April 20th, 2021: Offense, Nelson, Luetge, King, Bruce, Sanchez

Know what happened on this date in 2007? Alex Rodriguez hit his 12th -- 12th! -- home run of the season. 12 homers in 15 games. Ronald Acuna Jr. currently leads baseball with seven homers and the Yankees have 16 homers in 15 games as a team. I had a 20-game ticket package in 2007 and I feel like I saw A-Rod hit 30 homers that year. Anyway, the Yankees are on pace to go 54-108 with 147 games remaining. To today’s thoughts.

1. Weekend observations. When the fans threw baseballs on the field Friday, who do you think was the target of their ire? The Rays? The Yankees players? Aaron Boone? Ownership or the front office? I’m going with all of the above. Whoever it was, the fans went nuclear*, and that feedback added to the most embarrassing night for the organization I can remember.

* I totally understand the frustration. The Yankees have played terribly this season, they were mediocre last year, ownership is unwilling to meet the market’s competitive demands (World Series or bust, baby), and we all have 13 months of pandemic angst built up. I get it, but folks, don’t throw stuff on the field. Best case is you get kicked out and we all look like babies.

It’s not just that the Rays aren’t intimidated by the Yankees, it’s that the Yankees are completely shook by the Rays. They’re intimidated by Tampa’s lack of intimidation and seem to think they have to match their creativity (Nick Nelson as an opener? overthink that one much?) to beat them, and that is not how this works at all. The Rays are completely in their heads.

Tampa is 4-7 against the Not Yankees while being outscored 62-36 this year (the Yankees have a better run differential than the Rays!), and two of the four wins were 1-0 games with Tyler Glasnow on the mound, and that makes their dominance of the Yankees even harder to swallow. The Rays are a beatable team that isn’t as good as they look when they play the Yankees.

And yet, Tampa goes into every game against the Yankees with a massive confidence edge and that absolutely matters. The Yankees have lost seven straight series to the Rays dating back to Sept. 2019, including the 2020 ALDS, and they’re 5-18 against Tampa during that time. This is not a rivalry. Rivalries are competitive and the Yankees aren’t against the Rays.

The Yankees are 5-10. This is the first time they’ve lost 10 of their first 15 games since 1997 and only the eighth time they’ve done it as a franchise. Only the Rockies (4-12) have a worse record. The last time the Yankees had sole possession of the American League’s worst record: April 4th, 1998. They were 0-3, then won 114 of their final 159 games. No one knew what the 1998 Yankees were capable of at the time, but I’m pretty sure the 2021 Yankees won’t come close to matching it.

“I think (I’m) more pissed off at the way we’ve come out of the gates here, not playing our best,” Aaron Boone said prior to Saturday’s game. “... It’s always frustrating when you’re going through a tough time, but it’s also part of being a Major Leaguer and part of the 162-game season. Adversity’s going to show up for you. You don’t know when and where, how often, but you gotta be able to deal with it. That’s part of it. I’m confident we will.”

The Yankees are doing nothing well. They’re not hitting well, they’re not pitching well outside a select few guys, they’re not running the bases well, and they sure as hell aren’t defending well. Everything the manager does backfires*. The roster construction is a mess and the attempts to improve it are laughable (Rougned Odor?). A stale roster is producing stale results.

* Why did Aroldis Chapman not pitch the ninth inning Sunday? He hasn’t pitched since Monday, so he will go at least eight days between appearances, and we know what tends to happen when Chapman goes too long without work.

Two things are true. One, it’s still early. It is! The Yankees have another 147 games to play. If the season were a nine-inning game, there would be two outs in the bottom of the first. I know we’re all sick of hearing it, but it’s early. And two, the Yankees have done real damage to their AL East title odds with the 5-10 start. Here are the numbers going into yesterday’s action:

Their postseason odds are still a healthy 73.1% (down from 91.3% on Opening Day), but MLB went back to the 10-team postseason format this year, so no division title means playing in the Wild Card Game, and I hate it. I mean, I love it, the win or go home Wild Card Game is tremendous theatre, but I hate that the Yankees may settle for it for the third time in five years.

