August 7th, 2020: Andujar, Happ, Sanchez, Chapman, Mailbag

If not for the expanded postseason format, this weekend's four games in three days series at Tropicana Field would have been a Very Big Deal. Instead, it feels like just another series to me. Maybe that'll change at first pitch, but the expanded postseason has eliminated some of the drama. Oh well. Hope you're all staying safe/sane and thanks as always for the support. Now let's get to today's thoughts.

1. Andujar demoted. Rosters were trimmed from 30 players to 28 players yesterday and, to meet the new requirement, the Yankees demoted Miguel Andujar to the alternate site in Scranton. Thairo Estrada was sent down as well, as expected, and so was Nick Nelson following his Murphy's Law outing Wednesday. Nick Tropeano came up to replace Nelson in the bullpen and is keeping the spot warm for Aroldis Chapman (Tommy Kahnle was moved to the 60-day injured list to open a 40-man spot for Tropeano). I've got a few thoughts on Andujar being sent down and roster in general, so let's get to 'em.

Sending Andujar down is fine

I am the biggest Andujar fan out there, you know this if you've been reading RAB long enough, and as much as I love the guy, the demotion is the correct move. Andujar missed just about all last season with shoulder surgery and then lost another four months this year to the pandemic. He needs at-bats and he's not getting them with the Yankees because Gio Urshela is basically Adrian Beltre now, and because the Yankees are so deep in outfielders that Clint Frazier was sent down nearly two weeks ago. Aaron Hicks, Aaron Judge, and Giancarlo Stanton all would have started the year on the injured list had the season started on time in March, so there would have been plenty of playing time available for Andujar. That isn't the case now. He had 14 plate appearances in 14 days on the roster after going roughly 16 months without seeing live, competitive pitching, and he's trying to learn a new position on the fly. That's just not going to work. He needs at-bats and he'll get them in Scranton (intrasquad at-bats are better than no at-bats). I love Andujar and still believe he will be an important Yankee going forward. Right now, going to Scranton is the best thing for him, and that includes more time in the outfield. This will put him in better position to help the Yankees later this season (and beyond), not growing roots on the bench.

Service time ramifications

Unfortunately for Andujar, the demotion is likely to delay his free agency. He came into this season with two years and 20 days of service time. In a normal 162-game season a player needs to spend 14 days in the minors to fall short of a full year of service time, so Andujar would have had to spend 34 days in the minors to delay free agency this year. The March agreement gives players prorated service time his year and each day on the roster equals 2.78 days of service time, according to Joel Sherman. Thirty-four divided by 2.78 means Andujar needs to spend only 13 days in the minors to push his free agency back from the 2023-24 offseason to the 2024-25 offseason. Two weeks in Scranton and he'll hit free agency at age 29 rather than age 28, and possibly lose millions in the process. What a bummer. In this case the demotion is defensible because Andujar has no clear path to playing time and he needs at-bats after losing last year to injury. It still sucks for him though. A lot. The Yankees insist they don't consider service time when making roster decisions but what are they supposed to say? Yeah, we're delaying this guy's free agency? They kept Luis Severino and Gleyber Torres (and Tommy Kahnle) in the minors just long enough to delay free agency in recent years. They do it. They say they don't but they do. Manipulating service time does not violate the collective bargaining agreement, technically, but it is a bad faith tactic that amounts to wage theft. Through no real fault of his own (injury and the pandemic), Andujar lost his third base job and lost playing time, and unless he's called back up very quickly, it's likely to delay his free agency and take money out of his pocket. Sucks. (It should be noted delaying Andujar's free agency and gaining that extra year of control will make him quite a bit more valuable on the trade market.)

