VETERANS WILL BE COUNTED ON
Already-strong bullpen gets boost with Chapman trade
MLB organizational reports: Yankees still lean on veterans but quietly build young core.
The New York Yankees’ vast riches come with sky-high expectations, and both the team and its fans bristle at the concept of rebuilding. So the Yankees entered 2015 with designs on contention but question marks all over the diamond, mostly in the form of aging and high-priced former free agent acquisitions coming off ineffective or injury-riddled seasons.
Then the season started, and many of those same players enjoyed resurgent seasons and good health. And while the club played its way to a American League wild-card berth — losing to Dallas Keuchel and the Houston Astros — general manager Brian Cashman subtly continued the process of acquiring and developing a new core of young players to buttress the big-ticket stars on the roster and a group fit to support the next crop of marquee Yankees superstars whenever it should come.
The success of the 2016 Yankees will still largely rest on the performance of familiar faces signed to big deals on the long side of 30. The club will count on Mark Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez and Carlos Beltran — the youngest of whom, Teixeira, will turn 36 in April — to provide a good portion of its offense. And it will hope for rejuvenated output from Jacoby Ellsbury and Chase Headley to hang with the homer-happy Toronto Blue Jays and the suddenly retooled Boston Red Sox in the AL East.
But 2015 saw the Yankees debuts of shortstop Didi Gregorius, starter Luis Severino and first baseman Greg Bird, all of whom look ready to be regular contributors at the big-league level. And in Masahiro Tanaka, Michael Pineda and Nathan Eovaldi, Cashman might have collected the bulk of a solid starting rotation on the cusp of its prime years.
Many prognosticators expected the Yankees to add another starter before the 2016 season to shore up the back end of a rotation rendered shaky by CC Sabathia’s continued decline and struggles with health, alcoholism and velocity. Instead, the Yankees made fireballing closer Aroldis Chapman the biggest acquisition of their offseason, beefing up a bullpen that already included dominant late-inning arms in Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances.
It appears the Yankees will take the approach made famous by the Kansas City
Royals, relying on a decent offense and a group of starters good enough to keep them in games through the sixth inning, then turning the ball over to a trio of nearly unhittable relievers.
And the acquisitions of solid, young big-league players such as new second baseman Starlin Castro and fourth outfielder Aaron Hicks further bolsters the new core Cashman appears intent on building, suggesting the Yankees won’t exactly crash and burn when all of their big contracts expire or their veteran players prove too old to continue contributing.
Where the Yankees stand at each position (*prospect):
Catcher: Brian McCann hit a careerhigh 26 homers in a bounce-back season in which his on-base-plus-slugging percent- age (OPS) jumped from a career-low .692 in 2014 to a respectable .756 mark. McCann has stayed healthy during his two-year tenure in pinstripes, but the Yankees have a compelling replacement option in Gary Sanchez if their starter gets hurt. Sanchez, long one of the club’s top prospects but only 23, posted a .815 OPS across Class AA and AAA play in 2015 and mashed in the Arizona Fall League. Light-hitting Austin Romine might open the season as the bigleague backup while Sanchez irons out his defensive kinks in Class AAA.
Depth chart: McCann, Romine, *Sanchez, *Sebastian Valle.
First base: Teixeira looked like he was on his last legs by the end of the 2014 season, when he returned from an injury-ruined 2013 campaign to hit .216 with a .711 OPS. In 2015, Teixeira posted a .906 OPS and enjoyed his best offensive season in five years until he went down with a shin injury in mid-August. In his absence, Bird, 23, hit nearly as well. Entering the final year of his contract, Teixeira is the incumbent and will start whenever he’s healthy. But Bird does not appear to have much more to prove in Class AAA.
Depth chart: Teixeira, Dustin Ackley, Bird.
Second base: After Stephen Drew’s dismal tenure at second base in the Bronx came to an end, Cashman found a huge upgrade in Castro. As a Chicago Cub in 2015, Castro played miserably and lost his
starting shortstop job by early August. But later that month, he took over as the team’s regular second baseman and hit well the rest of the way. If he falters in the Bronx, Ackley, a lefty-hitting utility man, likely will take some of his at-bats, especially against right-handers. Fan favorite Rob Refsnyder appears headed to Class AAA for the third consecutive season.
Depth chart: Castro, Ackley, Pete Kozma, *Refsnyder.
Third base: Headley disappointed in his first full season in the Bronx, hitting .259 with a .693 OPS in the first year of a four-year, $52 million deal. Though Headley, at 31, likely will never again be the MVP-caliber player he was for the San Diego Padres in 2012, the Yankees will give him an opportunity to return to form this season. Beyond Ackley and Kozma, they’ve got no obvious in-house replacements ready, and they’ve got Headley under control until the end of the 2018 season.
