From NoMass The Yankees are at one of the most interesting and crucial junctures in the history of the franchise. When we look back at this season some years down the road, this Yankee era will be remembered primarily for two critical decisions: 1) The decision to severely decrease team salary in order to meet a firm cap goal, and 2) The decision to either buy, sell, or walk some tenuous middle ground at this year’s trade deadline. The Yankees appear to be well on track in pursuing their cuts to player investment. Despite some bizarre and misguided acquisitions that will add salary and little else, the Yankees have already demonstrated a commitment to capping how much of the fans’ money they will reinvest in the team. It is nothing short of a complete break with the longtime Yankee strategy of winning at all costs. If they keep with the middle ground mindset that they’ve been displaying on decision #2, it will be a decision to give up on winning period. In any other year, we would have no problem with the Yankees steering from their current course and going into all out buy mode. They are only 2.5 games out of a wild card spot and have an excellent pitching staff. Adding a couple high end bats could put them back in a playoff spot, but there are some major problems with this strategy. First and foremost, the Yankees are not a very good team overall. While the standings show them as 5 games over .500, their -8 run differential betrays the fact that this is probably a .500 team. They are competing for the final wild card spot and would have to have to out play a significantly better Orioles team (+30 run differential) by 3 games the rest of the way to overtake them. That’s certainly possible, but it’s not likely. In addition to the Orioles, the Yankees would need to outpace the Rangers (+9 differential) and the Indians (+47 differential) both by a couple of games. And this is just to reach the playoffs, which is currently only an 11% shot according to Baseball Propectus’ Playoff Odds Report. Bovada is laying 33 to 1 odds (a 3% chance) for the Yankees to reach the real goal- a World Series Championship. Even if you still want the Yankees to go for broke, there may be very little they can actually do on the trade market to improve their chances. While a few very good pitchers have been on the market, none of them are going to be a vast upgrade for a team that is 5th in pitching wins above replacement. The Yankee lineup- 3rd from the bottom in wOBA and wRC+- is what needs to be rescued, but there don’t seem to be any white knights available at all. The biggest name mentioned on mlbtraderumors.com is Alex Rios, owner of an uninspiring 103wRC+. David Justice, he is not. Even if a difference-making bat became available, the Yankees simply may not have the prospects to entice a team to pull the trigger. We would empty the farm system for Giancarlo Stanton, but there’s no way they could make that work. As dispiriting a picture as that is, the Yankees are currently on a far worse course. They have been acquiring players like Ichiro, Vernon Wells, and Alfonso Soriano. They are reportedly inquiring about the aforementioned Rios. These are all players that provide only minor upgrades, not players who can carry a team to the playoffs. In additon, they will also be around next year and their salaries will add up and prevent them from adding players to replace the losses of Mariano, Pettitte, et al. Adding anything similar now means dooming the 2014 Yankees to a worse record. This brings us to selling, by far the most rational course of action for the Yankees. And by selling, this mostly means trading their best player, Robinson Cano. While the mainstream media is so aghast at this notion that they haven’t bothered to entertain it as a possibility, we suspect Yankee fans are actually much more open to the idea. Hal and Levine have conspired to suck quite a bit of passion for this particular team out of the fanbase. It is evident in the empty stadium seats and it is evident in conversations with other Yankee fans. It was hard enough to blindly commit to a roster with such charmless players as Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, Francisco Cervelli and Chris Stewart. When that devolved into a lineup featuring the likes of Eduardo Nunez, Vernon Wells, Lyle Overbay, Jayson Nix, Zolio Almonte, and Luis Cruz, it began to feel like ownership was taking a dump on the fanbases chest (unless you’re into that). While “giving up” on the season supposedly isn’t in