Anyway, this intro is longer than I expected. Let’s get to some miscellaneous observations and thoughts from the messy weekend against the Rays, in no particular order.

Missing their pitch

A sneaky underrated frustrating baseball thing is missing a hittable pitch. Strikeouts are ugly and double plays are annoying, but taking or fouling away or missing a pitch out over the plate is a special kind of crappy. The Yankees did that all weekend and especially Saturday. That was a real bad “get your pitch and do nothing with it” game.

Here are the pitches each team fouled away, took for a called strike, or swung through Saturday (full-size image). You will notice considerably fewer in the middle of the plate for Tampa. They (mostly) did what they were supposed to do when they got their pitch. The Yankees did not and haven’t all season, really.

On a day Glasnow couldn’t locate his curveball or (new) slider, the Yankees let him off the hook. They stranded the bases loaded in the first inning -- it’s hard to have four straight batters reach base with two outs, as they were attempting to do -- and left another two men on base in the second inning. After that, Glasnow settled in and retired 11 of the final 12 batters he faced.

“I think we’re actually controlling the strike zone a little bit,” Boone said after Saturday’s game. “When we have gotten pitches -- and there have been a handful of pitches each game that typically we do our damage on -- we’re putting those on the net, or not doing damage on them when you do get pitches. That’s a lot of times the separator. You gotta not leave the strike zone a lot, and when you do get a mistake, you better hammer it.”

As noted in the intro, the Yankees have hit 16 home runs in 15 games so far. For reference, they hit 27 homers in the first 15 games last year, and the last two times they hit no more than 16 homers in the first 15 games were 2008 (missed postseason) and 2014 (missed postseason). The Yankees are bringing singles and walks to a home run fight. You’re not winning without dingers in the year 2021.

The culprits are numerous. Gleyber Torres is a singles hitter now and his regression since that 38-homer season in 2019 should be the No. 1 worry for the franchise. Aaron Hicks’ game has completely deteriorated (he’s not even drawing walks now). Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Clint Frazier have been low to no impact so far. Even DJ LeMahieu has been good rather than great. This offense is not a healthy Luke Voit away from being a powerhouse.

I’m not sure what the Yankees can do at this point other than wait for their underperforming players to snap out of it. Rearrange the lineup? Okay. Call up Mike Ford and put him at first base (at least against righties)? Fine. Brett Gardner is already taking at-bats away from Frazier, so give Mike Tauchman at-bats at Hicks’ expense? It’s worth a try with the way Hicks is playing, but Tauchman isn’t moving the needle. That's making a change for the sake of making a change.

All I know is the Yankees are hitting .210/.296/.346 (87 wRC+) as a team -- they’re slugging .346, dead last in baseball -- and that is a stat that transcends a 15-game sample. If that happened in a random 15-game stretch in June, we shouldn't shrug it off. It’s not just a little power outage that is being magnified because it’s early in the season. The one-dimensional offense is missing its one dimension.

“(Offense) will be a strength of ours, but it’s not currently a strength of ours,” Brian Cashman told Bryan Hoch yesterday. “That’s magnifying those deficiencies when we’re not scoring like we’re capable of. Those individual, below-average performances, we believe those will get corrected over time. We trust our players, we trust our process. The record is something that we’re better than. We just have to correct that.”

Nelson as an opener

Do the Yankees know the logic behind an opener is using a good pitcher against the top of the order? Yes, they do. I know this because they used an opener 17 times in 2019 and Chad Green started 15 of those games. Not coincidentally, the Yankees went 11-4 in those 15 games. (They also won games opened by Jonathan Holder and Stephen Tarpley, mostly because the offense scored 21 runs in the two games.)

I like Nelson, he’s got pretty good stuff, and he’d seem to be a natural fit as an opener given his experience as a starting pitcher in the minors, but he wasn’t the right guy Friday. I don’t think he’s at that point in his career yet. If you’re going with an opener, drop the hammer with a good reliever like Green, or don’t bother. Holding back Mike King (or whoever) and hoping a similarly unproven pitcher can hold down the fort for an inning kinda defeats the purpose, no? Bit of a head-scratcher, this was.