Shortstop: Didi Gregorius, in the team’s first post-Derek Jeter season, showed the Yankees what it looks like to have a superb defender at the most important defensive position. He also recovered from a rough first half offensively to hit .294 with a .762 OPS after the All-Star break. Gregorius, who will be 26 on opening day, won’t fill his predecessor’s shoes as a superstar but looks like a bright part of the Yankees’ future. Kozma, signed by the Yankees after being cut by the St. Louis Cardinals, could take over for Brendan Ryan in a defensive-specialist role.
Depth chart: Gregorius, Kozma, Donovan Solano, Jonathan Diaz, *Cito Culver.
Left field: Brett Gardner has somewhat quietly been one of the Yankees’ steadiest performers of the past half-decade, providing decent on-base percentages with great outfield defense and steals. But Gardner earned his first All-Star nod in 2015, thanks to a first half in which he posted a .861 OPS, then slumped after the break and hit .206 with a .592 OPS the rest of the way. Gardner’s batting averages on balls in play before and after the break (.363 and .247, respectively) suggest fortune played a hand in his hot start and weak finish, as his rate stats remained consistent with past performances.
Depth chart: Gardner, Hicks, Ackley, *Mason Williams, *Slade Heathcott.
Center field: Ellsbury, whom the Yankees signed to a seven-year, $153 million deal before the 2014 season, got off to a strong start in 2015, then missed 43 games with a knee injury and struggled upon his return. Ellsbury found himself benched in the Yankees’ wild-card matchup against Keuchel and the Astros, but his contract and his résumé guarantee him the starting job for 2016 and beyond. Newcomer Hicks, acquired from the Minnesota Twins in an offseason trade, appears at least a worthy fourth outfielder who can spell Ellsbury in center.
Depth chart: Ellsbury, Gardner, Hicks, *Williams.
Right fiield: At 38, Beltran is far from the elite defensive player he was in his prime, but the veteran hit well enough to justify his playing time in 2015, posting a .808 OPS on the strength of an excellent second half. In the final year of his contract in 2016, he could be playing the last season of his Hall of Fame-caliber career. He’d probably be best-suited as a full-time DH at this point, but the Yankees already have one of those. Hicks likely will see time in right when Beltran rests, with massive 6-7, 275-pound prospect Aaron Judge turning heads in Class AAA. Depth chart: Beltran, Hicks, *Judge.
Designated hitter: After sitting out all of 2014 while suspended for his role in the Biogenesis performance-enhancing-drug scandal, Rodriguez looked no worse for the time off in 2015, returning to bigleague competition to hit 33 homers with a .842 OPS. He needs only 13 homers to get to 700, a threshold that seemed out of reach at the end of the 2013 season, with his suspension looming. The Yankees will spell him with any veteran who needs a break from the field.
Depth chart: Rodriguez, Beltran, Teixeira, McCann, Headley.
Starting pitchers: Though Masahiro Tanaka, pitching through a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament, saw his average fastball velocity drop and didn’t match his rookie dominance in his sophomore season in 2015, the Japanese import maintained his impeccable control well enough to keep batters off base to limit the damage of the 25 home runs he allowed. His health will remain a question, meaning the Yankees’ best shot at an ace comes from Severino, who looked great in his first 11 big-league starts after dominating in Class AAA ball. Eovaldi and Pineda can both be frustrating, but both represent solid big-league rotation options with stuff that suggests big — if yet-unreached — upside. It’s unclear what the Yankees can hope for from veteran lefty Sabathia, who endured his third consecutive poor season in 2015 then entered alcohol rehab following the regular season.
Depth chart: RHP Tanaka, *RHP Severino, RHP Pineda, RHP Eovaldi, LHP Sabathia, RHP Ivan Nova, RHP Bryan Mitchell, *RHP Luis Cessa, *RHP Brady Lail, *LHP Chaz Hebert.
Bullpen: In Chapman, Miller and Betances, the Yankees have MLB’s 2015 leaders in strikeouts per nine innings and swing-and-miss percentage. They combined for a 1.70 EA and 347 strikeouts across 212 innings last season. In front of them, Chasen Shreve should serve as the club’s lefty specialist, with Cashman reprising his method of shuttling fresh arms back and forth to Class AAA to fill the remainder of the relief corps. The Yankees used 26 different relievers in 2015.
Depth chart: LHP Chapman, LHP Miller, RHP Betances, LHP Shreve, RHP Nova, RHP Nick Rumbelow, RHP Branden Pinder, RHP Mitchell, LHP Jacob Lindgren, LHP James Pazos, RHP Nick Goody.