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The team with all the money and just about as many top prospects as any club did nothing at the trade deadline.
So, in effect, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman doubled down on his current squad and what is still on the internal horizon: Alex Rodriguez returning, Manuel Banuelos and Jesus Montero percolating in the minors, and either Phil Hughes or Ivan Nova going to the bullpen.
Cashman said he never got close to a trade. Not for Ubaldo Jimenez. Not for Hiroki Kuroda. Not for Heath Bell. Not for anyone.
Instead, Cashman decided a 106-game sample size was significant. The Yanks are 64-42 after trouble was forecasted following Cliff Lee’s decision to go to Philadelphia and Andy Pettitte’s retirement. The Yankees have the majors’ third-best record, are sitting on Boston’s doorstep and are 6½ games up in the wild-card race.
So Cashman did not feel desperation, though he knew his trade-deadline inactivity would trigger a new round of “the Yankees are doomed.” Cashman, in fact, feels sure the Yankees have enough depth, even in pitching, to weather the rest of the season.
Do the Yankees have an obvious No. 2 starter for the postseason? No, they do not. But the Yankees saw the Rangers win the AL title last year with a rotation much like they have now of an unquestioned ace (Cliff Lee/CC Sabathia) and then a lot of question marks. Can Bartolo Colon or Freddy Garcia or Nova do for one series what Colby Lewis did by dominating the Yankees in the ALCS last year?
The Yankees will have to hope so because the biggest issue was that there was no one clearly better available. The best was Jimenez. And the Yanks asked this question internally: If there were a Division Series Game 2 that had to be won tomorrow, would the team feel more comfortable with Bartolo Colon or Jimenez? It was not: “Who do you want for the next three years?” It was simply: “Who do you feel most confident about right now?” The answer all around the table was Colon.
So how then, Cashman reasoned, could he give up three chips he valued as much as Dellin Betances, Montero and Nova for Jimenez? Especially after the Rockies told the Yankees they could not give Jimenez a physical as part of the deal, at a time when the Yankees are worried about the righty’s health.
Betances was the most valuable of the lot because a true ace never materialized in this market. No matter how many times the Yankees called, for example, the Mariners never made Felix Hernandez available. And after that, there were, in Cashman’s words, “a lot of names that might not have the games to match.” For example, the Yanks talked to the Astros about Wandy Rodriguez. But the Astros offered to pay very little of the $25 million owed Rodriguez in 2012-13 and still were asking for good prospects. And the belief is Rodriguez will get through waivers in August, just in case the Yankees need to turn that way.
Cashman is not delusional about his rotation. He conceded that Yankees are in “no-man’s land” with Colon and Garcia. Who knows if they can keep doing what they are doing?
Still, Cashman reasoned, “I was not going to make a move because we are the Yanks and we are expected to make a move. It had to make sense and nothing made sense to us.”
If anything, this trade deadline reinforced that there are other teams trying to bust into superpower status beyond the Yankees and Red Sox, who made just two minor moves for infielder Mike Aviles and left-hander Erik Bedard though Boston had its own significant rotation worries. There is no doubt the Phillies are now unquestioned heavyweights, completing a huge July trade for the fourth straight year (costing them a total of 15 prospects), this time for Hunter Pence.
The Giants (Carlos Beltran) and Rangers (Mike Adams, Koji Uehara) also are moving up in weight class as they addressed uncertainty in the lineup and bullpen, respectively. They were all willing to do what the Yankees were not, which was expend big prospects in July to fortify their rosters.
The Yankees now will try to use their youngsters to win. Baneulos will make his Triple-A debut as a starter tomorrow, but the plan will be to bring him along quickly in hopes he usurps Boone Logan as the primary bullpen lefty. Nova or Hughes will eventually end up in the pen. Montero has heated up at Triple-A and is on the radar to come up as a catcher/DH.
Look, everyone, myself included, wanted the Yankees to use Nova or Eduardo Nunez to complete a trade for Lee last July, and if they had, who knows if the Yankees win a World Series and/or Lee falls in love with New York and signs as a free agent? But what is knowable is that those kids are now helping the Yankees. Since becoming a regular on June 14, Nunez is hitting .302 with nine steals in 36 games. For all the talk of Nunez’s defense killing them, the Yankees are 9-3 when he makes an error. Nova is 9-4 with a 4.01 ERA.
The Yankees actually have five starters with at least 90 innings and ERAs of 4.25 or lower; Texas is the only other AL team that can say that. It might not win in October, but it probably will get the Yankees there.
“We have one of the premier rosters in the game right now,” Cashman said.
That, in conjunction with trade prices he found too high and how much he likes the organization’s top prospects, moved Cashman to stand pat. He doubled down on the current group.