The Yankees Near Silence at the Trade Deadline Was Appropriate

The trade deadline has come and gone, the Yankees did virtually nothing, and I applaud them for that. Brian Cashman realized it would have been a pointless exercise and a waste of prospects. Oh, and to back up Cashman’s decision, they conveniently lost two of three to the Rays at the stadium. This season is close to being over, but I won’t be stopping here at Pinstripe People. Onward we go.

As I wrote the other day, the best thing the Yankees could have done at the MLB trade deadline was nothing, though I seriously doubted that Brian Cashman would swallow his pride and admit that the team he put together for 2023 is an utter failure and not worth trying to add pieces to for a push to the playoffs.

Stubbornly, he probably still believes there’s going to be a postseason for the Yankees, though most of us probably realize that isn’t happening, and even if they do somehow get in, it will be a short and likely ugly stay.

So, color me surprised that Cashman stayed out of the frenzy Tuesday with the exception of two low-level trades for pitchers, neither of whom cost anything of value. Honestly, these looked like trades Cashman made just so that the Yankees would avoid being the only team in MLB to not make at least one. Both happened in the final 15 minutes before the deadline.

The one addition, righty Keynan Middleton who came from the White Sox, might be serviceable. He has a 3.96 ERA in 36.1 innings with 47 strikeouts and 16 walks, so he’s the kind of reliever you bring in early if a starter falters which has become a trend with guys like Luis Severino and Carlos Rodon. That deal - for a rental player who becomes a free agent at season’s end - cost them a 21-year-old pitcher named Juan Carela who hasn’t yet pitched above High-A.

The other nobody they picked up for cash considerations from the Rangers was 27-year-old righty Spencer Howard, a former second-round pick of the Phillies in 2017 who has flamed out with them and the Rangers as his career ERA is 7.20 across 38 appearances. Scranton sounds like the place for him.

Naturally, Cashman didn’t say that this season is going nowhere; he had to at least give the illusion that he still thinks this team, as presently constructed, can turn things around and find its way to October. But he did say their position is not enviable.

“We’re here because we’ve played poorly,” Cashman said. “We underperformed in some cases and had some bad injuries. That’s why we’re at where we’re at right now. We were counting on more. So if those are decisions that fall on me, they’re on me. You’d rather be obviously in a more defined spot where we’d be 3 ½ games up in the postseason or 10 games back. It’d give you a clearer picture, but that’s not where we’ve put ourselves.”

Hence, the do-nothing approach because the Yankees were stuck in that limbo - not good enough to add, not quite bad enough to blow it all up. Though let’s be honest here, there’s no way he could have blown it all up because no one would even want most of the guys that would constitute a blow up: The players that really need to go - Severino, DJ LeMahieu, Anthony Rizzo, Giancarlo Stanton, and Josh Donaldson - are all untradable.

“We could have taken a wrecking ball to it, but I honestly felt based on the opportunities that presented themselves that that didn’t make any sense whatsoever,” Cashman said.

As I said, I’m fine with this approach. The Yankees have to change the way they do business and not depleting the farm system every year at the deadline is one way to do it. They have to start doing a much better job of signing prospects, developing them, and getting them to the major leagues, but they can’t ever do it because the roster is always weighed down by over-the-hill and overpaid veterans who block the way.

I could continue on here, but what I’d like to do is provide this link to Joel Sherman’s column in the New York Post which absolutely nails the Yankees’ sad situation. It’s why Sherman is one of the best baseball writers in the business. I could not possibly have said it any better than he does in this column. Just click here, then come back for the rest of the newsletter.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/01/yankees-terrible-mlb-trade-deadline-was-years-in-the-making

Here are my observations on the three games against the Rays.

July 31: Rays 5, Yankees 1

➤ If Cashman was still waffling on what to do, this last game before the deadline probably cemented his strategy. I guess this will forever be known as “The Armpit Game” and not because it stunk worse than a marathoner’s underarms at the end of 26.2 miles. What in the living hell is going on over there at One East 161st Street in the Bronx?

➤ Domingo German - more on him later - was supposed to start, but he felt pain in his armpit for a couple days, so Monday afternoon they scratched him and announced Jhony Brito as the starter. OK, whatever. But then some strange shit started happening. German met with the team doctor and said he was feeling better. This was around two hours before first pitch, plenty of time for him to go through his normal game day routine and make the start. Yet for some reason, the Yankees decided to stick with Brito and use German in relief if need be. What? In yet another big game against a division rival, their choice was to go with Brito over German?

