Good afternoon everyone, it’s time to dive back into the mailbag and answer some of your questions. Remember to send in your questions for our weekly call by e-mail to pinstripealleyblog [at] gmail [dot] com.
The idiot that said, “Harper is coming” asks: What are your general thoughts about the team as currently constructed? Good enough as is? Need a big splash at the deadline? Few tweaks to get the job done? Not good enough?
We’ll give the obvious caveat that things are early, injuries can and will
pop up at some point, and that can affect how the trade deadline looks for the Yankees down the line. However, out of the gate it looks like the Yankees are getting vindicated in their choice to run it back with largely the same roster as last year. Things aren’t perfect — I’m not expecting much from Ryan McMahon’s bat, for instance, but starting off ice cold isn’t going to do him any favors — and so minor tweaks looks like the soundest option of the bunch, but the pieces are there to make a charge at the best record in the AL again. The rotation firing on all cylinders right off the bat is a massively encouraging sign, as we all know the cavalry is coming to reinforce their ranks over the next month or so and if the likes of Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, and Clarke Schmidt start off close to form they’ll have one of the most dominant pitching staffs we’ve seen in a minute.
The question of how they actually improve the roster when it comes time to scan the market in the summer is a curious one, and might prove to be one of the more challenging midseason revamps Brian Cashman has had to navigate with this core. There’s a lot of money locked down to the contracts and starters that they have, so on top of getting any additions they’d have to weigh what they do with the players getting replaced. The cost of game-changing deadline acquisitions is always pricy, and the Yankees have rarely waded in those waters unless it was for a need rather than a want, but even dealing with more of the mid-tier pickups like they tend to browse through will still come at a cost if they’re shipping off contracts in exchange/in separate deals. For now, it’s just speculation, but I could see this being a quieter July much like the winter was unless something drastically changes.
OLDY MOLDY asks: Will MLB start seeing the tanking problems like the NBA?
The sport isn’t set up the same way to enable tanking, so no. There’s the rare uber prospect that jumps straight through the minor leagues and reaches the majors within a year or so, but you’re just as likely to see that happen from the 30th overall pick as you are the 3rd. Most prospects instead follow the similar pattern of needing multiple years of seasoning down on the farm before ever making an impact with their big league club, and crucially the success of a franchise is dependent on how well they hit across a draft class as a whole rather than who’s available with their first-round pick. Sure, the earlier picks have a clearer road to the majors overall, but more than any other sport baseball has rosters filled with players picked late in the draft — and that’s without even touching the separate system they have for international prospects that is unique to them. Add onto that the multiple roads to professional baseball allowing players to make the jump straight from high school ball or wait out almost all of their college years provides a stark difference in how classes can differ — one year can skew heavily towards prep players that showcase high ceilings but their floors have sunk into the basement, while others can provide consistency with a depth of college stars. Which way organizations lean can allow them to drastically outdraft their rivals regardless of where they sit on the draft boards, and the top teams in MLB are certainly not scared to sacrifice draft positioning to secure top-tier talent in free agency.
MSP Giant asks: It is a reasonable guess that Grisham is not the Yankees CF next year. IMHO he will find it hard to duplicate 2025 numbers again. I could be wrong, but… Riddle me this. That being the case, if Spencer has a good season, cuts down on his SOs and still hits well and Domínguez has a solid season. Does acceptably well from both sides of the plate and improves his D…. Who joins Judge in the starting OF next year?
In a world where both of these things align simultaneously, the Yankees would have a difficult choice on their hands, but I think they’d ultimately side with the younger player in Domínguez. Yes, the clock has already started on his service time, but a near-two year gap feels significant and Domínguez has already shown them something in the majors while Jones would still be an unknown at this level. However, if you asked which one of them feels more likely to find that adaptation, I’d lean towards Jones figuring out the hole in his swing faster than Domínguez manages to fix whatever has gone wrong with him in the outfield. Add onto that Domínguez’s secondary issue with his lefty-right splits (which, to his credit, looked better in spring than they did last year) and there’s less of an impediment for Jones to cross. Still, it won’t be as easy as hand-waving the strikeouts away — he swings and misses a lot, and that would be exposed just as much as Domínguez’s defense was in the majors.
