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Author: Neil Keefe

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason • Yankees Thoughts

Mar 27, 2023

Yankees Thoughts: Anthony Volpe Provides Vigor to Old, Stale, Injured Roster

This week there will be Yankees baseball. Real, meaningful baseball. We made it. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

This week there will be Yankees baseball. Real, meaningful baseball. We made it.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I was very close to ending my relationship with the Yankees as a fan.

If Anthony Volpe had been sent down on Sunday instead of being named to the Opening Day roster, that would have been it. After calling the shortstop situation an “open competition” entering spring training and having Volpe win that competition outright, it would have been a disgusting and unacceptable act by the Yankees to have him start the season in Triple-A. It would have meant not fielding the best possible team based on merit and production simply because of a lack of Triple-A time and a need to manipulate service time. For an organization that has performed egregious act after egregious act in recent years, not making Volpe a major leaguer after the spring he just had would have topped them all.

2. Thankfully, Volpe is a Yankee. I’m sure there are many in the front office who are disappointed Oswald Peraza didn’t outperform Volpe this spring, so that the service time clock would have been delayed on Volpe to save the Yankees some money in 2029, as if 2029 or saving the richest franchise in the sport (recently valued at $7.1 billion) matters. The Yankees went into spring training wanting Peraza to be the Opening Day shortstop and wanting Volpe to begin the season in Triple-A. But after the disparity in offensive production this spring, there was no possibly way the Yankees could have spun having Volpe go to the minors without their fan base revolting. Not having enough games at Triple-A was no longer a valid excuse. Because what constitutes enough games at Triple-A anyway?

3. Unfortunately, because of Volpe’s promotion to the majors to be the everyday shortstop, Peraza ends up back in Triple-A due to poor roster construction and poor roster management — a staple of the Brian Cashman Yankees in recent seasons. Peraza is no longer a Triple-A player, after having demolished the competition in his final months at the level. He has nothing more to prove or gain playing against minor-league players, but that’s where he finds himself because of the Yankees’ self-created infield logjam.

4. My Yankees’ infield would look like this:

Anthony Rizzo, 1B
Oswald Peraza, SS
Anthony Volpe, 2B
DJ LeMahieu, 3B

That infield doesn’t include Josh Donaldson or Gleyber Torres.

Cashman and Aaron Boone can say whatever they want about believing in Donaldson as a bounceback candidate for 2023, but the simple fact is that if he weren’t owed $21.75 million for 2023 and an $8 million buyout after 2023 (totaling $29.75 million), he would no longer be a Yankee.

“The things he did this winter to get himself ready to go, I think you’re crazy to think that a bounce back is not in there offensively,” Boone said of Donaldson as he hit this spring exactly like he did in all of 2022. “This guy still has bat speed, and is super talented. He’s in a much better place than he was a year ago right now.”

If his contract had expired after last season, he wouldn’t be a Yankee. The Yankees wouldn’t have re-signed him as a free agent. The only reason he is a Yankee is because of the $29.75 million owed.

5. As for Torres, I’m fine with him being a Yankee, but feel like he should no longer be a Yankee. If he remains a Yankee, so be it. If he’s traded, so be it. The 2018-19 version of Torres was a product of the juiced baseball and that version of him is never coming back. Torres might have been an above-average hitter last season, but that’s because the average hitter in baseball last season was essentially the Mets’ Luis Guillorme, who had a .691 OPS. There’s nothing I hate more than a low on-base percentage player and Torres posted a .310 OBP in 2022. Yes, he hit 24 home runs and had some big hits, but for a six-week period he had the lowest OPS in all of baseball. I think the Yankees would have been better off adding to their rotation by moving Torres, a rotation that is now in shambles.

6. Earlier this offseason, Boone said the 2023 rotation was the best he has had as Yankees manager. It wasn’t exactly going out on a limb, as some of the other rotations he has managed have had Sonny Gray, J.A. Happ and an opener. In theory and on paper, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon, Nestor Cortes, Luis Severino and Frankie Montas was the best rotation in the majors. But in theory and on paper is something that never pans out, at least not for the Yankees.

Cole and Cortes are now the only healthy names from that planned rotation and Cortes is coming off a groin injury that delayed his start to spring training. The rest of the rotation is now Clarke Schmidt, Domingo German and Jhony Brito. Darrell Rasner and Jeff Karstens aren’t far behind on the depth chart.