➤ Well, how did that turn out? Brito gave up four home runs in four innings and put the Yankees in an insurmountable 5-1 hole, especially with Tyler Glasnow dominating their pea shooter of a lineup. Only then did Aaron Boone go to German who proceeded to pitch five scoreless, two-hit innings. Gee, maybe had they not been such idiots, German could have done that in the first five innings of the game and maybe they would have had a chance to win. “We just didn’t feel like we could risk sending him out there and then if we had to pull the plug in the first inning or something, (it would) put us in a tough situation,” Boone said.

➤ I guess no one thought that if German started and did have to come out, they had Brito ready to eat those innings, which is essentially what they did anyway, only backwards. It was just another chapter in a season that has been filled with buffoonery at every turn.

➤ As for the game, here’s all you need to know: Brito was brutal as he gave up homers to Brandon Lowe, Wander Franco, Isaac Paredes and Josh Lowe, and the Yankees offense was again anemic. They managed three hits, one being a solo homer by Jake Bauers, and struck out 12 times, giving them 30 in the last two games, the highest total ever in a two-game span for a franchise that is 120 years old.

BOX SCORE

Aug. 1: Rays 5, Yankees 2

➤ With all the angst over deadline day removed and the fact that everyone still had a roster spot when the buzzer sounded an hour before first pitch, you would have thought the Yankees would have come out with a little pep in their step. Instead, they were yet again miserably inept and had only three hits through eight shutout innings before a meaningless two-run, four-hit rally in the ninth.

➤ Zach Eflin, like Glasnow the night before, just owned the Yankees. Six shutout innings where all he yielded were singles to Aaron Judge and Isiah Kiner-Falefa and a double to Bauers. Finally in the ninth, with no chance of winning, the Yankees rose up as Bader and Gleyber Torres doubled, then Rizzo and LeMahieu singled to make it 5-2. Here, Boone called on Stanton to pinch hit as the tying run and predictably, he struck out on four pitches, dropping him to 3-for-40 lifetime as a pinch hitter.

➤ Carlos Rodon disappointed once again. He needed an absurd 97 pitches to complete four innings, after which the Yankees were trailing 4-0. He gave up an RBI double to Manuel Margot in the second that had been preceded by two damaging walks, and then in the fourth he got dinged for a solo homer by Yandy Diaz and a two-run shot by Randy Arozarena that put the game hopelessly out of reach. Rodon has made five starts and three have been lousy. His ERA is now 6.29 and his average game score - the metric I talked about a couple weeks back - is 45 which, I’ll remind you, is not good. His 1.25 strikeout to walk ratio is terrible.

➤ Too bad he didn’t do his job because for the second night in a row the Yankees bullpen turned in five solid innings. This time it was one-run relief on two hits and three walks, most of that damage coming against Ian Hamilton in the fifth, but with no offense it didn’t matter.

BOX SCORE

Aug. 2: Yankees 7, Rays 2

➤ The night sure got off to an awful start. Cashman came out and announced that German will be leaving the team for the rest of the year to undergo treatment for alcohol abuse. German’s career has been one of the wildest rides of any Yankee I can remember. An 81-game suspension for a domestic abuse situation, his 10-game suspension for being caught with a foreign substance earlier this year, periods of very good pitching topped by a perfect game in late June, and some awful pitching, too. Now this.

➤ “It’s a very serious issue that affects way too many people, unfortunately,” Cashman said, offering that the 30-year-old has dealt with alcohol problems in the past and that something happened Tuesday night which led to this decision. “Hopefully the steps that are being taken today will really benefit him for the remaining part of his life because it’s a very serious problem that you need to address head on. These treatment places are significant steps, hopefully towards helping him get the tools to solve it.”

➤ Then the game started and Gerrit Cole walked Diaz and gave up a long two-run homer to Franco so two batters into the game it was 2-0. I tweeted “Ballgame over.” Ordinarily I would have been right, but Cole was outstanding the rest of the way and his teammates actually found some offense and turned it into a rare easy win. Cole gave up only two more hits, one more walk, and struck out eight. It was his 19th start permitting three earned runs or fewer. What a great season, and what a waste in a season like this.

