- Yankees pitching prospect Deivi Garcia has been moved to the bullpen for Triple-A Scranton-Wilkes Barre, according to Connor Foley of the Scranton Times-Tribune. While the organization has not given an explicit explanation for the move, it seems likely that it’s motivated by one of two things: most likely, the Yankees are limiting the workload for Garcia, who is just 20 years old and has already eclipsed 100 innings pitched for the season, a threshold that he never reached prior to 2019; or, less likely, the team is preparing Garcia for the role he would have in the Majors as a potential September call-up. The club has taken a similar course of action in the past with Justus Sheffield and Chance Adams, though both were further along in their development than Garcia.
Yankees Rumors
Yankees Reportedly Set To Sign Trevor Rosenthal
The Yankees are set to sign free agent reliever Trevor Rosenthal to a minor league deal, according to a tweet from MLB Daily Dish’s Andersen Pickard later backed up by Jon Heyman of MLB Network (Twitter links). The veteran elected free agency on August 10th after being designated for assignment by the Tigers organization.
Rosenthal, if nothing else, has certainly bolstered his frequent flyer accounts this year, as New York will represent his third organization of the 2019 season. Rosenthal’s signing of a one-year, $7MM deal with Washington was intended to bolster the D.C. relief corps with veteran experience, but the 29-year-old righty was thoroughly shellacked (22.74 ERA) in 6.1 innings in a Nats uni before being released on June 23rd. The Tigers then signed him on June 29th, perhaps hoping that his early-season struggles were just signs of rust understandable for a pitcher who had sat out the 2018 season in rehabilitation from Tommy John surgery. Those hopes were dashed over 9 summer innings, as Rosenthal again allowed nearly more walks (11) than strikeouts (12).
Perhaps Rosenthal can find a remedy for his struggles working in the New York organization. Though this deal is reported as being of the minors variety, it stands to reason that, with the end of the minor league schedule just weeks away, this signing is likely a precursor to Rosenthal’s late-season integration into the Yankees bullpen mix. For several reasons, there are worse gambles for Yankees GM Brian Cashman to make at this juncture in the season.
After all, Rosenthal is still youthful, and formerly effective. The last time we saw him pitch a full season, Rosenthal threw 47 2/3 innings of 3.40 ERA ball with a career-high 14.3 K/9 against 3.8 BB/9 for the 2017 Cardinals. Walks have always been a bugaboo for the Missouri native, with a career 4.5 BB/9 rate that is truly anxiety-inducing in a late-inning reliever, but his 12.0 career K/9 rating helps explain how a pitcher with that weakness could wind up stranding more than his fair share of runners. If the Yankees recent run of success with scrap heap vets is any indication, it may not be the strangest development of the 2019 season to see Rosenthal regain some of his old St. Louis form in New York.
Yankees Place Thairo Estrada On IL, Recall Tyler Wade
10:18 am: Estrada suffered the injury running the bases in yesterday’s game, manager Aaron Boone tells Bryan Hoch of MLB.com (via Twitter).
10:06 am: The Yankees announced today they have placed infielder Thairo Estrada on the 10-day injured list with a right hamstring strain. Utiltyman Tyler Wade is up from Triple-A Scranton Wilkes-Barre to take his place.
Estrada, 23, made his MLB debut in April. He’s been up-and-down from Scranton all year, totaling his first 61 MLB plate appearances. Regarded generally as a utility prospect, Estrada’s .266/.313/.452 line in Triple-A is unremarkable. It was encouraging to see him healthy until today, though, as he lost most of 2018 after being shot in a robbery attempt in his native Venezuela after the 2017 season.
Wade’s ridden the Scranton-New York shuttle multiple times over the past three seasons. The 24 year-old has put up a .177/.250/.257 line (37 wRC+) in the big leagues, although he’s never gotten an extended run to get into a rhythm. Instead, he’s mostly spent time in Triple-A, where he’s hit fairly well and stolen a few bases but never shown enough power to play his way into the Bronx full-time.
Yankees Activate CC Sabathia From IL
As expected, the Yankees announced they have activated left-hander CC Sabathia from the 10-day injured list. He’ll start today’s series finale against Cleveland after missing around three weeks with right knee inflammation.
