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.
qmerkel asks: Does the injury to George Lombard Jr. make him eligible for rookie of the year next season? If not yet, how many more games does he need to miss?
Rookie status is removed from a player after 130 at-bats in the majors, or 50 innings pitched for pitchers. There is also a 45-day active
roster rule that would make players ineligible for rookie status next season, so there’s two hurdles to clear here. Lombard wasn’t put on the Injured List for the duration of his knee inflammation, so the time that he’s been on the bench has been ticking his clock further down and is the likelier reason he’ll lose his status at the end of the year — there’s 23 days left in the regular season and Lombard has been active since August 4th, giving him 32 days on the 26-man roster already including today. He only needs to remain active for 13 more days to cross that threshold, even if his 79 at-bats in 23 games played would’ve given him a slight chance to slide under 130 at the end with 22 games left to play.
Matt C. asks: Why is Mitch Garver on the restricted list and how does that impact a potential callup?
According to the New York Daily News’ Gary Phillips, Garver is still eligible for a postseason roster spot despite getting put on the restricted list, but the team ultimately put him there instead of promoting him when he invoked the assignment clause giving him a chance to shop around for a spot with another Major League team. That the Yankees didn’t take this chance to promote him over Ali Sánchez implies to me that they don’t think he’ll be much of an improvement if he is one at all, but they’ve kept the door open for him at the least. Most likely though, it’ll be the catchers the Yankees have known all season riding with them to the end, especially now that Wells has turned it around in the late summer.
Mackenzie M. asks: Wells has been the everyday catcher for almost a month now. Would the Yankees consider leaving a second catcher off of the roster for the postseason (especially three-game series) and just have Rice available in case of an injury to Wells? That way they open up an extra roster spot?
I don’t think there’s a world where they do that, as it’d be far too dangerous to throw Rice into catching duties in a postseason game when he hasn’t been behind the plate all year. Even if they could substitute a hypothetically-injured Wells for the remainder of that series, that would make him ineligible for the next series and force the Yankees’ hands to either keep Rice as a catching option going forward or roster two of Sánchez, J.C. Escarra, and Garver to handle catching duties for an entire series. That’s far too much risk for the slight reward of adding an additional bench bat, as they wouldn’t be able to carry another reliever and they’ll already have enough options there with a shortened playoff rotation.
JudgeIsStillMyFavoriteOgre asks: Are the Yankees giving Jazz a qualifying offer in the offseason?
That remains to be seen, though the debate will be closer than most people perhaps are considering. Jazz has had a rough year overall, there’s no doubt about that, but he’s quietly collected himself and provided a ton of value down the stretch, leading to him holding a 3.4 fWAR season with 40 steals and a 99 wRC+. If that’s Jazz’s bad year, it’s very much worth a qualifying offer to bring him back for one more year and see if he can re-establish himself on the market a year from now. He’s in a better place than Gleyber Torres was prior to his walk year in 2024, having two strong years directly behind him to back up his overall value, and his second half has perhaps revived his free agent case from the mess it was going to look like in June. It’s fair if he would want that one-year fresh reset still, and it’s fair if the Yankees see surplus value in turning second base over to an in-house option if there are upgrades to be found elsewhere, but in a vacuum I would give the qualifying offer to Chisholm and that’s not a position I felt too strongly about a little over a month ago. He’s significantly turned it around, and he can make his case even better with an October to remember.
