chasing Babe Ruth’s home run record. Pretty crazy it’s been that long given how much success the franchise has had since then, no? The Yankees are on pace to go 96-66 with 35 games remaining. To today’s thoughts.

1. Weekday observations. Going into last night’s game, the Yankees were 1-9 in their previous 10 games in Oakland dating back to 2016. Their last win in Oakland came on Sept. 4th, 2018. The Athletics used Liam Hendriks as an opener that night and Adeiny Hechavarria hit a homer for the Yankees. Feels like a lifetime ago. Here are a few thoughts on the last few days as the reigning AL Player of the Week hasn’t started a game since Saturday.

The closer question

Six different pitchers have recorded a save during the 12-game winning streak and four times in the 12 games the pitcher who started the ninth inning was unable to finish it. I’m not sure we should go as far as to call this a closer crisis -- having six pitchers capable of getting saves is pretty good! -- but the closer’s role is definitely unsettled at the moment.

“We’ve got to figure it out,” Aaron Boone told Ken Davidoff following Tuesday’s win. “The bottom line is, a lot of people are doing some really good things down there and (Aroldis Chapman’s) going to be one of them too. We’ve just got to continue to find ways to win games. And it really is just a little bit of an ‘all hands on deck, let’s go find a way.’ A lot of guys continue to step up.”

To be fair to Chapman, he did get the final out of Tuesday’s game. Twice, I think. The Ozzie Albies ground ball would have been an out with an actual third baseman at third base. Rougned Odor has filled in admirably at the hot corner, though he plays the position like he has as much time as he did at second base, and it cost him there. He took too long to get rid of the ball.

Also, I’m pretty sure Chapman struck out Albies on the previous pitch. Home plate umpire Chris Conroy called it a foul tip into the dirt and the at-bat continued, though I am unconvinced Albies actually foul tipped it. Here’s the swing (GIF via @MajorLeagueGIFs):

Eh, hard to tell. That said, it’s a play you have to challenge. The broadcast cut to the dugout and bench coach Carlos Mendoza was on the phone, and he gave Boone the “the video guys can’t tell what happened” look. Still, you have to challenge. It’s potentially the final out! If there’s a close call or a bang-bang play with a chance to close out a win, just challenge it.

Anyway, Chapman looked good Monday and not so good Tuesday. Maybe we could chalk that up to pitching back-to-back days for the first time since coming off the injured list? He looked okay last night, though he’s been far from dominant for close to three months now. Since June 10th, Chapman has allowed 18 runs and a .288/.441/.538 batting line in 20 innings. Yeesh.

Boone’s thing is leaving relievers in one batter too long. He did it in Chicago when he stuck with Zack Britton, who walked the next batter on four pitches and gave Albert Abreu no margin for error. Boone did it again Tuesday with Chapman. He was over 20 pitches and running on fumes, then he walked Jorge Soler to force in a run, leaving Wandy Peralta with no margin for error.

Waiting until the situation is as dire as possible to make a pitching change and counting on the next reliever bailing you out is not a sustainable strategy. Boone needs a quicker hook. Sticking with your guys is a thing you do in April and May, when you’re still getting a feel for the season. In the middle of a postseason race in August? No. Gotta be more decisive.

So what do the Yankees do in the ninth inning now? Well, clearly they’re sticking with Chapman and willing to let him work through things in high leverage situations, so that answers that. Jonathan Loaisiga is too valuable as a shutdown middle innings monster. If you can save him for the ninth inning, great, but I wouldn’t hold him back for the save. His flexibility is too valuable.

The Yankees are at their best when Chapman is locking down the ninth inning and everyone else in the bullpen falls in place behind him, and the goal should be getting Chapman right so he can be that lockdown closer down the stretch. How do the Yankees accomplish that? I’m not sure using him in save situations is the answer when each win matters so much. Peralta won’t always be able to bail him out.

Mixing and matching in the ninth and using Chapman in lower leverage spots while he sorts things out seems like the best solution, but a) the Yankees are obviously not going to do that based on last night, and b) it’s easier said than done. Chapman went five days between outings last week even though there were opportunities to get him work during the Twins series. That shouldn’t happen.

