THE PROMISE OF SPRING

Spring is less than 2 weeks away, but on the east coast it will certainly be more welcome than almost any other prior year, with the ridiculous amounts and relentless occurrences of snow!  The arrival of spring training baseball is a key sign to such promising, improved weather.  In fact, just a few days after the games began, the weather jointly “began” improving immensely.

So, as we move forward with promising weather, our baseball teams also move forward with their own promise.   No matter what team you root for, each new season offers promise.  The Yankees are no different, although most of the NYY fans I’ve spoken to are not as excited as I am.  That’s because the Yankees only signed one well-known free agent, reliever Andrew Miller.

This past offseason, the Yankees’ main and continuing goal was to focus on getting younger, including avoiding the loss of their top draft-pick selection, which they achieved.  They began their youth movement last year when they dove into the international free agent pool and signed most of the top-tier players that were each approximately 18 years old.  Recently, they signed 8 of the 11 key MLB roster players (as of today) that are 22-30 years old.  Here are their 11 key signings thus far:

SP Nathan Eovaldi (25 years old)

RP Justin Wilson (27 years old)

RP David Carpenter (29 years old)

RP Chris Martin (28 years old)

RP Andrew Miller (29 years old)

RP Domingo German (22 years old)

SS Didi Gregorius (25 years old)

1B Garrett Jones (33 years old)

2B Stephen Drew (31 years old)

3B Chase Headley (30 years old)

OF Chris Young (31 years old)

These 5 additional players from the same expected 25-man roster are in their 20s:

Adam Warren (27 years old)

John Ryan Murphy (23 years old)

Michael Pineda (26 years old)

Masahiro Tanaka (26 years old)

Dellin Betances (26 years old)

Their potential starting pitchers consist of 5 out of 7 starters that are in their 20s - Adam Warren, Ivan Nova (28 years old/expected back in June from surgery), Eovaldi, Pineda, and Tanaka.  Only CC Sabathia and Chris Capuano are over 30.

At this point, the Yankees’ 25-man roster has approximately half of its players 30 years old or younger.  Moreover, in baseball terms, they only have 4 contracted players who are considered “old” in baseball standards.  Out of those 4 players (CC Sabathia (3 years remaining), A-Rod (3 years remaining), Beltran (2 years remaining), and Capuano (1 year remaining)), both CC and A-Rod have health issues that may lead to insurance payouts in place of the Yankees having to wait for their contract terms to end.  That’s not too shabby!  Furthermore, I am very hopeful and excited as they have even more potential young stars that may soon join their team this year or next year including Aaron Judge (OF), Luis Severino (SP), Greg Bird (1B), Rob Refsnyder (2B), Jose Pirela (2B), Jacob Lindgren (RP) - along with the pool of international players that will offer at least a few more youthful options within the next 5 years.

Clearly, their current team is now younger and they have so many promising, young players that are expected to make their roster by the end of this year or next.  To further my final point, even Baseball America (BA) and some other renowned professional baseball experts are now acknowledging the Yankees as having a much better farm system then they’ve had in years.  Here are such future potential stars, as ranked by BA, with the first 2 players qualifying within BA’s Top 100:

SP Luis Severino

OF Aaron Judge

SS Jorge Mateos

1B Greg Bird

C Gary Sanchez

RP Ian Clarkin

2B Rob Refsnyder

RP Jacob Lindgren

C Luis Torrens
3B Miguel Andujar