The unfortunate third base situation

Yesterday the Yankees placed Kevin Youkilis on the 15 day Disabled list and called up Corban Joseph. There are however several problems with this promotion:


• Joseph is a left handed batter so he does not help the Yankees loss of Youkillis against left handed pitchers and will now force Overbay to play against lefties.

• Jospeh cannot play third base as he cannot make the throw across the diamond, if you recall he displayed this in spring training. He is listed as a third baseman but you need to be able to make that throw and he cannot, he could probably play third in an emergency but I do not have a lot of faith in him at third.

• Brian Cashman said that he can only play the right side of the infield, meaning that he can only play second and first. Keep in mind that Jospeh has only played a handful of games at first ever, all of which came this season.

The reason why Jospeh was called up for Youkilis is simply that the Yankees do not have a viable choice for third base other than him. Ronnie Mustillier impressed in spring training but he just had his first rehab game in Tampa as he is coming back from a Spring Training injury. David Adams is also a better option at third base than Jospeh but he cannot be called up until May 15th because he was released by the Yankees, not Designated for assignment, and then resigned to a minor league deal and players who are released and re-sign minor league contracts with the same team have to wait 30 days before they can be called up. The timing of this injury is very unfortunate because as of right now there is no backup for Nix and Nunez because they are the backups themselves. I guess the Yankees could have called up Dan Johnson, but they would have needed to add him to the 40 man roster and his display at third base in Spring left a lot to be desired and he is only hitting .171 in AAA. CoJo is a borderline prospect as he cannot defend very well anywhere on the field and while he can hit enough to be useful, he won’t hit well enough to be a starter. Honestly if I was the Yankees I would try and trade and acquire Chris Nelson who was recently DFA by the Colorado Rockies. The Yankees have reportedly been talking to Colorado about a trade but they will reportedly try to get him after he clears waivers.