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Prospect Lists and the Musings of Joel Sherman

Posted by Sean P. at 3:00 pm 16 Responses »
Jan 272011

This is the time of year where all the prospect lists start to come out and two notable compilations were posted this week. MLB.com’s list compiled by Jon Mayo came out Tuesday and Keith Law has been rolling out his work at ESPN all week.

It’s no secret that I’m not really a fan of MLB.com’s prospect list which is put together by Jon Mayo who essentially just polls scouts. Last year Montero ranked #19 which a lot of people reacted rather poorly to. This year there was a similar clamor when after many graduations from the list, Montero only moved up to #9. Here are the Yankees that popped up on Mayo’s list:

#9- Jesus Montero

#32- Gary Sanchez

#35- Manuel Banuelos

#52- Dellin Betances

Betances was included in the “just missed” category.

I tend to rely on Keith Law’s list more than others because he actually scouts these players himself. He’s also willing to ask other scouts about certain players just to get a variety of opinions or angles on a prospect. 5 Yankees made his top 100. Only Tampa Bay, Toronto and Kansas City had more players in the top 100. Below I included Law’s 2010 list just for comparison sake. Overall ranking is in parenthesis.

Law said that Austin Romine was a “just missed” guy as well and he noted there were several issues concerning his receiving skills. Personally I was pretty surprised by Banuelos at #12. Law does his rankings primarily on upside but I was still interested to see him ahead of names like Kyle Drabek and Jeremy Hellickson. McAllister’s awful year dropped him off the list completely and he’s not even on the top 10 Indians prospect list. I’ve never been a big fan of his so I was shocked by this. Stoneburner and Warren were both nice to see pop up. He also added this nugget in his Thursday chat:

Obviously that’s a real nice thing to hear.

Also on the prospect front Joel Sherman chimes in with some info about where the Yankees expect their pitching prospects to open the year.

Nothing very surprising there. Sherman does bring up an interesting scenario though about the competition for the 5th starter spot in spring training. He wonders what will happen if Banuelos or Betances really stand out in March. Given their inning limits (125 apiece), could they actually make the team? Then he stirs the pot a bit by asking what would happen if Girardi thinks Banuelos or Betances give the Yankees the best chance to win in 2011? Could he go over Cashman’s head, a la the Soriano signing, to rush them up in order to help this year?

Sherman also says that Girardi was one of the big influences pushing for the Soriano signing against Cashman’s objections. Obviously, I don’t know anything about that. I do know that the Yankees like to handle their pitching prospects delicately and this is something I’m totally behind. I would rather be conservative and keep the risk of injury as low as possible. Baseball prospects have such an unpredictable nature that I think treating them cautiously can give them the greatest chance to succeed. So I would really hope that Betances or Banuelos are not pushed into roles above their heads this year.

Yes Censorship Points To Conflict In Yankee Front Office (UPDATED: RAB Statement)

Posted by EJ Fagan at 1:00 pm 14 Responses »
Jan 272011

I’ve avoided commenting much on Moshe’s post about how YES seemed to have put pressure on two of its blogs, River Ave Blues and The Pinstripe Bible, to wait to see if anyone involved with deny it. The YES Network’s official response was “no comment”, as was the official response from both the writers at River Ave Blues and the Pinstripe Bible. That they refused to deny that something went on, in my mind, is pretty close to confirmation that something did go on.

Some bloggers, promoted by YES, said that the Rafael Soriano deal was a bad decision. They weren’t particularly vitriolic about it, they just disagreed with the signing. At the same time, Brian Cashman publicly, although politely, disagreed with the signing. He said that it was a bad idea, and very blankly stated that he had nothing to do with it. Someone else in the Yankee organization went over his head and convinced ownership to make a bad move. Welcome back to the George Steinbrenner area.

It is significant because both RAB and the Pinstripe Bible blogs say negative things about the Yankees all the time, but this has never been a problem in the past. YES, correctly, doesn’t think that it costs the Yankees one cent to have a sponsored blog dissent every once in awhile. However, the Rafael Soriano signing somehow triggered a response from someone in the hierarchy. I think that it is possible that Randy Levine is the person behind it all. Levine is the President of the New York Yankees, and had been George Steinbrenner’s chief voice in the Yankee front office. Levine was the key player in Steinbrenner’s Tampa-based decision making team in the late Torre years, but eventually lost much of his influence as Steinbrenner grew old and Brian Cashman established his autonomous control of the front office. He was reported to be the person behind the signing. He’s also known to be a bit hotheaded and temperamental.

I suspect that Randy Levine was quite sensitive that his YES-sponsored blogs were saying bad things about his signing, and by extension him, and called up to yell at someone at YES. YES responded by telling Steve Goldman to take down and then heavily edit his post, and by removing RAB from the YES site for a couple of days.

This is important because it indicates a renewed power struggle within the Yankee front office. As William notes in this post, this kind of split would be a big problem for the Yankees. Baseball teams have to make moves with a focused, long term plan in mind. A two-headed monster leading the organization will not be good in the long term, regardless of what you think of the Soriano signing. It wasn’t all that long ago that Brian Cashman had to fight Randy Levine to not trade prospects, invest more in the draft, or make important personnel decisions (Notably, Guerrero vs. Sheffield). To make matters more complicated, Brian Cashman’s contract is up after this season.

We could be in for a rocky year.

Photo Credit: John Munson/The Star-Ledger

Updated by Moshe: I just received an official statement from RAB on this issue:

“The YES Network has no editorial control over the content produced by River Ave. Blues, and at no point during our relationship has YES ever asked us to edit or remove any post we’ve published on RAB.”

