Originally Posted by
jacksonianmarch
It is about time to close the Offseason thread as the Yanks have now been in ST for a couple weeks now and we are only 10 days from opening day.
Yanks made some moves and got rid of Sanchez, Voit and Urshela. Rizzo was retained, IKF was brought in and Donaldson looks to continue to mash and offer leadership. On the position player side of the ball, the only major question right now is who will be the 4th OFer. Locasto likely has a leg up but the Yanks did bring in Rosario from the sox for a look. Jeisson plays solid D, is fast and can walk, but he cannot seem to make contact and when he does, the ball doesnt go anywhere. He's basically a left handed Tim Locasto. I do think this very expensive team is making a mistake in not shoring up the outfield. Aaron Hicks has been trending towards the below average defensively for the last two seasons and he's now another year older. Plus, the guy hasnt played a full season since 2018. Gallo and Judge can play CF and it sounds like the Yanks will be using Stanton in the OF more than recent years, so maybe the plan is to keep Aaron fresh and rotate the 4 across the 3OF positions and at DH. Either way, the lineup is pretty solid and it seems Boone will use one of the bigger boppers at leadof
1. Donaldson DH
2. Judge RF
3. Rizzo 1B
4. Stanton LF
5. Gallo CF
6. Lemahieu 3B
7. Torres 2B
8. Kiner-Falefa SS
9. Higashioka C
On the pitching side, I thought the Yanks would add some veteran presence to their rotation as Kluber's year was a bust. But they didn't and the news on German isn't good, so they went from being deep to being needy at this point with no further FAs out there. They always seem to add a back end pitcher later in the year, so maybe that is the plan and they do have a host of highly touted prospects ready to take the ball if given the chance. On the SP side, I think the following is locked in for the rotation, but word out of ST is that Severino has lost his command. If he doesn't find it, this crew could turn into a minus real quick
1. Cole
2. Montgomery
3. Severino
4. Taillon
The 5 spot is between King, Schmidt, Gil, Cortes, and Garcia. Lots of depth, but Cortes was the best in the bigs as a starter out of that group last year, so he probably has a leg up. King has proven to be a deadly swiss army knife option out of the pen, so I doubt we would move him unless he really found a way to dominate when starting. Schmidt has the best stuff of the bunch and is finally healthy. He might end up being the guy who starts in the 5 spot the most by end of year, but I bet they want to take it slow with him in the minors. Garcia might have the highest ceiling of the bunch, but he has to prove he is over the yips which really shelved him last year. He went from a very command focused pitcher to a guy who couldnt find the zone.
The pen should be pretty solid, IMO.
Chapman CL
Loaisiga SU
Holmes SU
Green SU
Peralta MR
Luetge MR
Those guys above are locks and are all guys who pretty much dominated with the Yanks. Add in King as a multi use weapon and maybe Joely Rodriguez and you've got a deep pen. Throw in the 28 man roster early on and the Yanks will likely carry a couple of the options on the starting side for a bit as well and all can deal.
All in all, this team if it was in the AL Central would probably be a high 90s-100 win team. In the ALE, 93 wins is the target. The top 4 teams are gonna beat each other up again and I think whomever gets to 93 will win the division. This team has holes, but it is capable assuming reasonable injury luck, which is never a good assumption in NY.
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