Luetge’s bad luck

Poor Lucas Luetge. The official record says he has a 6.10 ERA in the early going (seven runs in 10.1 innings), but basically everything that could go wrong has gone wrong when he’s been on the mound. Consider:

April 6th: Gave up a two-run home run after Torres nonchalantly played a Ryan Mountcastle ground ball, turning what should’ve been the final out of the game into an infield single. You can’t completely absolve Luetge of the homer, but yeah, the game should’ve been over. Make a play, defense.

April 9th: Gave up a solo home run in his third inning of work. It was the ninth batter he faced and the first time Luetge had thrown three innings in a game since 2017. He did yeoman’s work chewing up innings because the bullpen was taxed (and it’s not even his longest outing of the season!), and his reward was giving up a homer deep in the outing.

April 16th: Gave up two runs on four dinky hits in the first of his four (!) innings. The exit velocities: 67.6 mph, 77.0 mph, 71.9 mph, 70.9 mph. I mean, watch this. The Rays had been in a 5-for-55 skid with runners in scoring position dating back to last weekend’s series at Tropicana Field, and the BABIP gods smiled down on them while Luetge was on the mound.

“Lucas really picked us up in a big time way,” Boone said following Friday’s game. “Giving us four innings there, being so pitch efficient. Feel bad he gave up a couple runs cause all he did was go out and induce soft contact all night. He pitched really, really well, and really kinda saved us.”

It’s going to take Luetge all season to whittle that 6.10 ERA down to something respectable. If he gets all year, I should say, because he’s not exactly assured a long-term roster spot. As the last or second to last guy in the bullpen, Luetge’s done nice work chewing up innings while the rotation fails to give length, and it is appreciated, even if the 6.10 ERA says he’s been bad.

Luetge has 12 strikeouts and no walks in 10.1 innings and his 34.1% whiffs-per-swing rate is just a little south of his eye-opening Spring Training (41.9%). His average exit velocity allowed is strong too (81.8 mph). This doesn’t mean Luetge is guaranteed to pitch well going forward. I’m just noting circumstances led to that 6.10 ERA more than poor pitching. Hopefully things start breaking his way soon.

King promoted, then demoted

King returned Friday to pitch as the bulk innings guy behind Nelson and he wasn’t exactly dominant, but three scoreless innings is three scoreless innings, even if he needed 67 pitches to get those nine outs. King wiggled out of several defense (and umpire) assisted jams and gave the offense a chance to get back into the game, which they never did.

The Yankees predictably sent King down Sunday for a fresh arm (Brooks Kriske, in this case) and while I understand it, I don’t like it. There are nine relievers on the roster and there was an off-day coming Monday. They could’ve weathered the storm and I think the best players belong in the big leagues. That usually applies to service time manipulation but it also applies to bullpen shuttles. The best and most talented players should be in the big leagues, full stop.

On the list of things wrong with the Yankees, this is near the bottom. I just hate seeing players who don’t deserve to be sent to the minors being sent to the minors, even if it is understandable from a roster and player availability standpoint. Is King one of the 13 best pitchers in the organization? Right now, I think the answer is yes. Would be cool to treat him as such.

Infield practice!

Boone chewed the Yankees out following Friday’s game -- he wouldn’t reveal the nature of the meeting (typical in these situations), though Frazier confirmed Boone was angry -- and the Yankees were out on the field taking infield practice early Saturday morning. I can’t remember the last time they did that. Infield practice is a dead art (teams rarely do it nowadays).

Truth be told, it’s eyewash. 20 minutes of ground balls isn’t curing what ails the defense. It’s more about the message. What we’re doing now isn’t working and you need to be better. Message received? Not exactly, based on Saturday’s and Sunday’s results. Maybe next they’ll run poles or hold a players only meeting or burn some equipment, Scott Proctor style.

2. Bruce retires. Aaron Boone hinted roster changes could be coming over the weekend and little did we know Jay Bruce had already informed the Yankees he will retire. Bruce said he told Boone he is retiring Friday, then he made the public announcement Sunday. He said he made the decision because he can no longer perform at a level he considers acceptable. Smart move jumping off the sinking ship. Too bad Bruce can’t take drag half the roster into retirement with him.