There are five weeks remaining in the regular season. That is both enough time to get Chapman right but also not enough time to mess around and let a struggling pitcher work through things in high leverage situations. As well as they’ve played recently, the Yankees are not locked into a postseason spot yet. I’d like to see Chapman in lower leverage spots until we begin to see some semblance of the pitcher he was even earlier this season.

Waiting for Gallo

Hopefully last night’s homer is the start of something, because it’s been almost a month since the trade deadline and we’re still waiting for Joey Gallo to get going at the plate. He’s made an impact defensively (this play and this play stand out) and he’s hit a few important homers (like this one and this one), but he’s still hitting .149/.315/.379 (94 wRC+) with a 42.6% strikeout rate in 25 games as a Yankee, and that ain’t good.

"I wouldn't say he's struggling," Boone told Max Goodman earlier this month. "He's a guy that's still getting his walks, I think that's one thing that I see in there that's pretty important. When a guy is struggling, usually he's not getting on base. He's getting on base, he's taking close pitches, he's had some key homers for us, some key doubles for us."

The results haven’t really been there but I think Gallo’s at-bats have been good. He doesn’t look overmatched, and his strikeouts aren’t the “good morning, good afternoon, good night” variety. Gallo’s 14.8% chase rate as a Yankees is exceptionally low, so he’s not expanding the zone, and his 68.6% in-zone contact rate isn’t wildly out of line with his 70.4% career mark.

Earlier this week Derek at Views from 314 ft. noted Gallo has missed a lot of hittable fastballs as a Yankee (look at this one, gah!), usually by popping them up or fouling them back. That tells us his timing is off juuust a little bit. Gallo is on the velocity but isn’t squaring the ball up. He’s just getting under those pitches, and not doing damage on hittable fastballs equals a slump. Even last night he missed two middle-middle pitches earlier in the at-bat before the homer.

“It is a little unique. I do think he does a pretty good job of keeping his head still, which is very important,” Boone told Kristie Ackert recently. “I mean, there’s obviously some movement but for all the moving parts it’s impressive the swing decisions that he’s able to make and some of the pitches that he’s able to lay off. I think it just kind of speaks to the fact he’s pretty uniquely talented and athletic in everything he does.”

Sometimes when a hitter slumps, he looks like he’s never seen MLB caliber pitching before, and Gallo does not look like that right now. I think he’s having quality at-bats and doing a good job of not chasing pitcher’s pitches, though he’s yet to turn those good at-bats into consistent results. Eventually Gallo will get in a groove and hit seven homers in a week (like this). It just hasn’t happened yet.

For me, Gallo’s lack of offensive production is annoying more than worrisome right now. He’s still able to contribute on defense and on the bases, and he’s still a threat to hit a ball into orbit at any moment. When I watch him hit, I don’t see a player who is overmatched or having a hard time getting comfortable. He’s just missing a few pitches, and the tide will turn soon enough.

“What I’ve really liked from the jump with him in Miami, he didn’t have a lot of results, but what I was seeing was a lot of good at bats,” Boone told Ackert. “Hopefully you can continue that and start to follow with some results because we know how impactful obviously he can be with his ability to get on and his ability to drive the ball.”

Taillon’s workload

Following last night’s start Jameson Taillon is up to 127 innings on the season, which is a pretty hefty workload for a pitcher in Year 1 post-second Tommy John surgery. Taillon said he was targeting 120-150 innings coming into the season, though the Yankees sold him on a “let’s play it by ear” approach. Either way, he’s well into that range now.

“I thought originally 120-150,” Taillon told Davidoff in Spring Training, “But that being said, I’m kind of on board with the idea of, let’s just see how I’m feeling and measure it throughout the year.”

The best recent two-time Tommy John surgery success story is Nathan Eovaldi. He threw 143.1 innings in 2018, his first year back from the second surgery. Chris Capuano threw 105.2 innings in his first year back from his second Tommy John surgery, and he managed to hang around the big leagues another six years after that. Those two are the gold standard.

Taillon is well ahead of the curve. As Kevin Acee noted last year, most guys either return from the second Tommy John surgery greatly diminished, or they don’t return at all*. Taillon had his second surgery fairly young and he’s gotten better as this season has progressed (last night notwithstanding). Most guys don’t make it this far back. By that standard, Taillon’s season has been a huge success.