It hasn’t been a banner final season for the 39 year-old, who has been especially plagued by the league’s home run surge. Sabathia’s 2.39 HR/9 is by far the worst mark of his career. While a career-worst 38% ground ball rate surely plays some part in that, an unsustainably high 21.1% HR/FB rate has contributed to that whiplash. Sabathia’s strikeouts (21.1%) and walks (7.7%) in 2019 are identical to those he put up in 2018, when he gave New York a 3.65 ERA over 153 innings.
Sabathia’s a back-end starter at this point, clearly, but it’d still be nice for the Yankees to get some volume from him down the stretch. The Bombers have ridden a power lineup and stellar bullpen to a league-best 83-42 record despite a mediocre rotation.
Luke Voit Expects To Start Triple-A Rehab Aug. 22
- Yankees first baseman Luke Voit expects to start a Triple-A rehab assignment Thursday, per Jack Curry of the YES Network. Voit has been dealing with core issues since late June, which have forced him to the injured list multiple times and could’ve ended his season. Now, though, Voit “feels he’s in the clear,” Curry writes. He hasn’t suited up for the Yankees in almost three weeks, and they’ve turned to DJ LeMahieu and Mike Ford at first in the absences of Voit and fellow injured Bomber Edwin Encarnacion.
Outrighted: Yacabonis, Mantiply, Lail
Let’s catch up on a few announcements regarding players who have been outrighted after clearing waivers …
- The Orioles announced that righty Jimmy Yacabonis is destined for Triple-A after clearing. He had struggled in a 41-inning showcase this year, managing only a 5.40 ERA with 7.2 K/9 against 5.3 BB/9. Yacabonis has produced similar numbers in parts of two prior seasons in the majors.
- A pair of hurlers are heading to the Yankees’ top affiliate via outright assignment. Southpaw Joe Mantiply struggled in his lone outing with the Yanks after being acquired from the Reds. That was his first time in the bigs since a brief 2016 debut. Righty Brady Lail also lost his 40-man spot after a single MLB appearance. He has worked to a 2.79 ERA with 11.8 K/9 and 2.8 BB/9 over 42 minor-league frames this year.
Brian Cashman On Domingo German's Workload
- Yankees righty Domingo German has thrown 120 innings between the majors and minors this year, putting him on pace to eclipse the professional-high 123 2/3 he amassed in 2017. The starter-needy, World Series hopeful Yankees are unlikely to limit German’s workload, though, in part because he missed three weeks earlier this season with a hip flexor strain, George A. King III of the New York Post writes. “There are no innings limits when you are in October. All safeties are off,” general manager Brian Cashman said, adding that German “already has had a timeout.” The 24-year-old German has been one of the top options in a shaky New York rotation this season, having pitched to a 3.96 ERA/4.64 FIP with 9.62 K/9 and 2.02 BB/9 over 116 MLB frames.
Yankees Sign Tyler Lyons
The Yankees have signed left-hander Tyler Lyons to a minor league contract and assigned him to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, per Conor Foley of the Scranton Times-Tribune (Twitter link). He’s the second veteran reliever the club has added on a minor league deal this week and the third veteran piece of bullpen depth the club has picked up overall. New York inked righty David Hernandez to a minor league contract two days ago and also claimed right-hander Ryan Dull off waivers from the Giants this week.
Lyons, 30, was released by the Pirates earlier this week but has posted strong numbers in Triple-A in 2019: a 3.35 ERA (3.46 FIP) with 10.8 K/9, 3.2 BB/9, 0.79 HR/9 and a 39.8 percent ground-ball rate in 45 2/3 innings. He made three big league appearances with Pittsburgh as well but was tagged for five runs in four innings during that time.
Not long ago, Lyons was a reliable bullpen option for the Cardinals. The lefty logged 162 innings with a 3.33 ERA, 9.7 K/9 and 2.7 BB/9 from 2015-17 out of the St. Louis bullpen. His best season, in 2017, saw Lyons put together a 2.83 ERA and a near-identical 2.86 FIP to go along with a career-best 30.9 percent strikeout rate (11.33 K/9).
With that being his third straight quality season in the Majors, Lyons looked to have established himself as a go-to reliever for the Cardinals. However, his 2018 campaign was shortened by back and elbow issues, and the Cards cut him loose in what looked at the time to be a potentially hasty DFA that summer after a total of just 16 innings. Lyons went unclaimed on waivers, though, and took a minor league pact with Pittsburgh this offseason. He’ll now hope to pitch his way back to the big leagues in the Bronx. He’d technically be arbitration-eligible for another two seasons if he impresses the Yankees’ front office, though he’d need a quick call to the big leagues and a very strong showing to convince the club to tender him a contract this winter.
