YANKEES ADMIT IT’S OK TO LOSE
And by doing that, New York won big this trading season
Dealing outfielder Carlos Beltran seemed all but an inevitability after the New York Yankees traded relievers Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller.
But until a couple of weeks ago, it remained unclear if the Yankees would be willing to be sellers with the club on the fringes of contention and with club ownership reputedly still set on trying to win every season, regardless of the likelihood of it actually happening.
The Yankees, sitting at .500 entering Monday, essentially punted a 2016 season in which they never looked poised to contend. With an aging roster full of expensive and injury-prone veterans, the Yankees didn’t have the horses or financial flexibility to hang with the Baltimore Orioles, Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox in the American League East (or the wild-card hunt).
Now, thanks to their flurry of deadline activity, the Yankees can boast perhaps the best farm system in baseball and a clear path toward creating a sustainable winner as soon as 2018. Of the players they traded, only Miller was signed beyond this season, and neither Chapman nor Beltran appeared to be an obvious candidate to reject a $16.7 million qualifying offer and net a draft pick in return. And by trading the trio, they brought back highly touted outfield prospect Clint Frazier from the Cleveland Indians, highly touted infield prospect Gleyber Torres from the Chicago Cubs and an array of promising young arms and potential future big-league contributors.
No prospect is ever guaranteed to pan out, but bulking up on them increases the chance one or many of them does. By all accounts, it represents a tremendous haul for general manager Brian Cashman in his efforts to rebuild the club and should provide the Yankees a good core of young, cost-controlled major league players in plenty of time to complement what seems like an inevitable spending spree during a 2018 offseason set to be loaded with superstar free agents.
About that: Bryce Harper is set for the open market after the 2017 season, as are Josh Donaldson, Jose Fernandez, Andrew McCutchen and, if he opts out of his current contract, Clayton Kershaw. The Yankees, meanwhile, will get Mark Teixeira and CC Sabathia off their books after this season, and Alex Rodriguez will be gone from their payroll after 2017.
The Yankees will soon have a lot of money to spend and, if just a few members of their new wealth of prospects pan out, a good crop of players to ensure they won’t need to spread that money to all nine positions. By finally admitting it’s OK to lose, the Yankees won big this trading season.