* Part of that is selection bias since many pitchers needed the second Tommy John surgery late in their careers, when they were already nearing the end of the line.

The Yankees have handled Taillon very carefully this season. He’s made 15 of his 25 starts with extra rest (he did make four straight starts on normal rest earlier this month when Gerrit Cole and Jordan Montgomery were out and the Yankees needed innings), and he’s thrown 90+ pitches only nine times (only four times in consecutive starts). They’ve been smart with him.

We may be starting to see some signs of fatigue though. Taillon’s spin rates have held steady, so that isn’t an issue, but his velocity is clearly trending down:

Teams have access to Hawk-Eye data that essentially allows for real time biomechanical analysis. They know when a guy’s mechanics are beginning to fall out of whack, and surely that is something the Yankees are monitoring with Taillon (and all their pitchers). The important thing is we’re in late August and Taillon has held up physically, though the velocity is a red flag. Not a reason to panic just yet, but something to monitor.

At his current pace Taillon is going to finish with something like 145-150 innings, then he will hopefully tack on a bunch more in the postseason. Taillon reached 145+ innings every year from 2016-18 (between Tommy John surgeries), so while this isn’t uncharted territory for him, it kinda is with this elbow ligament. So far, so good, though Taillon will require constant monitoring.

No more GIDPs

Here’s a fun one: the Yankees have grounded into one (1) double play in their last nine games, and only four double plays in their last 13 games. Their double plays per game rate: 0.93 in April, 1.00 in May, 1.12 in June (!), 0.83 in July, and now only 0.54 in August (the MLB average is 0.67 double plays per game). For at least one month, the double play problem is gone.

“When you have some opportunities like we’ve had and you typically have guys with not a lot of speed that hit the ball hard, if it’s on the ground (it’s going to be a double play),” Boone told Randy Miller back in June. “We just have to keep building off some small successes we’re having and hopefully break through here.”

I see three possible explanations for the sudden (and welcome) decline in double plays:

• The Yankees are hitting more fly balls. From April through July, the offense had a 44.7% ground ball rate. In August, it’s 38.9%. With men on base, it was 44.7% from April through July and is only 35.0% in August.
• They’re stealing more bases now. Fourth most in baseball since the All-Star break! Stealing bases reduces the number of double play opportunities.
• Luck, regression, whatever you want to call it. The double play rate was unsustainably high for a long time and it’s come back to Earth.

I thought maybe the Yankees are striking out more in August as well given the Gallo addition and the return of Luke Voit, but nope. They had a 24.6% strikeout rate from April through July, and it’s 24.6% in August. You can’t hit into a double play if you don’t put the ball in play. The Yankees aren’t striking out any more than usual though.

Now that I’ve written this, the Yankees will bang into six double plays tonight, because the baseball gods are cruel like that (in case you’re wondering, the record is seven double plays in a nine-inning game by the Giants on May 4th, 1969). In all seriousness, the double plays were salt in the wound earlier this year. The Yankees underperformed and every rally seemed to die with 6-4-3 twin killing. It was brutal. For at least the last few weeks, we’ve had a bit of a reprieve.

2. Arizona Fall League candidates. According to Jim Callis, MLB will announce rosters for the 2021 Arizona Fall League season in late September. They’re typically announced in late August each year, but this isn’t a typical year. MLB is apparently waiting a little longer to finalize AzFL plans because of the pandemic. They have some time to play with it and they’re using it.

A few weeks ago Josh Norris reported there will indeed be an AzFL season this year, and it’ll look like a normal AzFL season. The 30-game season is tentatively scheduled to begin Oct. 13th and each of the six teams will feature players from five MLB organizations. Yankees prospects played for the Surprise Saguaros alongside Orioles, Nationals, Rangers, and Royals prospects in 2019 (the team assignments rotate each year).

Generally speaking, you’ll see three kinds of prospects in the AzFL: top prospects trying to build on a strong season, prospects who need to make up for time lost to injury, and breakout guys a team wants to evaluate further. There are a few non-prospects to fill out rosters too, but for the most part the players are there for a reason. Teams want to get a longer look at them.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some players the Yankees could send to the AzFL in a few weeks. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that trying to predict AzFL rosters is damn near impossible. There are always a ton of surprises, so take all this with a grain of salt.