the Yankee DNA, the choice here is to restock a base of talent to build around for next year and beyond, or to continue on the path of mediocrity indefinitely. Robinson Cano would bring back a boatload of prospects to a franchise whose feeder system has taken a beating lately. There really isn’t any perfect analog for trading a player of this caliber, but we can look at some other recent examples and drool over the possibilities. Last year, the Brewers traded Zack Greinke to Angels as a summer rental. That move has already paid off in spades as it brought Jean Segura, who is the second best shortstop in baseball (123wRC+, 3.1WAR) during his rookie season. The Brewers have 5 more years of this star player at cost-controlled prices, plus whatever contributions they may get from the two pitching prospects which came along with Segura. Cano is a more valuable player, having put up 12.2WAR in his two prior seasons. Greinke had posted 8.4WAR in the two years before the season he was traded. Another deal that should make Yankees fans salivate at the idea of selling Cano, is the 2007 trade sending Mark Teixeira from the Texas Rangers to the Atlanta Braves. Teixeira had an extra season of team control left, but it’s still a decent comp because Cano is an appreciably better player now than Tex was at the time. Cano is coming off 2 seasons of 12.2WAR and has already posted 3.8WAR to this point in the season. Teixeira had 9.1WAR in his prior two seasons, and 2.1WAR up to the deadline when he was traded. So, even if the extra year of team control made Teixeira an overall greater commodity, the two are certainly within shouting distance. And how nice it would be to come within shouting distance of this haul that the Rangers got back (total career WAR to date in parentheses): Elvis Andrus (14WAR), Matt Harrison (9WAR), Neftali Perez (5WAR), and Jarrod Saltalamacchia (5WAR). That’s a solid ~$150mil in win value, for a total salary cost of less than $30mil. It’s no coincidence that the Rangers went from a joke of team with a losing record year after year, to a perennial World Series contender the very first year that all these guys were on the roster. Obviously the Yankees can’t expect to get a bounty quite that rich, and sometimes prospects don’t work out. When Teixeira was traded again the following summer to the Angels, the Braves got back Casey Kotchman who went bust. But even so, they were able to parlay a free-agent-to-be into a team’s #1 prospect. The Cubs were able to get the Rangers #1 prospect (plus two young arms and a PTBNL) for Matt Garza this year, once again, a lesser player. The Yankees can surely have, at the very least, their pick of a team’s #1 prospect plus some longer shot talent that they can build around. And for what exactly? Two months of Cano. Even if they delt him, they could resign Cano and pair him with the new young and cheap talent after he becomes a free-agent this offseason. You can characterize it as giving up on the season, but a more exacting description is that they’d be cutting their World Series chances from 3% to 1% or 2%. It is insane to let that percentage point or two get in the way of recovering a tremendous amount of long term value that they could get from a trade. Yankee fans, for the better, have never gotten the opportunity to be in a position to witness this kind of deal. It would thrilling to make a huge deal for exciting prospects that we can watch come of age in pinstripes. The alternative is far more grim
Here is more reason to trade Cano now, AMERICAN W L PCT GB HOME ROAD RS RA DIFF STRK L10 POFF Tampa Bay 64 43 .598 - 35-19 29-24 498 422 +76 Won 2 8-2 91.8 Boston 64 44 .593 .5 35-20 29-24 540 444 +96 Won 1 5-5 90.8 Oakland 63 44 .589 1 34-17 29-27 479 412 +67 Lost 1 7-3 88.7 Detroit 60 45 .571 3 33-19 27-26 538 416 +122 Won 4 8-2 89.6 Baltimore 59 48 .551 5 31-22 28-26 504 473 +31 Won 1 5-5 38.4 Cleveland 58 48 .547 5.5 35-19 23-29 507 457 +50 Won 6 7-3 48.8 Texas 58 49 .542 6 31-24 27-25 454 442 +12 Won 2 4-6 32.1 NY Yankees 55 51 .519 8.5 29-25 26-26 409 418 -9 Lost 1 4-6 8.5 Kansas City 52 51 .505 10 27-24 25-27 406 402 +4 Won 7 8-2 9.3 Seattle 50 56 .472 13.5 29-28 21-28 424 477 -53 Lost 1 6-4 0.4 Toronto 49 57 .462 14.5 28-28 21-29 489 512 -23 Won 1 4-6 0.4 LA Angels 48 57 .457 15 27-28 21-29 476 495 -19 Lost 5 2-8 1.0 Minnesota 45 58 .437 17 23-25 22-33 415 468 -53 Lost 2 5-5 0.1 Chicago Sox 40 64 .385 22.5 22-28 18-36 385 461 -76 Lost 5 2-8 0.1 Houston 35 70 .333 28 18-37 17-33 394 560 -166 Lost 2 2-8 0.0