➤ Hey, the Yankees hit the ball. After amassing just 10 hits in the first two games they had 13 in this one, the big blows coming in a five-run third inning against Shane McClanahan, one of the best pitchers in MLB who once again had a curiously bad night against one of the worst offensive teams. In two starts against the Yankees this year his ERA is 10.13. Harrison Bader doubled and Anthony Volpe hit a two-run homer to start what became just the second three-hit game of his rookie season. Then IKF and Torres singled, and Stanton shocked the world by hitting a three-run homer to right to make it 5-2.

➤ Thanks to Cole it was a cruise from there as the Rays looked a little disinterested in this game after having already clinched the series. The Yankees tacked on two runs in the seventh as Stanton had a bloop RBI single and Torres scored on the back end of a double steal when Franco dropped the throw to second as the Rays tried to throw out pinch runner Greg Allen. For Stanton, it was just his second four-RBI game of the season.

➤ IKF had a nice night batting leadoff. He was on base twice and scored both times, and he threw two runners out at second base from left field, though on both plays the Rays’ runners made terrible decisions to try to stretch singles into doubles. On both, Torres made nice tags.

BOX SCORE

 ➤ Aug. 1, 1941: Joe Trimble’s lead in his Daily News story perfectly summed up Lefty Gomez’s afternoon at Yankee Stadium on this day 82 years ago. Trimble wrote: “Lefty Gomez, who has always had a flair for doing things the goofy way, pitched a real whacky game against St. Louis at the stadium.”

Yeah, whacky is one way to describe to it. Another way might be to call it the worst complete game shutout in the history of MLB. Against the last-place Browns, Gomez gave up five hits and an astonishing 11 walks, setting a record for most free passes in a shutout.

The Browns had runners on base in all nine innings including multiple runners in six innings, but they somehow never scored. In leaving 15 men on base, they went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position and if you’re wondering why that number was so low, remember, walks don’t count as at bats.

When Gomez was asked one time what his secret to success was, he said, “Clean living and a fast-moving outfield.” And obviously, better control because he didn’t get elected to the Hall of Fame solely because of his defense.

One time, Gomez walked the bases loaded so manager Joe McCarthy sent out pitching coach Ari Fletcher to have a talk. “Fletcher whispered to me ‘the bases are full,’” Lopez said. “I told him I didn’t think those other guys were extra infielders!”

Tommy Henrich led the Yankees offense in the 9-0 victory with two home runs off Browns starter Elden Auker who lasted just three innings. And just over two weeks removed from seeing his MLB-record 56-game hitting streak snapped, Joe DiMaggio had two hits to extend his latest streak to 15 games meaning he had hit safely in 71 of his last 72 games. During this 15-gamer he was batting .415, raising his season average to .378.

The 56-52 Yankees are now 2-4 in this brutal stretch of the schedule after losing two of three games to both the Orioles and Rays, and they remain 3.5 games behind the Blue Jays who sit in the third wild card spot. Now, here come the 62-47 Astros for the first series of the season between two combatants that, as we know, don’t like each other. And for the Yankees, it’s a bad time to be playing a team that has owned them for several years.

Houston is 10-4 in its last 14 games and just finished off a sweep of the Guardians with the middle game featuring a no-hitter by Framber Valdez. At the deadline, they reacquired Justin Verlander who helped them win two World Series in 2017 and 2022. And they also now have back from lengthy injury stints both Jose Altuve and Yordan Alvarez, two offensive juggernauts who have killed the Yankees like few players have in recent memory.

It has been a bit of a weird season for the Astros who were stumbling around for quite a while before their recent surge. They rank just 14th in OPS (.735) and 15th in on-base (.320), though much of that is due to the absence of Altuve and Alvarez plus some other injuries. However, two players they’ve had all year, Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker, have been outstanding and both have 18 homers, one off Alvarez’s team leading 19. But on the pitching side it’s the same old Astros as they rank second in ERA at 3.77, not a good sign for this Yankees offense.

The pitching matchups are as follows: Thursday at 7:15 on FOX it’s Clarke Schmidt against Cristian Javier (4.33), a pitcher who has buckled the Yankees’ knees every time he has faced them. Friday at 7:05 on Apple-TV it’s Severino (7.49) against Hunter Brown (4.12). Saturday at 1:05 on YES it’s Nestor Cortes (5.16) making his first start since May 30 against probably Verlander (3.15 with the Mets). And then Sunday at 1:35 on Amazon Prime, it’s Rodon (6.29) against probably Jose Urquidy (5.20).