Yankees GM Brian Cashman’s purse strings have been tethered close to its zipper the whole winter, with the league’s biggest spending club seemingly sitting out the Hot Stove after locking up CC Sabathia and Freddy Garcia, moves that didn’t address the team’s glaring need for starting pitching so much as maintain the status quo.
With two huge moves Friday night, New York surpassed a lot of contending clubs for pitching depth, acquiring All Star rookie starter Michael Pineda from the Seattle Mariners in a four-player deal before agreeing to terms on a one-year deal between $10 million to $11 million with free agent pitcher Hiroki Kuroda.
The Yankees looked good enough to do nothing about its starting pitching, owing to its deceptively present depth that includes top prospects Dellin Betances and Manuel Banuelos, Sabathia, Phil Hughes, Ivan Nova Garcia and even A.J. Burnett, not the worst option at the five hole. That’s six starting pitchers, with at least one ace (Sabathia), an innings eater (Burnett), a 16-game winner as a rookie (Nova), a good fourth hole starter (Garcia) and an imperfect but nonetheless promising young arm (Hughes). Betances or Banuelos, it would seem, would just be protecting the Yankees from injuries, although the chances of one or both being called up sometime in 2012 seemed inevitable.
Pineda should be considered more than just a prospect, after making 28 starts, with an All Star game selection. He went 9-10 with a 3.74 ERA, with his 3.42 FIP / 3.53 xFIP suggesting he didn’t just benefit from playing most of his games in a pitching friendly park. He also owns a superior 9.2 K/9 innings, and his 2.89 BB/9 innings rate suggests he’s largely controlled his blazing fastball.
Among the young starting pitchers traded this winter, Pineda has the highest upside. He throws the hardest, is just 22 and will be under club control until 2016. He’s in his pre-arbitration years, and won’t receive a significant raise until 2014. Even if he turns into a shutdown ace as he projects to become, it’s unlikely that the Yankees will need to pay him more than $12 million a month going into his walk year. That’s still just $36 million for three years for a pitcher under 30, and that’s if arbitration falls Pineda’s way.
New York may have paid a huge price by letting go of Jesus Montero, who is to young hitters what Pineda is to young pitchers. He played just under a month after being called up in September, but he was good enough to alter pitching strategies. He hit four home runs and drove in 12 runs, while batting .328 with a .406 OBP. While his slashes figure to go down some, he could fit the role of Seattle’s power hitter, something that hasn’t existed in Seattle since the time of A-Rod.
Montero was almost a Mariner two seasons ago, when the Yankees nearly acquired Cliff Lee mid-season, only for the Rangers to swoop in with a package involving Justin Smoak. So far, Smoak hasn’t met his projections as a power hitting pro, a task no doubt made more difficult playing in Safeco. From the little we’ve seen, it also seems clear that Montero was the better hitter of the two.
There’s no way to accurately predict that right now, but Seattle is at wits end trying to produce 20 or more home runs from an individual player. Recognizing that his teams still need to score runs, GM Jack Zduriencik was forced to barter one of the game’s best pitching prospects, knowing that it’s easier to produce starters in Seattle, if only because of how large its homepark is.
Cashman and New York may not be receiving a proven pitcher in return for its best hitting prospect in years, but Felix Hernandez would actually cost more money, already earning a league standard $18 million a year for pitchers of his quality, and prospects. It was widely assumed that the Yankees could acquire Hernandez, if only Cashman was willing to part with Banuelos, Betances and Montero. For a third of the price, Cashman just acquired a better fit, given the Steinbrenners’ desire to reset its luxury tax hit. It’s clear that Hernandez is the better pitcher, but given the budgetary constraints, the Yankees traded for, oddly enough, a more coveted piece that wasn’t even in the conversation for trade candidates.
New York has a battery of power hitters, and keeping Montero would only add to an already elite offense. Montero’s road to becoming a regular was already paved when Jorge Posada, the team’s incumbent regular DH and part-time catcher, retired. Francisco Cervelli can’t hit to merit an everyday spot. But Russell Martin provides enough offense on the backstop, and it doesn’t seem like Montero would even approach his defensive acumen.
We know demanding a good defense from a good hitting catcher is folly given how important it is to generate runs from a traditionally non-hitting position. Smarter teams know this, which is why the Minnesota Twins are reluctant to move Joe Mauer to first or right field, and why the Rangers said fuck it and traded for Mike Napoli.
Scouting reports from as early as 2010 suggested that Montero would be a career designated hitter. He’s either a disinterested defender, some would say, or doesn’t possess big league instincts to be an everyday catcher. Teams are increasingly becoming reluctant to promote positionless hitters, which is why you’d see guys like Wily Mo Pena, Jack Cust, Luke Scott and for a time, even Napoli, not receiving much interest, either as free agents, Rule 5 picks or trade baits.
The Mariners however don’t have the luxury of waiting for a complete package. The team needs runs, and even its options at DH remain thin. Montero will catch some games, and he’ll do more of it if he can show that he can hit at the same time. That’s hardly why the Mariners traded a future ace for a chance to see if he does have staying big league power.
In the end, it’s all about trading to increase your team’s number of wins. So far, and as a rookie, Pineda had a 3.4 fWAR, huge for a rookie. Jeremy Hellickson of the Tampa Bay Rays, voted Rookie of the Year, had a 1.4 fWAR.
Position players, especially elite hitters, account for more wins above replacement compared to pitchers of the same level. But we don’t know if Montero will even account for 3.4 wins, a milestone that would surprise me if he makes it in his first full big league season. The Mariners are not playing for today, and on paper, at least procured more wins in the future — say two or three seasons from now.
Still, every trade has a winner and a loser. The Yankees look to be the obvious winners so far.