“All I ever wanted to be ‘when I grew up’ was a baseball player, and to say I got to live out my dream would be the understatement of a lifetime,” Bruce said. “... Every stop I made throughout these 14 seasons were special, and my family and I are so appreciative of all the help and hospitality along the way. I’ve always loved baseball and will be a fan for life.”

It didn’t work out with the Yankees, but Bruce had a great career. Former No. 1 prospect in the game, 14 years in the big leagues, 319 homers, three-time All-Star, two top 10 finishes in the MVP voting, over $100M in contracts. My favorite Bruce fun fact is his company on the all-time home run leaderboard:

t-122nd. Jay Bruce: 319
t-122nd. Cecil Fielder: 319
t-122nd. Prince Fielder: 319

Yep, the Fielders hit an identical number of homers in the big leagues. Anyway, Bruce also used his platform to help others through charity work. The tribute video the Reds put together a few years ago is one the best I’ve seen (starts at 0:46 mark). The only thing Bruce is missing is a World Series ring. I hope the Yankees send him one this year.

So what does Bruce retiring mean for the Yankees? Other than the fact this is the second time in three years they had an Opening Day starting position player retire in-season (Troy Tulowitzki in 2019), which doesn’t speak well to the roster construction, it means three things:

• They have an open 26-man roster spot.
• They have an open 40-man roster spot.
• They save about $1.3M in luxury tax payroll ($5M or so in wiggle room now).

The money is whatever and the 40-man spot will eventually go to Zack Britton. It does give the Yankees a little short-term roster flexibility, but eventually Britton will come off the 60-day injured list and claim that 40-man spot permanently (unless Clarke Schmidt or Luis Severino make it back first, which would mean Britton had a setback, but let’s not worry about that).

Mike Ford and Tyler Wade are the two obvious call-up candidates (today is the first day both can be recalled). Despite his terribleness, there is little reason to believe the Yankees will scale back on Rougned Odor’s playing time (the only thing better than a $0 player is a $0 player who produces, so he'll keep getting chances), which means Odor at second and DJ LeMahieu at first for the foreseeable future. Starting Ford at first base against righties isn’t happening. At least not yet, I don’t think.

"I think (LeMahieu) is going to get a lot of looks, a lot of time (at first base)," Boone said over the weekend, after Bruce informed him he was retiring (but we were still in the dark). "Luke (Voit) is on the horizon and making really strong progress, so I'm excited about where he's at. But I think you could expect to see him a lot there in the near future."

If Ford is not going to play much, then Wade is the better option. He’s more versatile -- it would be nice to have a legitimate shortstop on the roster, no? -- and would improve an infield defense that can charitably be described as sketchy. The downside is Mike Tauchman would take over as the backup first baseman and he has played *checks notes* zero career innings at first.

The best option is neither Ford nor Wade. It’s Derek Dietrich. He’d provide more versatility than Ford (he can’t play shortstop though) and more offense than Wade. Dietrich would step easily into Bruce’s 40-man spot and also his salary slot. I haven’t seen the terms of Dietrich’s contract anywhere, but I doubt his MLB base salary is higher than Bruce’s. Should be an easy move.

The three options boil down to Ford with Urshela as the backup shortstop, Wade with Tauchman as the backup first baseman, or Dietrich with Urshela as the backup shortstop. Give me Dietrich. I’m more comfortable with Urshela at short than I am with Tauchman at first, and it’s time to build the most functional roster. Dietrich doesn’t solve every problem, but he’s a step in the right direction.

3. 2021 draft prospect: Massachusetts HS OF Joshua Baez. The 2021 MLB Draft will take place during the All-Star break and J.J. Cooper (subs. req’d) reports MLB has informed teams the draft will be 20 rounds, the minimum number allowed under last year’s March agreement. The Yankees hold the No. 20 pick. Here is our 2021 draft prospect coverage archive.

Baez turns 18 two weeks before the draft and is one of the younger high school players in the draft class. His high school hasn’t started their season yet, so teams haven’t seen him since his pandemic-shortened junior season last spring and a handful of showcase events last summer. Baez is committed to Vanderbilt, a school that doesn’t recruit nobodies.