7. It turns out Rodon was dealing with the same elbow problem in the middle and at the end of last season and that didn’t stop the Yankees from signing him. We knew Montas was hurt a few weeks before the Yankees traded for him, but we didn’t know he became a Yankee still hurt and tried to pitch through a shoulder problem, and that didn’t stop the Yankees from trading for him.

It’s unfortunate, but not surprising that Severino is hurt. It’s now been five years since Severino has pitched a full, injury-free season and hearing that he has a “minor lat strain” isn’t exactly reassuring. He had a “minor lat strain” last season and missed two months. In 2019, a lat strain was part of the litany of injuries that caused him to not make his first start of the season until September. The Yankees are talking like Severino is going to miss one start. Knowing him and his injury history, specifically with lat injuries, I would sign up for him only missing April right now.

8. When Hal Steinbrenner was negotiating a new contract with Aaron Judge, he told Judge he could sign him and do more. After the Yankees signed Rodon, Steinbrenner said they weren’t done. They were done. The Yankees brought back the same offense minus Matt Carpenter and Andrew Benintendi and added Rodon. The Yankees chose not to upgrade the offense, not to add an everyday left fielder and to give two of 26 roster spots to Hicks and Donaldson. The supposed best rotation in baseball was going to make up for a yet-again-right-handed-heavy lineup. But now that rotation looks like a mid-2000s Yankees rotation held together by scotch tape, string and hope.

9. The Yankees will begin the season without 60 percent of their expected rotation, their starting center fielder and two important pieces of their bullpen in Tommy Kahnle and Lou Trivino. The Yankees ended last season without LeMahieu, Benintendi, Aaron Hicks, Michael King and Chad Green, and had Carpenter playing on a barely-healed broken foot. Had the ALCS gone past Game 4, Cortes wouldn’t have been able to start another game in the postseason. This after all the injuries of 2019, 2020 and 2021. Last week, Meredith Marakovits asked Hal Steinbrenner about all of the Yankees’ injuries over the last few years.

“We’re doing everything right,” Steinbrenner said. “We’re doing everything right. We believe that.”

It takes a special kind of person to see the injuries the Yankees have endured going on now five seasons and still think the organization is handling, diagnosing and rehabbing injuries the right way. In a results-driven business, the Yankees’ results in terms of injuries have been disastrous, and yet, the owner of the team isn’t worried by it. Maybe this is part of the “process is more important than results” bullshit Cashman was spewing at his end-of-the-season press conference. It’s an organization-wide belief and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to change.

10. I’m happy baseball is back even if the Yankees’ same issues from last season and the season before that and the season before that and the season before that still exist: the team is too right-handed heavy, too much of the core is still here and there are too many injuries.

Between now and Thursday at 1:05 p.m. I will talk myself into believing in this team and this roster like I do every year entering Opening Day because I have no other choice. For me, as a Yankees fan, I have to find a way to persuade myself into thinking this team can what the previous 13 iterations of the Yankees couldn’t. For the Yankees, as an organization, all they can do now is play the hand they dealt themselves.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

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Podcasts • Yankees • Yankees Podcast

Feb 17, 2023

Yankees Podcast: ‘Best Rotation’ Down Two Starters

The Yankees were thought to have the “best rotation in baseball” and now 40 percent of the rotation is injured.

The Yankees were thought to have the “best rotation in baseball” for 2023. Now that rotation is down 40 percent of its members with Nestor Cortes working through a hamstring injury and Frankie Montas set to undergo shoulder surgery. Cortes is expected back for the start of the season, if all goes right, but Montas’ best-case scenario is to be back sometime late in the season. The Yankees’ pitching depth will be tested right away, and the depth isn’t what it was before the trade for Montas.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

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Blogs • Yankees

Feb 15, 2023

Will Oswald Peraza Be Yankees’ Opening Day Shortstop?

There are two names and only two names that should have a chance at being the team’s Opening Day shortstop: Oswald Peraza or Anthony Volpe.

The Yankees’ first baseman missed one-fifth of last season with debilitating back problems; their second baseman is still rehabbing a foot fracture from last summer that may need surgery; their other second baseman was the worst hitter in baseball for a six-week stretch and they unsuccessfully tried to trade him at the deadline; their shortstop was benched in the postseason; their third baseman experienced career lows in every offensive statistic; they don’t have a left fielder (at least not a major-league-caliber one); no one knows what to expect from center field and their designated hitter is coming off the worst “full” season of his career. Outside of Aaron Judge, the entire Yankees lineup is full of question marks, including at shortstop, where, like left field, they haven’t officially named a starter.

