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If the Yankees were not part 1 of what Commissioner Rob Manfred would like to change from the current game, they certainly have gone further with the acquisition of James Paxton.
At a time when Manfred and his lieutenants are trying to find a way to play the ball, Brian Cashman and his associates set up a pitching team designed to do the opposite.
Cashman gives priority to ground strikes and ground strikes, so he obviously prefers those who excel at the same time as Masahiro Tanaka or, believe it or not, Lance Lynn. The chief executive of the Yankees said that if he could only have one over the other, he would not discriminate. But he also told me that if you are going to call on a ground ball specialist, "you'd better make sure that there's a good defense (in the field) behind (the pitcher) if all goes well then there are many more moving parts there. . "
And the Yankees' home defense is, at the very least, suspect. Their best glove maker, Didi Gregorius, will miss at least two months after Tommy John's operation. Miguel Andujar was, in terms of statistics, the worst defender of the majors in third place. Gleyber Torres has the fast hand / hard arm attributes to be a great defender, but was not consistent last year. Luke Voit is a defender below average and Greg Bird, perhaps, average early.
This is how the Yankees must train their team to coincide with this defensive reality – unless they know they will eventually put Manny Machado's superb glove in third place. This does not mean that the Yankees would run away from free players who are more grounded than attackers, like Dallas Keuchel and Yusei Kikuchi. But there is an obvious penchant for the crossed out.
Yankees pitchers had an average of 10.1 on catches in nine innings last season. Only the 2018 Astros (10,4) have never done more. The 2017 Yankees (9.7) are fifth all-time and the 2016 Yankees (8.8) are 29th. And the 2019 Yankees have now Paxton, whose 11.7 shots in nine outings were fourth in the majors (minimum 160 innings). Luis Severino (10.4) was 12th.
And the market offers even more similar things with free agents Patrick Corbin (11.1 out of four strikes), Charlie Morton (10.8), JA Happ (9.8), plus the Indian triumvirate Trevor Bauer (11, 5), Carlos Carrasco (10.7) and Corey Kluber (9.3) available commercially. All but Happ also had above average league baseball results last year – and Happ did it in the past, in addition to proving that he could handle New York. Corbin's 200 innings, his left hand and his 48.5% ground ball rate make him particularly attractive, but that's for the entire sector. He could therefore be in the running for a contract similar to Yu Darvish's last-season (six years, $ 126 million) or more.
The most interesting case is Nathan Eovaldi, whose runaway average climbed eight out of nine rounds for the first time last year – which better matches his power – while he was perfectly in control. Will teams such as the Yankees see Eovaldi turn more to missing bats and therefore more attractive?
Cashman also said the plan is to add two relief people. Last year, the Yankees became the first to average more than 11 strikeouts in nine innings (11.4), and the 2014-2018 Yankees Relief Corps posted five of the top 10 finishes. Inflation the highest ever recorded. This is one of the reasons why Adam Ottavino (13 strikeouts in nine innings) is of interest to an organization that wants to attract the attacker to the pitchers who excel in the shot.
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