Brian Cashman Reflects On Gio Urshela Acquisition
Even though the Yankees had 2018 AL Rookie of the Year runner-up Miguel Andujar manning third base, surprise abounded when they didn’t aggressively pursue free agent Manny Machado in the offseason. Plenty has changed for those two players since then. Machado took a 10-year, $300MM offer from the Padres and has gone on to post a solid but unspectacular season. Andujar, meanwhile, amassed just 49 plate appearances – during which a shoulder injury limited him to a disastrous .128/.143/.128 line – before undergoing season-ending surgery in mid-May.
The lack of Machado and Andujar could have made the hot corner a black hole for this year’s Yankees, but the position has unexpectedly been a significant strength. Once-anonymous third baseman Gio Urshela is one of many Yankees who have come from nowhere to flourish, thus helping the club to a major league-best 81-42 record.
Urshela joined the Yankees in what looked like a minor trade with the division-rival Blue Jays last August. New York parted with cash considerations for Urshela, whom Toronto had just designated for assignment. It was understandable that the Blue Jays (and the Indians before them) gave up on Urshela. After all, at the time the Jays sent him to the Yankees, Urshela was just a .225/.274/.315 major league hitter over 499 plate appearances. He wasn’t exactly a force in the minors, either.
Despite the less-than-stellar pro track record Urshela once had, general manager Brian Cashman explained to Mike Mazzeo of Yahoo Sports this week that the club “had been trying to acquire him for awhile. We daydreamed about him being a very versatile utility player. We loved his glove. We were very fortunate that we ran into him at the proper time of his development.” Cashman admitted, though, that “nobody thought Gio would be this guy” and “no one expected him to be Manny Machado.”
If the Yankees had splurged on Machado over the winter, they wouldn’t have complained had he opened his Bronx tenure with a .337/.379/.585 batting line, 18 home runs and 3.1 fWAR in 364 PA. Amazingly, that’s the production they’ve received this season from the 27-year-old Urshela, whom the Yankees re-signed to a minor league deal during the winter. His offensive output since then has been an astounding 50 percent better than that of the typical MLB hitter, according to FanGraphs’ wRC+ metric. Urshela ranks eighth in the league in that category among batters with 350-plus PA, sandwiched between Anthony Rendon and Fernando Tatis Jr.
Whether Urshela can continue to handle opposing pitchers to this extent is rightly in question, though there are encouraging signs. Thanks to help from Triple-A Scranton hitting coach Phil Plantier, Urshela’s “staying through his legs more,” said Cashman, who added Urshela has also gotten stronger. Cashman believes those factors have“created a whole new dynamic.”
After entering the year with a nonthreatening .090 isolated power figure, the stronger Urshela has put up an imposing .248 mark this season. He hasn’t had to sell out for it with more strikeouts, having fanned in only 15.9 percent of plate trips and swung and missed at an above-average 10.4 percent clip. With an 81.3 percent contact rate, Urshela sits 5 percent better than average in that regard. His ability to consistently put the bat on the ball has helped offset a paltry walk rate (5.5 percent), and Statcast is mostly buying into Urshela’s enormous uptick in meaningful contact. He ranks toward the top of the league in hard-hit rate (75th percentile), average exit velocity (87th), expected slugging percentage (91st) and expected batting average (98th). Urshela’s also in the 91st percentile in expected weighted on-base average, owning a .382 mark that isn’t a great distance from his real wOBA (.403).
The Yankees may have found a bargain gem in Urshela, who’s on a minimum salary this year and still has three seasons of arbitration eligibility. Come 2020, the presences of Urshela and what should be a healthy Andujar ought to make for an intriguing setup. Having battled a litany of injuries to key players this year, the Yankees will likely be thrilled to have the depth.
Latest On Giancarlo Stanton
- Yankees manager Aaron Boone and GM Brian Cashman both believe Giancarlo Stanton will be ready to return sometime in September, and the slugger himself told reporters (including MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch) that he hopes to get “a few weeks of at-bats before October.” Those at-bats could come in the form of simulated games or minor league games, however, as Stanton has yet to be cleared for on-field activity. A variety of injuries have limited Stanton to just nine games, making it a “brutal” season that has only been salvaged by the Yankees’ success. “That’s what’s kept it not so bad for me, is to watch everyone bring together wins all different ways….That’s what I’ve been focusing on, not ’poor me’ or all that stuff,” Stanton said.
