Standing on the grass at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Florida, this spring watching Aaron Judge drill moon shots toward Dale Mabry Highway, you couldn’t yet see into July, when the New York Yankees would hit the eject button on two-thirds of their killer back end of the bullpen and parachute into seller mode for the first time since 1989.
But here in midsummer, Andrew Miller—now property of the Cleveland Indians, as the Yankees’ PR Dept. announced Sunday—and Aroldis Chapman—now of the Chicago Cubs—you sure as heck can look ahead as these ho-hum Yankees slog toward the 2016 finish line and see a future that has clicked from grainy, muddled signals to high-def.
Somebody asked general manager Brian Cashman on a conference call Sunday whether he thought the Yankees fanbase would tolerate this sell mode, a concept that in recent years has been as difficult to imagine as Derek Jeter getting, um, married.
A better question would have been whether the Yankees should have done this a long time ago.
Look, as great as the days of Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera were, what’s evident at the other end of that era is how the Yankees allowed their farm system to become overrun with weeds. The only homegrown position player they’ve developed since 2008 is Brett Gardner. No offense to Gardner, who is a gamer, but he ain’t exactly the second coming of Joe DiMaggio…or Bernie Williams.
Yes, in their efforts to keep the ball rolling in the present over the past few years, the Yankees wound up delaying their future. Birthday candles for Alex Rodriguez and Carlos Beltran don’t exactly lead to the next promised land.
For Miller, the Yankees pulled in outfielder Clint Frazier and left-hander Justus Sheffield, considered two of Cleveland’s three best prospects, along with right-handers Ben Heller and J.P. Feyereisen.
For Chapman last week, the Yankees hauled in prized shortstop Gleyber Torres, considered the best prospect in a very rich Cubs system, right-hander Adam Warren and two other minor leaguers.
“I don’t know if I can say there is a change in institutional thinking,” Cashman said Sunday with Miller en route to the Indians. “Clearly, there is a recognition that has to take place that the chessboard that’s lined up that we’re playing on is not the same chessboard we were playing on when I started in the late 1980s and 1990s.
“Clearly, there have been a lot of changes in the game. Access to talent is more restricted; penalties are more in play. Back when I first started under the Boss [Steinbrenner], we could go into the international market and pull down an El Duque [Orlando Hernandez] to replace an Eric Milton we traded away. You could execute and dominate that way.
“You could play in the draft with a Deion Sanders, [taking a flier on] a two-sport star. But now the draft is restricted; you’ve only got so much money to play with. And the cost of international talent is capped.
“Instead of institutional change, it’s a reaction to how the industry is completely different and operating standards are completely different.”
In other words, the game is a lot more balanced now. Old money doesn’t go as far as it once did. The game was forced to react, and it did. Not only does money flow through many more markets in a modern game that last year produced some $9.5 billion in revenues, but rival front offices have gotten smarter. Much smarter.
“If you want to become a superteam, there are different ways to go about that now,” Cashman said. “One thing the Yankees have always stood for is an effort to become a superteam.
“We obviously have a number of World Series titles, and there were years we haven’t been able to win. But I can tell you, the effort is always there—the strategizing and dreaming about how to become a superteam.”
Cashman did not dream overnight Saturday, because he did not sleep. Not a wink, he said. Talks with Cleveland that produced the Miller deal started in earnest around 10 or 11 p.m. Saturday, the GM said, and continued throughout the night.
“It’s hard, especially with Miller, because we’ve had him through last year, and we had him under control, obviously, under a very strong contract for the next two years,” Cashman said. “In his case, it was extremely difficult.”
Reality is, the difficulty should have been in the details of whom the Yankees were getting back, not in the decision to move Miller. As play started Sunday, the Yankees were one game over .500 (52-51). Toronto was 14 over (59-45). Baltimore was 13 over (58-45). Boston was 10 over (56-46). If the American League East teams were swimming in a pool, the Yankees would be the kid learning how to swim, flailing madly just to keep moving forward and hold their head above water.
That’s no way to roll. And that’s coming off last season, when the Yankees were eighty-sixed from the AL Wild Card Game they hosted by Houston.
No, this superteam Cashman talked about, the Yankees haven’t been that in years. And it’s because when you acquire too much of your oxygen from the free-agent market—A-Rod, Beltran, CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, Brian McCann, etc.—you get too many players just after their peaks. Maybe you get a brief window of high production, but the returns begin to diminish far too quickly.
As Theo Epstein and the Cubs are showing, as World Series champion Kansas City exhibited last year and the up-and-coming Astros continue to prove, teams cannot thrive in today’s game without a healthy farm system.
Finally, the Yankees are making the moves they need to in that area. Cashman talked Sunday about “doing a dance between the future and the present” to “cushion the blow,” attempting to give manager Joe Girardi a chance to win now while the club focuses on the future. Thus, Warren from the Cubs and the acquisition of reliever Tyler Clippard from Arizona.
But all that is is borrowing furniture during a move because, well, you’ve gotta have someplace to sit in your living room until the move is complete.
Let’s just say the Yankees won’t be having guests over to show off their place right now. But they plan to soon.
“I’m getting a lot of compliments when scouts parachute in to cover us; they walk away impressed with the work we’ve done,” Cashman said. “I know that recognizability hasn’t been the case as much for a period of time.”
Now, he promised, “the picture is brighter than at anytime since I started.”
In Frazier, Cashman said, the Yankees acquired “an electric bat. His bat speed is already legendary. He’s got all the tools: He can run, hit, he has hittability, he can hit for power, play all three [outfield] positions. And he has high energy—he shows up for the national anthem in a dirty uniform.”
Sheffield, he said, “gets up to 95 [mph], has a three-pitch mix and is a competitor on the mound.”
Using their “Prospect Points,” MLBPipeline.com, in a midseason adjustment Wednesday, ranked the Yankees system fourth in the majors.
It now ranks Frazier as the No. 1 prospect in the Yanks organization and Torres No. 2. Judge, the 6’7″ behemoth with the raw power to make any park look small, is No. 4.
“They’re nice additions to what already is considered a very strong farm system,” Cashman said of Sunday’s haul. “When I started with the Yankees, with [current San Francisco GM] Brian Sabean as director of player development and [legendary former Yankees scouting director] Bill Livesey, we had started to build under their direction some of the best young talent we’ve had.
“The system currently in play is hopefully starting to mirror that system that propelled us into the 1990s.
“We’re trying to get back into a situation where we’re building an uberteam.”
Call it what you want—superteam, uberteam, whatever.
The most important thing today is the renewed recognition that the seeds for those teams must begin to flourish in the bushes—and not with the free-agent checkbook.
Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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