Baseball America (subs. req’d) ranked Baez as the 21st best prospect in the draft class while MLB.com ranks him a bit lower at 39th. Here’s some video and here’s a snippet of MLB.com’s scouting report:

There might not be a player in the Draft class with more raw pop than Baez. It shows up in games against good competition, like when he crushed a home run with an exit velocity well over 100 mph at the Area Code Games. With that power comes a lot of swing and miss, especially when he gets too home run happy. He doesn’t take bad swings or get fooled, but just swings through pitches while trying to hit the ball 600 feet every time. There is hope that when he learns to trust his strength and tone down his swing, he’ll make more contact and find his power is naturally there.

While not a burner, Baez is a solid runner who knows how to steal a base and could stick in center field for a while. If the Vanderbilt recruit needs to move to a corner, he should profile very well in right, with a hose for an arm that fires fastballs up to 97 mph off the mound.

For what it’s worth, Baseball America’s scouting report says “scouts have noted (Baez) never truly looks out of control or lost at the plate” despite the swing and miss concerns. Either way, a high school kid with a propensity to swing and miss is incredibly risky. Every once in a while one of those guys turns into Giancarlo Stanton, but it’s rare.

The Yankees have used their first round pick on a high school hitter three times in the last five years (Blake Rutherford, Anthony Seigler, Anthony Volpe) and all three were hit over power guys. The last power over hit prospect they took in the first round was Aaron Judge in 2013, when they had three first round picks and could take a big swing on a risky player.

There is more to Baez than power but power is his calling card, and the Yankees are always drawn to power. My hunch is the Yankees would not jump on a player with this profile in the first round in a year with no extra picks. You never really know though. They could buy into Baez’s athleticism and innate ability to make adjustments, and take a shot on a player with big upside.

4. Remembering a random Yankee: Matt Nokes. By request, this week’s random Yankee was the Gary Sanchez of his era as a catcher with big power but questionable defense. Here’s the random Yankee archive. You can find links back to everyone we've covered there.

The Giants selected Nokes out of his San Diego high school in the 20th round of the 1981 draft, and although high school catchers are typically slow to develop, he reached the big leagues as a Sept. call-up in 1985. San Francisco sent Nokes to the Tigers in a rare early October trade after the season (the trade was made the day before Game 1 of the ALCS). The full details:

• Giants receive: RHP Juan Berenguer, RHP Scott Medvin, random Yankee C Bob Melvin
• Tigers receive: RHP Eric King, LHP Dave LaPoint, C Matt Nokes

Nokes, then 22, spent most of 1986 in Triple-A. The Tigers lost Lance Parrish to free agency after the season and started 1987 with Nokes and Mike Heath in a catcher platoon. Nokes eventually took over as the full-time catcher and was marvelous, hitting .289/.345/.536 with 32 homers. His lefty swing was a perfect fit for the short right field porch at the old Tiger Stadium.

“We thought he'd be a good enough hitter to play somewhere on our ballclub,” Tigers then-GM Bill Lajoie told Murray Chass that July. “But I don't think that anyone could say they knew that he'd hit as well as he has. Actually, we thought Parrish would be back, Nokes would play first, and (Darrell) Evans wouldn't be here. We weren't going to sign Evans. As it turned out, Parrish left, we signed Evans and we found out that Nokes could catch for us.”

Nokes was an All-Star and won the Silver Slugger at catcher that season, and he finished third behind Mark McGwire and Kevin Seitzer in the AL Rookie of the Year voting. He also received a few MVP votes. Nokes went 2-for-14 (.143) with a home run (video) in the five-game loss to the Twins in the ALCS that year, and it proved to be the only postseason action of his career.

A sophomore slump followed in 1988. Nokes authored a good but not great .251/.313/.424 line with 16 home runs that year, and his defense was not good. I dig through the New York Times archives when I put these random Yankee posts together and the word “stiff” was used an awful lot describe Nokes behind the plate back then.

Nokes slipped to .250/.298/.388 in 1989 and had played his way out of town by 1990. Heath had taken over as the starting catcher and the Tigers, who lost 103 games in 1989, decided to move on from Nokes in the weeks leading up to the 1990 trade deadline. All told, he hit .268/.322/.458 with 61 home runs in 395 games spread across parts of five years with the Tigers.