Aaron Boone doesn’t think it’s a problem. Then again, he thought showing highlights of the worst postseason loss in Yankees history to his Yankees team would spark them to win four straight against the Astros. (His team blew an early three-run lead and a late one-run lead in the ensuing game and was swept.) So excuse me if I don’t think Boone thinking not having a starting shortstop isn’t an issue.

Not only does Boone not think it’s an issue, he thinks the Yankees have four everyday-worthy options at the position.

“I’m really excited about penciling in any name,” Boone said on Wednesday on the first day of spring training about possibly naming Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Oswald Peraza, Oswaldo Cabrera or Anthony Volpe as his Opening Day shortstop.

I’m not. No Yankees fan is. There are two names and only two names that should have a chance at being the team’s Opening Day shortstop: Oswald Peraza or Anthony Volpe. The two names Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman cited a year ago as the reason why the Yankees sat out on the best free-agent shortstop class in history. The same reason they sat out on big-name free-agent shortstops again this offseason.

It would seem nearly impossible for Volpe to pass Peraza and Kiner-Falefa and start the season in the majors with such a small amount of time at Triple-A (even though other organizations called up their top prospects from Double-A without hesitation last season), though Boone doesn’t think so.

“If I feel like he looks like the best option,” Boone said. “Then we wouldn’t be averse to doing that.”

I love Boone saying, “If I feel like,” as if he has the power to make such a decision (and I think he does think he has the power to make such a decision). I’m glad he was smart enough to throw the “we” in there on the backend of his comment to cover up his foolishness.

Volpe’s out, for now. Cabrera isn’t truly an option the same way he isn’t truly an option to be the team’s starting left fielder: because the Yankees want to use him at a different position every day. That leaves Peraza and Kiner-Falefa, and that really only leaves Peraza.

Five weeks ago I wrote: Be on the lookout for the first day of spring training quotes talking about how hard Kiner-Falefa worked tirelessly over the winter on his defense.

“I think IKF has had a really good winter,” Boone said with a straight face on Wednesday.

A really good winter? Financially speaking, yes, Kiner-Falefa had a good winter getting tendered a $6 million contract from the Yankees to play baseball for a living. But we know Boone wasn’t speaking about Kiner-Falefa’s salary.

Kiner-Falefa hasn’t played an actual game since Game 4 of the 2022 ALCS. I guess maybe that’s it? He had a good winter because he hasn’t played an actual game. There weren’t any first-pitch, breaking balls outside of the zone to roll over for an easy out, and there weren’t any routine ground balls to boot.

We all know what Boone meant. Kiner-Falefa worked out and worked hard on his defense and plate discipline and blah, blah, blah, blah blah. Forget this winter. Kiner-Falefa hasn’t had a good spring, summer or fall as a major leaguer. He’s now entering his age 28 season and has a career .264/.316/.347 slash line. A .663 OPS over 534 major-league games, having never finished in the .700s in any of his five major league seasons. It’s more likely Josh Donaldson wins AL MVP this season than it is that four months of not playing baseball made Kiner-Falefa good enough to play over the organization’s Top 2 shortstop prospects.

Kiner-Falefa was brought in to be a one-year stopgap. The gap was stopped (though not well). It stopped when Peraza was called up last August, only to outperform Kiner-Falefa and remain on the bench. A second season of Kiner-Falefa as the starting shortstop would not only be an embarrassment to a team preaching championship aspirations, but it would be an organization failure.

Unfortunately, for Peraza, Boone is a Kiner-Falefa supporter and defender. He went to great lengths all of last year to sell Kiner-Falefa to the media and public as if the games aren’t televised, as if stats and information aren’t readily available, as if we are all blind. Boone cited vague and secret internal metrics that rated Kiner-Falefa as one of the best shortstops in the league.

When the Yankees’ season was on the line in Game 4 of the ALCS, who did Boone start at shortstop? Kiner-Falefa. It would take the Yankees putting more stock into Peraza’s spring training play than him actually outplaying Kiner-Falefa in August, September and October. If Peraza wasn’t good enough in Boone’s eyes to start over Kiner-Falefa then, how could he be now with the Yankees having played zero games since the last time Boone played Kiner-Falefa over Peraza (while facing elimination)?

