Good afternoon everyone, it’s time to dive back into the mailbag and answer some of your questions. Remember to send in your questions for our weekly call by e-mail to pinstripealleyblog [at] gmail [dot] com.
Michael G. asks: The Reds seem to be falling out of the race. Would Stephenson make some some sense? He’s a free agent at year end and healthy.
Advertisement
Stephenson would, and right now I’d say he’s the fallback option if the Yankees can’t pry Ryan Jeffers or Hunter Goodman away from Minnesota or Colorado. It’s not a priority pick, because Stephenson’s offensive capacity is nowhere close to those two with just an 86 wRC+ this season, but when you compare that to what the Yankees have gotten out of their catchers it’s still an upgrade. The main reason that Stephenson could end up in pinstripes though is that the Rockies have been hesitant to include Goodman in trade talks because they see him as a building block towards getting out of the gutter, while the Twins have managed to stay in the playoff race despite hovering around .500 basically the whole season. Things could shift on either front, but if they both stand firm and the Yankees end up with neither of them then Stephenson becomes an option that the team more readily considers.
Darth_Lazarus asks: Given he’s had a month or so adjustment period before he starts hitting with every promotion, does it make sense to contemplate bringing up Lombard? Assuming he’d come up around the deadline would he have time to be ready for playoff pitching?
There’s been plenty of speculation about whether George Lombard Jr. will see the field in the Bronx this year, fueled in equal parts by his strong rise through the organization’s minor leagues as well as the lack of enthusiasm for the current shortstop options in José Caballero and Anthony Volpe. I think I’d be more gung-ho about the potential of Lombard making an impact on this year’s title hunt if he hadn’t gotten injured and missed the last month of playing time, because it looked like he’d turned a corner on Triple-A pitching and was starting to put the pieces together. Now he’ll need to get back into the rhythm again and absolutely rake in a short period of time to warrant a shot with enough time to adjust to the major league level, but to his credit his rehab games in Rookie ball have already gone swimmingly with a pair of homers in as many games. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, but it’s also a pretty significant gamble to mess with the development time of the organization’s top prospect when there are questions still to be answered about his contact rate that could cause major issues against major leaguers.
While there’s a narrow window for this timeline to work out, at the very least it’s not one inhibited by the Trade Deadline. The Yankees won’t be going out to get a shortstop from another team, and it’s also not likely that they’ll be looking for infield help anywhere that could impact this situation. Caballero and Volpe may not be inspiring choices to stick in the starting lineup, but they’re also far from the biggest problem with this roster — both are hitting to a 95 wRC+, just a shade below average in an offense that’s been far more feast or famine elsewhere, and while I sympathize with people who just simply have Anthony Volpe Fatigue at this point due to the occasional boneheaded play his defense overall has looked much closer to his first couple of seasons than his terrible play last year. The onus is on Lombard to impress enough to make his way onto the roster rather than an outright need that has to be addressed here and now, and if he does then there’s a world where his high ceiling plays a part in New York’s October baseball lasting longer than a week or so.
Advertisement
BetweenthePinstripes asks: Has the league shifted towards being more aggressive with promoting younger prospects to the big leagues? If so, are there (relatively) new financial incentives for teams to accelerate a prospect’s development?
We’re sticking with Volpe as the topic here for a minute, as this question was asked in tandem to a response that Derek Jeter had over the All-Star break when asked about the Yankee shortstop. You can read the full comments that Jeter gave here, but I’ll highlight the ones that were pulled out for this question in particular.
“I think as a young player, it’s obvious the Yankees have made a commitment to Anthony….They’re committed to allowing him to continue developing at the major league level. At times, fans get frustrated watching that, but every player goes through it. Every player has gone through bumps in the road. Most of the time, those bumps happen in the minor leagues….It’s tough to go through growing pains at the major league level.“
There are new incentives for top prospects in particular, namely the Prospect Promotion Incentive baked into the last CBA that prompts teams to start promising rookies right away on their Opening Day rosters instead of stashing them in the minors long enough to earn another year of control over their contracts. The return is that they’ll be rewarded with a draft pick if said players win Rookie of the Year or finish in the top three for an MVP or Cy Young Award before they become arbitration-eligible.
The Yankees have not gotten lucky enough to qualify for these picks, though you could argue that this clause in the CBA has still brought about a wave of teams leaning on prospects earlier than expected as the team brought up Cam Schlittler midway through last year and had Ben Rice debut midseason the year before that despite not having had significant time spent down in the minors. Neither one of those players were considered to be contenders to become the players they are now, but they got their shot because the team wasn’t as concerned with holding out for team control as much as they were seeking help for a sudden hole the team needed to fill. It could’ve easily been a journeyman fill-in or a Triple-A mainstay that could’ve been elevated for the starts needed at the time, and that would’ve been the old Yankees’ operating procedure, but the door is more open now than it felt a decade ago. Whether that constitutes a faster pace than there has ever been or if it’s just a course correction from how conservative teams have been with prospects prior to the past few years is a different conversation, but there’s definitely been a notable enough shift.
Read the full article here