C Josh Breaux

Breaux will be Rule 5 Draft eligible this offseason and the Yankees could use the AzFL as one last little look before deciding whether to add him to the 40-man roster. The 23-year-old is having exactly the sorta big power/low on-base season his skill set projects to produce (.259/.307/.514 and 113 wRC+ with 21 homers), and he’s reportedly improved his defense. Donny Sands has played his way into the 40-man picture. Carrying two spare part catchers on the 40-man may not be doable. The AzFL could be Breaux’s last chance to make his case.

IF Oswaldo Cabrera

Like Diego Castillo and Hoy Jun Park, Cabrera returned from the lost minor league season with way more power. Unlike Castillo and Park, Cabrera was not traded at the deadline. Cabrera’s other skills remain unchanged (same contact rate, same walk rate, etc.) even while he’s more than doubled his previous career high in homers. He owns a .256/.305/.475 (107 wRC+) line with 17 home runs. Cabrera, 22, will be Rule 5 Draft eligible again this offseason and an AzFL assignment would be another month or so of evaluation time. I think he’s on the outside of the 40-man looking in right now, though a big showing in the desert could force the Yankees to keep him (and then potentially trade him rather than lose him for nothing as a Rule 5 Draft pick).

RHP Zach Greene

The Yankees pull live-armed bullpen prospects off an assembly line and Greene, an eighth round pick in 2019, has a 2.84 ERA (3.10 FIP) with a 39.1% strikeout rate in 50.2 innings split between High-A and Double-A this year. He’s an extreme spin rate efficiency guy who misses a lot of bats in the strike zone with a low-to-mid-90s fastball and an okay slider. The Yankees send one or two random relievers to the AzFL each year (Aaron McGarity in 2019, Matt Wivinis in 2018, Andrew Schwaab in 2017, etc.) and Greene is as good a bet as anyone to be that guy this year.

RHP Yoendrys Gomez

Gomez made one Grapefruit League appearance, then missed the start of the regular season with what was vaguely described as a “sore arm,” and he’s been on the COVID list* since July 27th. Between all that, he’s thrown only 23.2 innings this season, so an AzFL assignment would be a way to get him work after all the missed time. As long as he’s healthy, Gomez seems like an AzFL no-brainer. If not, then maybe he can make it back in time for the Venezuelan Winter League season.

* Gomez was added to the 40-man roster this past offseason and the Yankees will need to clear a 40-man spot whenever he’s ready to be activated (Brody Koerner was outrighted earlier this week, so they have an open 40-man spot now, but that's going to Corey Kluber next week). Not sure when that will happen though.

OF Everson Pereira

What a season for Pereira. The 20-year-old is hitting .328/.420/.667 (183 wRC+) with 11 home runs in only 34 games while climbing from Extended Spring Training to the Florida Complex League to Low-A Tampa to High-A Hudson Valley. The 26.7% strikeout rate is elevated but not unwieldy, and Pereira is showing big exit velocity. He’s always had tools.

Pereira is going to be Rule 5 Draft eligible after the season and at this point I think the Yankees are going to add him to the 40-man roster, and don’t need to see him in the AzFL to make that decision. That said, Pereira is having a great year, and he was held back in ExST, which is way more casual than regular season games. He’s not as worn down as most players in late August. Send him to the AzFL to get him a few more at-bats and let him build on this season, you know?

RHP Clarke Schmidt

The elbow issue has cleared up and Schmidt is currently taking a regular rotation turn with Triple-A Scranton. He’s still under 20 innings for the season, so going to the AzFL to get more work under his belt would make sense. The caveat here is the AzFL coincides with the MLB postseason and there’s a chance Schmidt is on the Yankees postseason roster. It’s a very (very) small chance at this point, but it’s not zero.

LHP T.J. Sikkema

The No. 38 pick in the 2019 draft (the pick acquired from the Reds in the Sonny Gray trade) still has not pitched this season because of a lat injury. Should Sikkema get healthy in the coming weeks, going to the AzFL to make up for all those lost innings would have to be a consideration. Keep in mind the Yankees can not hoard all the rotation spots. They can’t send Gomez and Schmidt and Sikkema to the AzFL and expect all three to get rotation spots. The rotation spots have to be shared among organizations, and that will factor into the AzFL decision-making.