It’s also hard for me to see Peraza being named the official starting shortstop because of owed money. Owed money trumps all when it comes o the Yankees. It’s why Donaldson will be starting at third base and batting fifth again this season. It’s why Cashman said two weeks ago he thinks Aaron Hicks will be a starting outfielder this season. The Yankees would rather lose than have owed money sitting on the bench in favor of a better, less expensive player, and they would rather watch countless runners get left on third base with less than two outs than release owed money for nothing. When trying to decide on a supposed spring training competition, look at the payroll and you’ll find the answer. Kiner-Falefa is on the books for $6 million in 2023. That’s $6 million of guaranteed money, which is a lot more than the league minimum Peraza commands.

I really hope I’m wrong. After not making any position player offseason additions, after staying nearly all right-handed again, after bringing back Kiner-Falefa, Donaldson and Hicks, I pray the Yankees get one thing right by having Peraza starting at short come Opening Day. But until he’s standing between second and third on the Yankee Stadium infield and acknowledging the Bleacher Creatures in the top of the first on Opening Day, I won’t believe it’s his job.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

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Podcasts • Rangers • Rangers Podcast

Feb 9, 2023

Rangers Podcast: Vladimir Tarasenko Traded to Rangers

The Rangers have traded for the Blues’ Vladimir Tarasenko in a move that has zero downside for the Blueshirts.

There’s still more than three weeks until the trade deadline, but the Rangers decided not to wait until the last minute, trading for the Blues’ Vladimir Tarasenko, who will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season.

The Rangers sent Sammy Blais, Hunter Skinner, a conditional first-round pick an a conditional fourth-round pick to the Blues in exchange for Tarasenko and Niko Mikkola with the Blues also retaining 50 percent of Tarasenko’s cap hit.

There isn’t a single negative to the trade for the Rangers. It’s an unbelievable job by Chris Drury.

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Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Thoughts

Feb 9, 2023

Rangers Thoughts: Cautionary Tale for ‘Kid Line’

The Rangers showed the sizable gap between a team that’s contending for a championship and a team that seems to have no plan on Wednesday night against the Canucks.

The Rangers showed the sizable gap between a team that’s contending for a championship and a team that seems to have no plan when they wanted to on Wednesday night against the Canucks. In the end, they got the expected two points, but it wasn’t as easy as it probably should have been.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. There aren’t many games I expect the Rangers to win, but Wednesday night against the Canucks was one of them. The Canucks are a poorly-run organization with a bad on-ice product that just changed head coaches midseason in the oddest way possible and also traded their captain a month before the the trade deadline. They are a mess. They are a team that has Connor Bedard aspirations and the Rangers are a team that has Lord Stanley aspirations, and the disparity was evident when the Rangers wanted it to be on Wednesday.

2. The Rangers scored 6:53 into the game on a beautiful, no-look pass from Vincent Trocheck to Chris Kreider on a 2-on-1. From just inside the blue line until his pass, Trocheck kept his eyes on Spencer Martin, making everyone believe Trocheck would shoot. He didn’t and the Rangers took a 1-0 lead. One minute and 38 seconds later, the Rangers scored again.

Filip Chytil scored his 19th of the season to extend his goal-scoring streak to five straight with his seventh in the last five games. (He now has 11 goals in the last 13 games as well.) It’s easy to forget Chytil is 23 years old because this is his sixth season in the league, having debuted in 2017-18. Chytil is going to get paid if he keeps up this level of play and production (as he should) as a true second center (again, if this is who he truly is). You would like to think the Rangers will be able to find a way to keep him, but unfortunately, the money owed to Trocheck is likely the money needed for Chytil.

After the Chytil goal, Rick Tocchet’s face had an expression equivalent of someone who gave up a nice TV gig to join a disaster. Eight minutes and 31 seconds into the game, and the game was essentially over. Or rather it should have been.

3. In typical Rangers fashion, they didn’t score the next goal, which would have made the remainder of the game a formality. With two minutes and 24 seconds left in the first, Conor Garland scored after the Rangers let Quinn Hughes weave his way around the top of the offensive zone without any pressure. Of course the Canucks were able to get on the board against the Rangers’ fourth line and third defensive pair.