The 1990 Yankees were very bad (they finished 67-95) and desperately short on offense. On the morning of June 5th, they were hitting .246/.296/.364 as a team and had scored the fewest runs in baseball. On June 5th, they acquired Nokes in a three-player trade, sending righties Lance McCullers (Sr.) and Clay Parker to Detroit.

''Right now, (random Yankee Claudell Washington) is the only left-handed batter on the bench,” then-manager Bucky Dent told Michael Martinez. “I usually have to wait and pick my spot to use him. With Nokes, I have a chance to do something early. I'm not saying that (Bob) Geren won't get an opportunity to catch, but (Rick) Cerone has been swinging the bat well and Nokes gives us another left-handed bat, which we needed.”

Nokes initially split his time between catcher and DH (and pinch-hitter) with the Yankees and he started very well, going 13-for-47 (.277) with four homers in his first 18 games in pinstripes. More playing time following and Nokes finished 1990 with a .248/.306/.373 batting line and 11 homers, including .238/.307/.354 and eight homers in 92 games as a Yankee.

The Yankees went into 1991 with three catchers: Geren, Nokes, and 27-year-old rookie Jim Leyritz. Leyritz’s versatility created the possibility of a three-man platoon. "I know we could combine for probably 25-30 home runs and over 100 runs batted in. There's no catcher in this league who can do that,” Geren told Martinez about the three-headed catcher monster.

Leyritz drew the Opening Day start at catcher but spent most of the season at third base, and Nokes was the primary catcher with Geren backing up. Nokes had a resurgent season, hitting .268/.308/.469 with 24 home runs in 493 plate appearances. At the time, the 24 homers were the most in a season by a Yankees catcher not named Yogi Berra, Bill Dickey, or Elston Howard.

"He's redeeming himself for a couple of bad seasons. We tried to make him the Player of the Week today,” Twins then-manager Tom Kelly told Jack Curry after Nokes hit two home runs against Minnesota on Aug. 1st. It was his fourth two-homer game in a month.

The Yankees went 71-91 in 1991 and Nokes led the team with those 24 home runs. He also got into it a bit with Roger Clemens in September, which endeared him to fans. Clemens put a pitch in his ribs, and Nokes fired the ball back to the mound before proceeding to first base. Here’s the video. Nokes then stole second base to further get back at Clemens.

“I know he was intentionally throwing at me,” Nokes told Dan Hafner after the game, noting his success against Clemens (four homers!). “I hit a home run to win a game (earlier in the season), and Clemens told the reporter that ‘I got to earn my living, and Nokes is going down.’ And we got up to their place, and that’s what happened.”

The 24 homers solidified Nokes as the starting catcher going into 1992, and it also earned him a very nice contract. With Nokes a year away from free agency, the two sides avoided arbitration with a three-year contract worth $2.5M in January 1993. At the time, it made him the highest paid catcher in Yankees history.

“Matt was outstanding for us last season both at the plate and behind it, and we expect him to continue that success. We are very pleased he has made this commitment to the organization,” then-GM Gene Michael told UPI. The Yankees opened 1992 with Leyritz and free agent pickup Mike Stanley behind Nokes on the catcher depth chart.

Although he socked another 22 home runs in 1992, Nokes took a step back to .224/.293/.424, which wasn’t good enough to keep him in the lineup despite his contract. Stanley received more and more playing time as the season progressed and was the most of the time starter by August. Nokes, then 28, was playing his way out of another organization.

The Yankees went 76-86 in 1992 (their most recent losing season!) and they believed in Stanley enough to sign him to a two-year contract after the season. He authored a .249/.372/.428 line in 68 games and replaced Nokes as the undisputed starting catcher about a month into 1993. As the backup catcher, Nokes hit .249/.303/.424 with 10 home runs in 238 plate appearances that year.

The highlight of Nokes’ season (and Yankees career?) came on Sept. 4th, 1993, and it was not because he had a good day at the plate (1-for-4). That day he caught Jim Abbott’s no-hitter against Cleveland (video), less than a week after that same Cleveland club shelled Abbott for seven runs in 3.2 innings (with Nokes behind the plate).