MLB loosened the AzFL eligibility criteria a few years ago and now pretty much anyone can go. It used to be only one player below Double-A per team with limits on the number of foreign-born players. Even with that, I don’t see the Yankees sending Jasson Dominguez to the AzFL. He is still only 18 and it’s not an appropriate place for him. Let him get through his first full pro season without putting too much on his plate.

Oswald Peraza and Anthony Volpe have stayed healthy all year and they’re both going to finish with 120-ish games and 500+ plate appearances each. That’s a full workload and not the sorta thing a team follows up with an AzFL stint. Mike Trout played 130 games in 2011, then looked like crap in the AzFL because he was “already dead tired.” Recovery time is important and Peraza and Volpe have earned theirs this year.

3. Rapid fire thoughts. A few quick injury updates: Luis Severino was cleared to resume throwing during an in-person evaluation. No word on when he’ll get back into rehab games or anything like that, but his shoulder checked out okay. Hooray for that. Maybe Severino will return this season after all. Gleyber Torres has been working out with Double-A Somerset and could begin a minor league rehab assignment next week. The Yankees are looking at the start of the homestand next Friday as a possible return date, as long as all goes well. Zack Britton will see the doctor Monday. Aaron Boone already admitted some kind of surgery is possible, so brace for bad news … Earlier this week MLB announced the 2021 postseason schedule. Here are the dates relevant to the Yankees:

• AL Wild Card Game: Tues., Oct. 5th
• ALDS: Thurs., Oct. 7th to Weds., Oct. 13th
• ALCS: Fri., Oct. 15th to Sat., Oct. 23rd
• World Series: Tues., Oct. 26th to Weds., Nov. 3rd.

Only one day between the end of the regular season and the Wild Card Game this season (the AL and NL alternate the extra day at the end of the regular season each year), so if the Yankees are going to start Gerrit Cole in the Wild Card Game, the latest he can make his final regular season start is Thurs., Sept. 30th. I’d bet on the Yankees giving him an extra day of rest going into the Wild Card Game, if possible (that way he could start a potential Game 163 tiebreaker on normal rest on Mon. Aug. 4th, if necessary). How about the Yankees just win the AL East so we don’t have to worry about lining Cole up for the one-and-done Wild Card Game? Sound good? … MLB.com released their top 50 prospects for the 2022 international signing period earlier this week and Dominican shortstop Roderick Arias is No. 1. The Yankees have been connected to him for months and they’re expected to give him a $4M or so bonus. “Arias is an extraordinary talent,” says the free scouting report, which is glowing. They give him at least a 55 (on the 20-80 scouting scale) on all five tools, which is pretty great. The Yankees are not connected to any of the other 49 prospects on the list, presumably because they’re giving most of their bonus pool money to Arias, and can’t offer other top prospects a competitive bonus. They’re really good at finding under the radar talent though, so I’m sure the Yankees will still land a few other quality players once the signing period opens Jan. 15th … And finally, Hannah Keyser reports MLB has begun soliciting player feedback on a new pre-tacked baseball (i.e. a sticky ball like they use in Japan). The Dodgers, Giants, and Mets all reviewed the new ball during their recent series in Flushing. MLB has looked into a sticky ball in the past but never seriously. Now it seems they want to figure this out, so they can use that ball and then completely ban foreign substances, leveling the playing field. It’s not something that will happen overnight, but at least now MLB is in the process of figuring this out. It’s overdue.

Mailbag Questions of the Week

Vincent asks: Do we think there's anything to Stanton's numbers since starting to play the outfield? Is being in the field more often giving him a positive affect overall, or is he just heating up?

I definitely believe playing the field can help (some) players offensively. Being a DH isn’t easy, especially when you’re used to playing the field everyday like Giancarlo Stanton did with the Marlins. You can hit in the cage and watch video between at-bats and all that, but at some point you risk overloading yourself. It’s good to turn your brain off for a bit.