“We were playing real good hockey and then all of a sudden we change our game a little bit and started turning pucks over in the neutral zone and going cross-ice and stuff like that,” Gerard Gallant said. “You get up and think it’s going to be easy and then all of a sudden it’s a hockey game.”

I’m sure Vitali Kravtsov and Julien Gauthier held back a good laugh upstairs, watching the site of Will Cuylle, Sammy Blais and Jake Leschyshyn contributing nothing positive in yet another game. It’s beyond frustrating that Kravtsov and Gauthier, two players who could potentially be difference makers, continue to not play, so that Gallant can get his traditional fourth line, even if that fourth line provides no offensive value and is a defensive liability.

4. In the opening minutes of the second, the Canucks drove the play, and it felt like yet another game in which the Rangers would blow a two-goal lead after growing comfortable with their early success. Thankfully, Alexis Lafreniere changed that at 6:23 in the second when he was able to finish off a Jacob Trouba shot by pushing the puck through the last inches of the crease and into the net. For Lafreniere, it was his second goal in as many games after this overtime winner on Monday, and for the Kid Line, it was their second goal of the game with all three members of it getting on the scoresheet.

5. “They were good again, scored a couple of big goals, tonight, obviously,” Gallant said after the game about the Kid Line. “I don’t think anybody was great defensively tonight, but the Kid Line created chances for us, for sure.”

A nice little backhanded compliment from the coach on the line he never seems to want to compliment from a group of players he never wants to praise. Luckily for him, the two goals they provided were the difference between the Rangers winning by a goal or losing by one, mostly thanks to his personally-constructed fourth line.

6. The Canucks didn’t go away, cutting the lead to a goal again after J.T. Miller found Vasily Podkolzin for his first goal of the year. It’s been five years since the Rangers traded Miller to the Lightning. As a Ranger, Miller produced 0.50 points per game in his age 19 through 24 seasons. With the Lightning, Miller had 0.69 points per game in his age 24 and 25 seasons. As a Canuck, Miller has averaged 1.04 points per game in 253 games over his age 26 through 29 seasons.

7. As a former first-round pick (15th overall in 2011), Miller is as good of cautionary tale as any that being a highly-touted prospect doesn’t translate to success in the NHL right away. Or it’s a cautionary tale that the Rangers have no idea how to develop their own potential high-end talent. The Rangers could use Miller. Every team could use a player of his caliber. Instead, they added him as a sweetener in the Ryan McDonagh package to the Lightning.

8. The same can be said for Pavel Buchnevich, who scored a career-high 30 goals With the Blues last season (in only 73 games) after being traded by the Rangers. Buchnevich has scored 15 goals in 38 games this season, totaling 45 goals in 111 games as a Blue (a 33-goal pace over 82 games). Buchnevich, like Miller, has become a more-than-a-point-per-game player since leaving the Rangers.

On a night in which the Rangers’ Kid Line (consisting of players that are 21 and 23 years old) scored two of the team’s four goals, Miller provided a reminder of what’s possible with patience with first-round talent, especially first- and second-overall first-round talent.

9. With just under four minutes left in the game, and the Rangers clinging to their 3-2 lead, Mika Zibajenad scored his 25th of the season to give the Rangers a two-goal for the third time. (Jacob Trouba picked up his second primary assist of the game on Zibanejad’s goal. A much-needed start to the “second half” for the captain.) But just like the previous two times in the game the Rangers held a two-goal lead, they let the lead get back to just one goal, and this time it only took 11 seconds for the Canucks to get it back. Elias Pettersson scored with 3:44 left in the game, and a game in which the Canucks were nearly 3-to-1 underdogs would be another hold-on-for-dear-life ending for the Rangers in the final minutes.

10. The Rangers did hold on for their third straight win, and are now six points ahead of Washington (with two games in hand) to stay out of a wild-card berth. I would prefer they got a wild-card berth if it meant playing the Hurricanes in the first round over the Devils, but obviously not if it means playing the Bruins. It’s safer to just stay in the Metropolitan bracket and facing the seem-to-be-superior Devils to avoid the chance of playing the Bruins.

The next 10 days will go a long way in helping determine where the Rangers end up in the postseason bracket. After Friday’s home game against the Kraken, the Rangers go on the road to play the Hurricanes, Canucks, Oilers and Flames before returning to the Garden to host the Jets. Beginning Friday, the Rangers will play six games in 11 days and their remaining 31 games in 63 days, nearly a Rangers game every other night.

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