The Yankees have excelled at developing starters, just not very good ones.
Twelve pitchers who signed their first pro contracts with the Yankees made at least 10 starts in the majors in 2023 — tied with the Mariners for the most.
However, there were 46 pitchers in the majors last season who made at least 11 starts and had an ERA of 5.00 or more while being used as a starter. Eight were originally signed by the Yankees: Luis Severino (6.39), Jhony Brito (6.32), Roansy Contreras (6.13), James Kaprielian (6.86), Hayden Wesneski (5.51), Luis Medina (5.47), Ken Waldichuk (5.33) and Garrett Whitlock (5.23) — plus, Nestor Cortes was at 4.97.
Here is something you might note about that list: Brito was used last week to help the Yankees acquire Juan Soto, and Contreras was central to the acquisition of Jameson Taillon, as Kaprielian was to landing Sonny Gray, Wesneski was for Scott Effross and Medina and Waldichuk were for Frankie Montas.
The Yankees have done such a superb job of procuring interesting arms and then improving their repertoires in the minors that they have remained alluring to the industry despite iffy MLB production. The Yankees have used their pitching depth as their greatest weapon in the trade market.
Beginning with the acquisition of Taillon on Jan. 24, 2021 through the Soto deal, the Yankees have made 12 trades in which they packaged multiple players to acquire major league talent — notably for Soto, Taillon, Montas, Andrew Heaney, Andrew Beneintendi, Jose Trevino, Joey Gallo, Anthony Rizzo, Josh Donaldson and Alex Verdugo. In those deals, they traded away 35 players, including 21 pitchers.
Their pitching depth again was emphasized at the Winter Meetings when they traded three for Verdugo, four in a five-player package for Soto/Trent Grisham and three of the 10 players taken in the major league phase of the Rule 5 draft were from the Yankees, all pitchers, including the first two picks, Mitch Spence and Matt Sauer.
The appeal of the Yankees’ pitching depth has been exhibited with the Rule 5 draft. The Yankees have had at least one pitcher selected in each of the past seven Rule 5 drafts dating to 2016 (there was no draft in 2022 due to the lockout). In those seven drafts, the Yankees had 18 players selected, including 15 pitchers.
The organizations with the next-most players taken were the Astros and Guardians with eight each. The teams with the next-most drafted pitchers in that span (six) were the Astros, Guardians, Rays and Red Sox. Now, most players do not stick with the team that drafts them, but the Yankees were hurt in the 2020 process when they lost Whitlock to the Red Sox and Trevor Stephan to the Guardians.
Colleague Mark Sanchez wrote a recent piece in which he extensively quotes the Yankees senior director of pitching, Sam Briend, about the development and loss of so much pitching collateral.
I am picking up on it as part of the weekly “Roster stuff maybe only I noticed.” We have been doing a countdown of teams assembling the best rosters of their originally signed players.
To date: 30. Brewers, 29. A’s, 28. Nationals, 27. White Sox, 26. Mariners, 25. Rockies, 24. Tigers, 23. Marlins, 22. Giants.
This week, we will add the Phillies at No. 21, the Rangers at No. 20 and the Yankees at No. 19.
The Yankees are this low not because of quantity, but because of quality. That is emphasized with the starting pitching — they have a lot of arms that were rotation regulars, but not a lot of strong performances.
This is familiar to the Yankees. They annually put among the most original signs in the majors, but what is missing is a depth of high-end players.
Nothing changed in 2023. There were 58 players in the majors who signed their first pro contracts with the Yankees, which was the sixth-most. That included 23 international signings — four more than any other organization.
But of the 58, just two position players (Aaron Judge and Thairo Estrada) and one pitcher (Jordan Montgomery) exceeded 2.0 Wins Above Replacement (Fangraphs).
Perhaps the perception of the quality will change if Anthony Volpe expands on his 20-20 rookie season and players such as Jasson Dominguez, Oswald Peraza and Austin Wells emerge.
But for now, this is the best team that could be formed from the 58:
C: Kyle Higashioka
1B: Mike Ford
2B: Estrada
SS: Volpe
3B: Ezequiel Duran
LF: Rob Refsnyder
CF: Estevan Florial
RF: Judge
DH: Gary Sanchez
Bench: Dominguez, Wells, Jorge Mateo, Josh Smith
Rotation: Cortes, Montgomery, Whitlock, Clarke Schmidt, Randy Vasquez
Closer: David Robertson
Bullpen: Brito, Stephan, John Brebbia, Gio Gallegos, Tommy Kahnle, Elvis Peguero, Greg Weissert
Here is the Phillies’ original team:
C: Travis d’Arnaud
1B: Alec Bohm
2B: Bryson Stott
SS: J.P. Crawford
3B: Matt Vierling
LF: Dalton Guthrie
CF: Johan Rojas
RF: Mickey Moniak
DH: Darin Ruf
Bench: Jonathan Arauz, Nick Maton, Logan O’Hoppe, Jon Singleton
Rotation: Carlos Carrasco, Bailey Falter, Cole Irvin, Aaron Nola, Ranger Suarez
Closer: Trevor May (note: The roster is based on 2023 stats. May retired following the season.)