“I think (playing the field) has helped kind of just not focusing on hitting,” Stanton told Peter Botte earlier this week. “You always want to be your best in the box, and feel like you’re in the best mind frame. But that also means turning it off for a second and using that focus somewhere else … So yeah, it helps in some way.”

I think playing the field can help some players offensively and Stanton seems to think it’s helping him, so who am I to argue? That said, I don’t think the splits this season are definitive proof Giancarlo is more productive when he plays the field than when he DHs only because it’s a tiny sample. The numbers:

• Stanton as a DH: .262/.363/.464 (129 wRC+) in 391 PA
• Stanton as an OF: .317/.404/.707 (197 wRC+) in 47 PA

Stanton went on that hot streak earlier this season (.306/.376/.541 and 154 wRC+ from April 23rd to June 6th) as a full-time DH, so it’s not like he hasn’t hit in that role. He’s actually been better as a DH (.265/.362/.505 and 136 wRC+) than as an outfielder (.270/.348/.493 and 126 wRC+) in his four years with the Yankees, and that’s a much larger sample.

I think the Yankees have been overly cautious with Stanton at times, though they’ve kept him at DH to try to keep him healthy. Their heart is in the right place. Also, there have been times when Stanton was limited to DH by injuries, most notably when he played through a hamstring issue in 2018. There were times he simply couldn’t play the field.

Stanton has started 15 of the last 26 (and seven of the last 11) games in the outfield and I think his results at the plate are a conveniently timed hot streak more than a direct result of playing the field. That doesn’t mean playing the field doesn’t help him at the plate. He thinks it does and that matters. It’s just too few plate appearances for me to fully buy it as the main reason right now.

No matter the numbers, Stanton should play the outfield regularly moving forward because that allows the Yankees to get Anthony Rizzo and Luke Voit in the lineup. Also, Stanton’s a pretty good outfielder! He’s not going to win a Gold Glove, but he’s not Bobby Abreu either. Stanton in the outfield is a positive for him, I think, and it’s definitely a positive for the Yankees.

“As soon as we started doing it, you always know there’s gonna be a conclusion drawn. It’s because he’s in the outfield, he’s doing this or isn’t doing that,” Aaron Boone told Botte earlier this week. “Sometimes it’s just baseball, and the ebb and flow of the season. That said, it’s very possible that being out there has helped him a little bit.”

Colin asks: As far as I'm aware, the Yankees single season K record for a pitcher is still Guidry's 248 from his '78 season. Have been waiting for this to be broke for a while, thought Randy Johnson might, then CC but no luck. What do you think the chances are for Cole to do it this year?

The Yankees have been around basically since the dawn of time, yet they’ve only had 18 200+ strikeout seasons in franchise history. The Diamondbacks have 14. That makes sense to some extent because strikeouts are way up the last 20-30 years, but still. The Yankees have 1.5 times as many World Series championships as 200-strikeout seasons. Huh.

Anyway, here are the six players to rack up at least 220 strikeouts in a season with the Yankees:

1. Ron Guidry: 248 in 1978
2. Jack Chesbro: 239 in 1904
3. CC Sabathia: 230 in 2011
4. Luis Severino: 230 in 2017
5. David Cone: 222 in 1997
6. Luis Severino: 220 in 2018

Gerrit Cole currently has 191 strikeouts (that ranks 27th on the team’s single-season strikeout leaderboard) and is a lock to become the 19th 200-strikeout season in franchise history, barring injury. His strikeout rate has slipped since the foreign substance crackdown (36.9% before vs. 32.0% after), though it’s still comfortably above the 23.5% league average.

Cole starts tonight and the schedule indicates he has seven more starts remaining. Maybe eight if the Yankees push him and don’t use scheduled off-days to give him extra rest now and then. Cole would need to average 9.7 strikeouts per start to break Guidry’s record with seven more starts, or 8.5 strikeouts per start with eight more starts. It’ll be close.

Since the foreign substance crackdown Cole has averaged 7.8 strikeouts per start, though he’s also had starts with 10, 11, and 12 strikeouts. Mix in a few big strikeout games like that and he’ll have a good chance to break Guidry’s record. As things stand, it’ll be real close. The COVID-19 absence earlier this month may have cost him a shot at the record. If he doesn't get it, then Cole will just have to try again next year.

