A True Yankee Podcast 7/31 Trade deadline

We take a look at the surprisingly quiet trade deadline. We also talk about the Bio-genesis stuff with Arod, Cervelli and the other people indicated. We also talk about the Jeter return and the Soriano Trade.Apparently the Yankees tried to trade for Carlos Ruiz and Michael Young and the Phillies decided against trading them because of reasons that I have no idea why. Apparently the Yankees offered to pay $5 million of Young's salary and a prospect and the Phillies said no and they also said no to trading Ruiz.

Godzilla!

Well today was a good day for me, I don't normally blog about individual games but today really was a fun day. I went to today's game because Hideki Matsui was going to retire as a Yankee on his bobble head day and that he did. The Yankees had a nice ceremony for Matsui showing highlights from his Career as a Yankee, especially the stuff from the 2009 World Series and then he came out and signed his retirement papers and was presented with a Jersey, after which he changed into Pinstripes and threw out the first pitch with the whole team on the field.

Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports

 Hideki Matsui is without a doubt the greatest Japanese slugger in Major League history. He has 175 Home Runs in his MLB career and has the five highest single-season home run totals of any Japanese player in the MLB. More than that though Matsui was a constant sight in the Yankees lineup player 519 straight games to begin his Yankee Career and was my absolute favorite Yankee growing up, I still have my Matsui shirt and Jersey which you can bet I was wearing today. Having this sendoff was absolutely fantastic for me and I know it was for everyone else at the stadium and the buzz in the stadium was amazing. Oh and the Yankees had a walk off so that was nice too.

Yankees acquire Alfonso Soriano

He's back

 After several days of rumors the Yankees acquired Alfonso Soriano from the Cubs for prospect RHP Corey Black. The deal was essentially confirmed last night when Soriano took a red eye flight to New york and real issue was just the Cubs deciding on Corey Black or Tommy Kahnle. I know I kept checking twitter to see if the deal had gone through and Corey Black even tweeted about it.

Well I've gotten about 100 new followers
— Corey Black (@CblackNYY) July 26, 2013

Soriano, 37, had full no-trade protection through his ten-and-five rights and had to agree to return to the Bronx. Nick Cafardo says the only team he was willing to accept a trade to was the Yankees. According to Buster Olney, the Bombers will pay $6.8M of the roughly $24.5M owed to Soriano through next season. They will pay $5M of that $6.8M in 2014. I'm not sure how it works with the luxury tax stuff, but needless to say the Yankees $189 million plan takes a hit with having to acquire Wells and Soriano.
Soriano has hit .254/.287/.467 (100 wRC+) with 17 homers and ten stolen bases. That includes a .273/.310/.496 (112 wRC+) line against left-handers. Over the last 30 days of this season, he’s put up a .286/.330/.714 (178 wRC+) line with ten homers, which as many people have pointed out means that Soriano has out homered the Yankees 8-7 in July. Soriano will provide a much needed bat and Right handed bat at that as the Yankees have not had a right handed home run since Jayson Nix took Yu Darvish deep o June 25th. The Yankees have been dreadful against left handed pitchers and Soriano should help that, but also he is likely going to step in and be the cleanup hitter simply because he will be the second best hitter on the team. Soriano is going to play everyday and while he does not walk like Hafner, Pronk has been atrocious since May hitting 174/.255/.299 but he is not likely to go anywhere with the acquisition of Soriano. I assume that Thomas Neal or Melky Mesa will be sent down for now and more moves will happen when Jeter and/if Arod return.
Soriano will likely be in todays lineup so we will get to see him impact soon.

Derek Jeter activated today

Derek Jeter will be activated for today's game according to Ken Rosenthal and is expected to be in the lineup. Jeter has been rehabbing for less than a week and many expected that he would be activated on friday, but no he has been activated today. During his rehab assignment, the Captain went 1 for 9 with a single and four walks. He also committed an throwing error while playing shortstop. The Yankees will obviously ease him back into this but I expect he will DH a lot as Nunez has played well and Travis Hafner has not.

Nunez activated off 60 day DL, Phelps to DL.