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Contemplating Colon

Posted by Matt Imbrogno at 11:00 am 1 Response »
Jan 272011

The Yankees signed Bartolo Colon to a minor league deal yesterday. Like every minor league deal ever signed, I can’t find any faults with it. Yeah there were other options out there like Justin Duchscherer, but that Colon could be had on a minor league deal alleviates the Yankees of a good amount of risk. It’s damn near impossible to complain about a deal like this. It’s the definition of minimal risk, even if the possibility for reward isn’t all that great. But, that’s the point of minor league signings, right? Think of this signing–and the Mark Prior one–like you’re in a zombie apocalypse and you spot a kick-ass car that can get you out of serious trouble on an empty highway. Do you expect it to have any gas left in the tank? Probably not. But if it has enough to get you out of harm’s way for a bit, you’ll be pumped. We should expect nothing out of Colon and Mark Prior, but we should still be hopeful that they can give the team something.

The role that Bartolo will take is pretty obvious and we can safely assume that Colon will spend the season in Scranton but like we would after any signing of a pitcher capable of starting this offseason, we have to ask, “Is this guy better than Sergio Mitre?”

Colon last pitched major innings in 2005, when he threw 222.2 innings. In the years since, Colon has thrown just 345.9 innings across the majors and minors, including a big fat doughnut hole in 2010. From 2006-2010, Sergio Mitre has thrown 372.5 total innings, missing all of the 2008 season. So each guy has had his share of injury issues. Because of the small samples of innings they’ve thrown, it’s not very telling to look at their stats, but we could mine something out of there.

We know Sergio Mitre is a groundball machine, but he still gives up too many homers and doesn’t strike a lot of guys out. Even with the injury troubles, Colon has shown good control, with his 2009 BB/9 mark of 3.03 (in 62.1 innings) as the highest since a 3.61 mark in 2001 with the Indians. His strikeouts, though, have dipped and he’s always been a bit homer prone (1.11 career HR/9). His groundball rate is also “meh” at 41.0%.

I’m really stretching here–or at least vainly trying to–by merely suggesting Colon could maybe/possibly be better than Sergio Mitre. Chances are that he’d be (at best) equal to Mitre at the Major League level in 2010. They’re about a wash in terms of profiles, but Mitre has the big advantage in that he actually pitched last year.

There is no plan to move Derek to CF

Posted by Steve S. at 7:00 am No Responses »
Jan 272011

DJ-"I got it" BG-"No! I got it" DJ-"NO! I GOT IT!"

For the past few days, the MSM and interwebs have been abuzz by a comment that Yankee GM Brian Cashman made at the WFAN breakfast on Tuesday. You would think that Brian said something really interesting, really decisive. Something that Yankee fans and baseball fans have been holding their collective breath about some big star player, and Brian finally cleared things up with a declarative statement. But he didn’t. In reality, he did nothing of the sort.

First, the context. The question was asked by an audience member if Derek will remain at shortstop for the entire 4 years of his newly minted contract. Mike Francesa immediately followed up with “what about moving Derek to third?” which is something he’s often discussed on his radio show. Brian said that he’s heard Mike discuss that on his show (long time listener, first time caller) but doesn’t like the idea of Derek on third. He recounted how in the late Don Mattingly years, the Yanks had Mattingly at first base and Wade Boggs at third. Those who remember his career will recall that a 1990 back injury had sapped Donnie of much of his power in his later years. Boggs of course, was the quintessential ‘slap hitter’ of the late 80s and early 90s who averaged 5-8 HRs most of his career (1987 notwithstanding). So from 1993-95 there were two key positions (1B/3B) where most teams expect to get some power where the Yanks were getting little. Brian said “That killed us, then we went and got Tino and (won in 1996)” Mike interjected “So where do you see Derek going? ” Brian took a deep breath, looked up at the ceiling and said “. . . more likely the outfield. ” Mike asked “Left?” Brian said “Well, we have Brett Gardner there”. Both Brian and Mike went on for a minute or so kicking around the idea after that, but Brian said nothing definitive. Brian was clearly thinking on his feet and answering a hypothetical question. One that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time to me, and there was no audible reaction from the audience, either. If anything surprised me, it was how little thought Brian appeared to have given to the subject.

Next, Brian said earlier at that same event that Derek is their SS next year, and for the foreseeable future. He doesn’t view Eduardo Nunez as a replacement, so its not as if they have his successor in house. So the really interesting question for me is what do they do with Derek when they find a replacement? He doesn’t profile as a DH, or as a corner outfielder. He’s under contract for 4 more years. Nobody envisions him remaining at SS for the whole 4 years, yet nobody knows what to do with him once he’s moved off the position. That’s where I think this gets really interesting, especially since Derek has long been a player who loathes spending any time whatsoever on the bench. He hates taking days off when he’s hurt, how’s he going to react when he’s healthy? But the MSM all too often steers clear of things that are thought provoking or interesting, opting instead for non-stop sensationalism.

Tyler Kepner caught up with Brian last night at a charity event, and Brian had this to say about his comments:

“At the breakfast yesterday I didn’t think I was saying anything that was newsworthy.

“All I can do is explain myself as well as I can and, hey, this is what I was talking about, this is what I meant. I didn’t think it was a big issue. I’ve been in that position before. Who’s going to replace Mariano Rivera as the closer? Is it Joba, it is Hughes? When Randy Johnson was here, can Randy Johnson be a closer? You know, all those different questions but for some reason when that comes around with the shortstop it becomes a really crazy loud story.

“I did talk to Casey Close. He asked, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ because they were receiving a lot of calls. I haven’t talked to Derek and I explained everything to him (Close). Hopefully I sufficed. As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing to explain.”

As someone who was there, I agree completely. It was an off the cuff remark that has generated 2 straight days media coverage. Why? Because it involves a big star in Derek Jeter, which attracts attention for media outlets whether or not the story deserves it. In context, it was really no big deal.

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