“He threw the same in the late innings as early in the game,” Nokes told Jennifer Frey after the game, adding he stopped talking to Abbott in the dugout in the later innings. “He had good stuff.”

Stanley was entrenched as the starter and Nokes remained as the backup in 1994 thanks to his contract. He broke a hamate bone in late April and spent two months on what was then called the disabled list (Leyritz backed up Stanley), and, when he returned, Nokes went 16-for-60 (.267) with five homers in 22 games prior to the work stoppage. He hit .291/.329/.595 with seven home runs in 85 plate appearances overall that year.

The work stoppage put an end to a dream Yankees season (AL best 70-43 that year) and also put an end to Nokes’ time in pinstripes. He became a free agent after the season and signed a one-year deal with the Orioles. “(O’s then-manager Phil Regan) told me I'll be doing some of the DHing and some of the catching, and if Rafael Palmeiro ever needs a day off I can play first base,” Nokes told Tom Keegan after signing with Baltimore.

In parts of five seasons with the Yankees, Nokes authored a .249/.304/.437 (103 OPS+) batting line with 71 home runs in 1,510 plate appearances spread across 452 games. The franchise’s all-time catcher home run leaderboard is a bit of a trip:

1. Yogi Berra: 358
2. Jorge Posada: 275
3. Bill Dickey: 202
4. Elston Howard: 161
5. Gary Sanchez: 117 (and counting)
6. Thurman Munson: 113
7. Mike Stanley: 72
8. Matt Nokes: 71
9. Brian McCann: 69
10. Russell Martin: 39

Couple all-time greats, someone who deserved better than one-and-done on the Hall of Fame ballot, the most polarizing Yankees position player in recent memory, and then a massive gap between the Stanley/Nokes/McCann tier and everyone else.

Nokes split 1995, his age 31 season, between the Orioles and Rockies, and hit .133/.197/.267 with two homers in 66 plate appearances. He never played in the big leagues again, and spent the next few years bouncing around independent leagues and the Mexican League. Nokes retired as a career .254/.308/.441 hitter with 136 homers in parts of 11 MLB seasons.

(Nokes made headlines when a small plane he was piloting made an emergency landing on a California freeway in Feb. 2000. “I went south, hovered over some cars and waited until they cleared,” he said following the incident, shortly after signing a minor league deal with Cleveland that went nowhere.)

5. Rapid fire thoughts. The Yankees had their first real catcher injury scare of the season on Saturday, when Gary Sanchez took a foul tip to the bare hand (video). X-rays were negative and he escaped with only a contusion, and is day-to-day, but still, a catcher injury is one of the last things the Yankees can afford. Robinson Chirinos is still recovering from his fractured wrist, so Rob Brantly and Kellin Deglan are next up on the depth chart. It’s bleak. Get well soon, Gary … Aaron Boone confirmed Domingo German will rejoin the rotation when the Yankees need a fifth starter Saturday, which isn’t surprising. The Yankees will be in Cleveland this weekend and they have been one of the few teams performing as poorly as the Yankees, offensively: .209/.286/.393 (89 wRC+). Jose Ramirez is a star and Franmil Reyes will put a mistake in the seats. Otherwise that’s about as soft a landing spot as German will find in this league (his next start would come against the Orioles). He needs a strong outing. The Yankees need one as well … And finally, Jee-Ho Yoo and Matt Kardos report infielder Hoy Jun Park and righty reliever Addison Russ are included in the South Korea and USA player pools for the 2021 Olympics, respectively. Both are currently at the alternate site. This doesn’t mean they’re on the Olympic roster, just that they’re under consideration and available players. Only non-40-man roster players are eligible for the Olympics and in 2008, the last time baseball was an Olympic sport, the USA roster was mostly Quad-A veterans with a few top prospects and one college kid named Strasburg. The Olympics are scheduled to run July 23rd to Aug. 8th and I don’t think the Yankees are at risk of losing anyone other than Park or Russ at this point. Whoever it ends up being, every team will have a little less organizational depth those two weeks.

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