Chris asks: Should the fact that Corey Kluber is a Free Agent after this season influence how the Yankees should use him down the stretch?

Kluber is going to start Monday against the Angels, Aaron Boone announced yesterday. He’s not stretched all the way out yet, so he’ll likely piggyback with Andrew Heaney that day, but the Yankees and Kluber believe he’s ready to face big league hitters, so he’s joining the roster. I’m a bit surprised (I thought he’d make another rehab start), but hey, good news.

“He feels really good and I think he’s ready for this next step. He’s ready to take on Major League competition and go to that next level,” Aaron Boone told Bryan Hoch. “He’s been bouncing back from his outings well as he’s been building up here. He’s not all the way built up like his full starter load, but we feel like he’s built up enough to hopefully go out and give us a few really strong innings.”

As for the question, yes and no. Yes in that Kluber isn’t signed beyond 2021, so the Yankees can push him a little harder than they might otherwise knowing there’s long-term risk. No in that you still have to do right by the player, and not put his career in jeopardy. Run Kluber into the ground so soon after a shoulder injury and other pitchers and agents will notice.

Kluber threw 45, 56, and 60 pitches in his three rehab starts, so the Yankees are building him up slowly. He hasn’t pitched well in those rehab starts (10 runs and seven walks in eight innings), but he’s a veteran on a rehab assignment, so I wouldn’t sweat it too much. He’s just getting his work in. Results are not the priority for him in that environment.

(For what it’s worth, Kristie Ackert spoke to a scout who said Kluber looked like he did in March during a recent rehab start.)

Heaney pitched well against the Red Sox and competently against the Braves, so that’s three times in five starts he’s given the Yankees a chance to win. Typical fifth starter stuff and not a reason to keep him in the rotation ahead of Kluber, who gives you a chance at excellence (even if you have to squint your eyes a bit). With a stretch of 20 games in 20 days next month (and Jameson Taillon maybe beginning to wear down), Heaney will still get spot starts, I’m sure.

Should the Yankees start Kluber every fifth day no matter what, and push his pitch count up regardless of the score/situation? Maybe! Kluber is going to want to pitch and do whatever he can to help the team, but sometimes less is more. Just because you can push a guy hard in September because you have no long-term ties to him doesn’t mean you should. If it doesn’t put the Yankees in the best position to win, it’s not worth it.

I’m not sure what to expect when Kluber returns but I’m not expecting much because this is his second major shoulder injury in two years, and it took him a while to get going earlier this year. Hopefully there’s enough time to really kick it into gear before the postseason. Either way, getting Kluber back is good news. If he pitches well, great. If not, then the Yankees are right back where they are right now.

Ray asks: is the Yankees’ farm system underrated? They have a knack for turning borderline prospects into tradeable pieces (see: 2021 trade deadline). I would argue the team’s ability to develop marginal players into assets with value far outweighs the Orioles, who are ranked No. 5 by MLB.com but don’t have the depth of talent.

I think ranking farm systems is more difficult than ever because (some) teams have gotten so incredibly good at player development. The Yankees have demonstrated a knack for turning lower profile players into legitimate prospects and trade chips. There’s a reason they get raided in the Rule 5 Draft each year*. There’s a lot of desirable talent sitting in the farm system.

* The Yankees have had 13 players selected in the last five Rule 5 Drafts, by far the most in baseball. The Astros are second with eight, and then Cleveland and the Twins are tied for third with five apiece.

We should separate talent from player development when we rank prospects and farm systems because players can get traded at any time, altering their development. Is Glenn Otto a worse prospect now than he was a month ago because the Rangers have had a hard time developing young pitchers the last few years? I don’t think those outside factors should matter.

I think prospects and farm system rankings should reflect natural talent only, because ultimately that’s the most important thing. There is no amount of training or player development that can get me to throw 95 mph or hit a ball 450 feet. It just can’t happen. You have to start with a base level of talent and that’s what the rankings should reflect.

It would make sense to create two sets of rankings: regular prospect rankings based on talent, then player development rankings based on the organization. The Yankees would rank higher on the player development rankings than the prospect rankings, at least right now. The farm system may not rank highly, but the Yankees have a tendency to get more out of their talent than others, and that matters more than the rankings.

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