Bullpen: Jake Diekman, Seranthony Dominguez, Mark Leiter Jr., James McArthur, Hobey Milner, Hector Neris, Jojo Romero
And here is the Rangers’ original team:
C: Jose Trevino
1B: Joey Gallo
2B: Andy Ibañez
SS: Isiah Kiner-Falefa
3B: Josh Jung
LF: Evan Carter
CF: Leody Taveras
RF: Rougned Odor
DH: Ramon Urias
Bench: Hanser Alberto, Sam Huff, Dylan Moore, Jurickson Profar
Rotation: Yu Darvish, Kyle Hendricks, Martin Perez, Cole Ragans, Jeffrey Springs
Closer: Peter Fairbanks
Bullpen: Jesse Chavez, Carl Edwards Jr., Luke Jackson, John King, Jose Leclerc, Nick Martinez, Erik Swanson
Free-agent deep dive
Since joining the Dodgers for the 2014 season after he was non-tendered by the Mets, Justin Turner has been a hitting metronome. Over these past 10 seasons, he never has hit lower than .275, never produced an on-base percentage lower than .339 and never had a slugging percentage lower than .438.
The cumulative effect of the decade — nine seasons with the Dodgers and last season with the Red Sox — is a slash line of .293/.371/.486 for an .857 OPS and a 131 OPS-plus.
The consistency for Turner has been terrific even in his ages 36-38 seasons:
2021: .278/.361/.451
2022: .278/.350/.438
2023: .276/.345/.455
There have been signs of decline as Turner’s strikeout percentage has climbed the past two years and his walk rate has fallen. But both rates are still better than the league average. His exit velocity ticked down a bit and his barrel rate has dropped a lot. Still, he remained a tough out in 2023, and a team should feel good that it will get a professional, clutch at-bat if Turner is signed to be a free agent for 2024.
Got my attention
Soto is a terrific offensive player. He turns every pitch within every plate appearance into a hitting holy war, whether it is 10-1 in May or 3-2 in October. He does not take a pitch off. His downside is on defense and baserunning, where he is below-average.
But here are two items about his offense that at least got my attention:
• San Diego’s Petco Park is a difficult environment for offense — only Seattle’s T-Mobile Park was more pitcher-friendly over the past three seasons combined. Soto hit .240 with 12 homers and an .827 OPS at home last year in 81 games. His home slash line of .240/.398/.429 is fine and looks like the overall work of a fine player in the Cubs’ Ian Happ (.248/.360/.431).
In 81 road games, Soto hit .307 with 25 homers and a 1.026 OPS. His road slashline of .307/.422/.604 looked a lot like the overall total of Mookie Betts (.307/.408/.579), who finished second for NL MVP.
And, of course, Soto now will be playing his home games with a short right-field porch.
• There is also this: Soto was good over the first 129 games of the Padres’ 2023 season. His slash line was .257/.396/.478 for an .874 OPS with 24 homers. That slash line was akin to what the Twins’ Edouard Julien put up in a fine rookie season.
But that took the Padres through August, a month in which they lost 10 of their last 14 games and fell to a season-low 11 games under .500 at 62-73, at which point it was understood they would not make the surge necessary to save their season and make the playoffs.
Over the final 27 games, as the Padres went a MLB-best 20-7 in garbage time, Soto was arguably the majors’ best hitter with a slash line of .340/.444/.711 with 10 homers. To find a slash line that looks like that for a season, perhaps the best choice is Hall of Famer Jimmie Foxx’s AL MVP 1933 season: .356/.449/.703.
Last licks
Because Soto was being paired with Judge and among the strengths for both is the ability to get on base, I decided to take a look at what the walk percentages were for both players over the past three seasons combined.
I expected it to show they were 1-2 among those with at least 1,000 combined plate appearances. Instead, they ranked No. 1 (Soto at 20.3 percent) and No. 3 (Judge at 15.3).
But what shocked me was that No. 2 and No. 4 might represent the most disliked Yankee and Met of the past few years: Joey Gallo was second at 15.8 percent, and Daniel Vogelbach was fourth at 15.2.
If any team needs that particular skill, both remain free agents.
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