Adding vet blocks youth, but builds the possibilities

TAMPA — Tough spring training for the Baby Bombers.

Good spring training for the Yankees.

You love your young pinstriped guys, the more homegrown the better, for good reason. You monitor their development and celebrate their arrival in The Bronx.

Nevertheless, it’s indisputable that, with Monday’s signing of Neil Walker, the Yankees will depart camp with a stronger, deeper roster than with which they kicked off workouts at George M. Steinbrenner Field. A club that’s better positioned to contend at the outset and better leveraged — in talent, although not dollars — to further upgrade their outfit by late July.

“All I can tell you is, if we see something that makes sense, then we’re going to get aggress i ve on i t ,” Brian Cashman said after the Yankees officially announced the Walker acquisition.

Cashman described Walker, one of the game’s more reliable second basemen for eight years running, as someone who “at least in the short-term is expected to come off the bench while he competes for an everyday job.” Thankfully, I had my Cashman-to-English dictionary handy, and here’s what that means: “Look, we leave the state in two weeks and he just got here, so let’s just make sure he’s good to go before we anoint him as the starting second baseman.”

The 32-year-old Walker turned more fragile during his two years with the Mets (who traded him to Milwaukee in August), so it wouldn’t be surprising if he required a visit to the disabled list, at which point the Yankees can tap into that depth. Tyler Wade still has a good chance to make the Opening Day roster, and Gleyber Torres, who has endured a rough Grapefruit League, will play every day at Triple-A Scran- ton/Wilkes-Barre — alongside Miguel Andujar, who saw his path to the majors get blocked last month when the Yankees traded for veteran third base man Brandon Drury.

For now, An dujar and Torres rank among the Yankees’ untouchable prospects. Yet stuff happens. A year ago at this time, the Yankees had zero interest in trading outfielder Dust in Fowler or pitcher James Kaprielian. Then both suffered major injuries, and both got packaged alongside Jorge Mateo in the trade-deadline deal for Oakland’s Sonny Gray.

So who’s to say? If the Yankees have a chance to get, say, young Tigers ace Michael Fulmer in July, they’d probably have to lead the package with Andujar or Torres to make it happen. Or perhaps they’d have to include one of the pair to get the Rangers to eat some of the money owed veteran Cole Hamels, whose $23.5 million salary for 2018 might not fit under the Yankees’ mandate to stay under the $197 million luxury-tax threshold, especially now that they gave Walker $4 million with another $500,000 attainable in incentives.

Those exceedingly team-friendly terms resulted from this nuclear winter for free agency, and for that, the Yankees got a guy who doesn’t strike out much (his career 17.4 whiff percentage pales in comparison to Giancarlo Stanton’s 27.7 and Aaron Judge’s 32.3), offers steady if not spectacular defense, has earned a reputation as a clubhouse leader and knows what it’s like to play in New York.

Teams need youth in these times of tougher drug testing. The Baby Bombers played a huge role in getting the Yankees all the way to Game 7 of last year’s American League Championship Series. Yet you don’t want to overdo the youth movement when you’re trying to win it all, and in Walker and Drury, the Yankees found upgrades that simultaneously make them less dependent on the kids while not blocking their longterm chances to make it here.

“These aren’t easy conversations to have,” Cashman said, “but when you’re having them, especially after all the dialogue we’ve had, as you walk through it, you can’t be afraid to ask the next question. … If you don’t ask, you might not get the result we have today.”

That result increases the likelihood of the Yankees attaining their optimal result. Even if it’ll be less of a storybook tale.