Bombers trade from deep well of young talent

In dipping into that farm system to pull off two major trades, Cashman gave up less than what he got back for his veterans a year ago. Gleyber Torres, Clint Frazier and Justus Sheffield, the top prizes from last summer’s Chapman and Miller trades, are still Yankees, as are most of the other top names in their farm system.

“We traded upper-tier talent,” Cashman told reporters following the Gray deal. “But we’re deeper than most. Our number 9 through 13 (prospects) are the equivalent of someone else’s one through six.”

Supremacy in the American League this summer appears to be up for grabs, with the Houston Astros (entering Tuesday’s games), at 69-36 holding by far the league’s best record, suddenly facing big questions about their pitching depth and strangely failing to do much about it at the trade deadline.

Beyond them, in the next tier, the Yankees (57-47) did the most to improve their roster at the trade deadline — more than the Boston Red Sox (58-49), their closest pursuers in the East, and the Central’s Cleveland Indians (57-47) and Kansas City Royals (55-49). All of them are scary in different ways, but as the regular season enters its final third, none appear as loaded as the Yankees.

But the Yankees’ trades were as much about 2018 and 2019, and beyond, as they were about 2017.

Of the players acquired in those two big July deals, only Frazier is a free agent at the end of this season. Robertson is under club control through 2018, Gray through 2019, and Kahnle through 2020. Best of all, those three combined will cost the Yankees only about US$22 million in 2018, keeping the franchise on track to meet its goal of getting under the luxury-tax threshold of $197 million next season.

Future off-seasons are likely to find the Yankees back to being the big-time free agent predators they were in winters past, with their targets potentially including Japanese superstar Shohei Otani, the two-way ace/slugger who could become available as early as this winter, and/or Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, the twin prizes of what is expected to be an epochal free agent class after the 2018 season.

It has been two years since the Yankees’ last playoff appearance, five years since their last division title and eight years since their last World Series championship. But in the wake of two trades that have recast both their present and their future, it is clear the Yankees are back to being the Yankees again.

Sonny Gray