The Yankees have activated Eduardo Nunez off the 60-day DL. He is playing short and batting 8th behind Luis Cruz. In a corresponding move it appears that the Yankees have placed  David Phelps on the 15 day DL with a forearm strain and it appears that Ivan Nova will stick around for at least one more start before the all star break. Nova's complete game 3 hitter last night was arguably the best start by a Yankees starter all year and so the Yankees will give him another start at least. Nunez will help the Yankees if he can hit at all as they have gotten no production from Shortstop this year.

The Wrongness of Selling

So lately I have seen some people advocate that the Yankees should basically blow it up so that they can get younger and basically start the next dynasty in 2-3 seasons.We talked about this on the podcast so give a listen if you haven't already or just hate reading. I understand the sentiment but there are several very serious flaws with this idea and I will go over them.

No Value: Okay this is really the most obvious one but what pieces are the Yankees going to be able to move for value? The Pieces that the Yankees have that other teams would be looking to acquire are Hiroki Kuroda, Curtis Granderson, Robinson Cano, Phil Hughes, Brett Gardner, Dave Robertson and Mariano Rivera. I guess you can rule out Mo because duh, but really that's it and except for Robertson and Gardner they are all free agents at the end of the year. I know Beltran netted the Mets Zach Wheeler but that is not happening and at the time Wheeler was in A ball at the time.In the end moving these pieces would not improve the team in the near future and would honestly only really serve to make this years team worse. The Yankees wont be able to acquire MLB ready prospects for any of these players and so there really isn't a point to trading away all these guys for some moderate prospects.

Age: There seems to be this idea that Young players are better and I am here to say that its not the case. Everybody wants to have a Mike Trout but look at Will Middlebrooks, he has totally bombed this season after a good 2012. Young players fail a lot and while its good to have some they go through growing pains look at Jesus Montero. Age is not the end all be all that some people think it is so get used to these old guys being around a while longer.

Winning: Despite what some people act like the Yankees are in the thick of it, they stand at 46-39 as of today and are 1.5 games out of the wild card. If they win this home series against the O's then they will be in the second wild card spot. However as we said on the podcast some fans basically treat this as a losing season saying that this team wont win a World Series so they should just sell because that's the end game for the Yankees. I'm just here to tell you that it is much harder to win the World Series if you don't make the playoffs and its only going to get harder to make the playoffs in the next few years as Tex, CC and Arod get older.

Sucking isn't a slam dunk: This isn't basketball or football people one top pick doesn't change your franchise. If the Yankees suck for 2-3 years they are not suddenly going to have these amazing pieces and start a new dynasty. The Yankees got really lucky in the late 90's they developed five legitimate homegrown all-stars, that's not supposed to happen and its not going to happen with a few years of rebuild. Look at home many years the Royals or Mariners have stunk and they have been rebuilding for a decade or more, rebuilding almost never works which is why the same franchises always seem to be rebuilding.

In the end this is kind of a moot point as the Yankees arent going to sell, espechially not when they have a winning record, if they wind up 5 games under .500 on July 31st then its an idea but I would still bet against it.

A True Yankee podcast 7/3/2013

An Everything sucks but the twins suck more episode. Looking at the various Yankee injuries, the very poor June and surprises from the Yankees and in the MLB and what we feel needs to happen at the trade deadline.Also soon after we did this Jayson Nix was placed on the 15 day DL with a hamstring strain and the Yankees signed Luis Cruz.

A-Rod cleared to begin rehab

Alex Rodriguez will begin his rehab tomorrow July 2nd for the Low-A Charleston Riverdogs. He is scheduled to play 3rd for a minimum of 3 innings and I expect that they will use all of his rehab time because he missed spring training. The Yankees really need Alex's bat despite what some fans and media might think. The 20-day rehab time will expire right after the series in Boston that follows the all-star break so his first home game back will likely be on July 26th against the Rays. The Yankees still need to acquire another bat and soon because they cannot rely on Jeter, Granderson and A-Rod especially considering what happened with Youkilis and Teixeira. Also this makes all the stuff that happened with Cashman telling Alex to STFU even dumber as he was right about when his rehab would begin.