Burning option years

Andujar has two minor league options remaining and, honestly, I don't expect him to return to the minors again after this season, so having another option for 2021 is kinda irrelevant. That is not the case with Estrada though. He will burn his final minor league option once he spends 20 days at the alternate site. Ditto Frazier, who is 12 days into his 20-day period. Tyler Wade will also burn his final minor league option should he get sent down at some point. Once a player runs out of options, he has to clear waivers to go to the minors, and talented young players like Estrada and Frazier (and Wade) aren't clearing waivers. The Yankees will either have to carry them on the roster next season or trade them because losing them for nothing on waivers can't happen. And hey, it might be easy to carry them on the 26-man roster, especially if Brett Gardner hangs 'em up or the Yankees let DJ LeMahieu leave as a free agent (unlikely but you never know). This is good for Estrada and Frazier because being out of options gives them a much better chance to stick in the big leagues. They have to be sick of riding the shuttle. I know I would. For the team's perspective, using their final option during this short season kinda stinks for roster flexibility, but it is what it is. 

28-man roster here to stay

Wednesday night MLB and the MLBPA announced an agreement to use 28-man rosters the rest of the season. They went from 30 players to 28 players as scheduled yesterday, and were supposed to go from 28 players to 26 players in two weeks, but that won't happen now. They'll stay at 28 players the rest of the regular season (and postseason) in an effort to limit injuries and navigate the pandemic. Teams will get a 29th player during doubleheaders and the traveling taxi squad has increased from three players to five players. The MLBPA pushed for a full-time 30-man roster but the owners were never going to let that happen. Getting a 28-man roster is a good compromise and it allows players like Mike Ford and Mike King to remain with the Yankees all season. Had the Yankees been required to send down two additional players in two weeks to get to a 26-man roster, Ford and King were likely to go because a) Ford isn't playing much and offers no versatility as a first base only guy (the Yankees have two first base only guys on the roster and yet they use their second baseman as a late inning defensive replacement at first base), and b) King has minor league options and can be sent down easily whereas Luis Avilan and David Hale can not. Now the Mikes have an easier path to staying on the roster all year. That doesn't mean they will -- I could see King being sent down in favor of a fresh arm following a 3-4 inning appearance -- but it will be easier to stay around. It's good for the Yankees too because they are so deep -- Andujar, Estrada, and Frazier are all big league caliber players and there's currently no room for them on the MLB roster -- and more roster spots allows them to use that depth. 

2. Happ's second stinker. J.A. Happ shouldn't start another game for the Yankees. There's really no reason for it at this point. We sat through 30 starts of this last year and surprise! The guy who was pretty bad at age 36 isn't any better at 37. The Yankees scored five runs in the top of the first inning Happ's first start. It was 5-4 by the bottom of the second. The Yankees built a 3-0 lead through two innings in Happ's second start and they were trailing 4-3 by the top of the third. Those games were against a terrible Orioles team and a Phillies team that had played one game in the previous 10 days. Eight walks and three strikeouts in seven innings with an 8.2% swing-and-miss rate that is well south of the 11.5% league average is flat out terrible, small sample size or not. Happ walked six Phillies in three innings and, as much as Angel Hernandez sucks, it wasn't his fault. There were a lot of easy takes:

James Paxton looks horrible, but the Yankees should stick with him because he's very good when he's right. He can dominate good offenses and that's a reward worth chasing. Happ's best case scenario is what? No. 5 starter you hope you don't need in the postseason? I don't think that's worth the effort to salvage. I wouldn't trade or release Happ because pitching depth can disappear in a hurry between injuries and illness this season. A move to the bullpen is the best solution. My preference is calling up Clarke Schmidt, but there's an argument to be made for pairing Jonathan Loaisiga or Mike King with an opener every fifth day. Conor Foley says Schmidt threw a simulated game in Scranton on July 26th, so a normal five-day schedule would line him up perfectly with Happ. Even if they're not lined up, it's no problem. They can slot Schmidt in whenever to make it work. The Yankees have 48 games remaining this season, including only 21 games prior to the trade deadline, so there's not much time to evaluate Schmidt. If the Yankees want to get a look at him before going out and getting a starter at the deadline, they have to do it soon. Give the kid as much time as possible to go through any growing pains and settle in. Service time is a non-issue -- Schmidt has already been down long enough to push his free agency back from the 2025-26 offseason to the 2026-27 offseason -- and even though the Yankees are close to a lock for the expanded postseason field, it shouldn't stop them from seeking potential upgrades. Maybe Schmidt comes up and struggles. That's valuable information too! That tells the Yankees they need a starter at the deadline, because Happ's not cutting it. He's probably not truly this bad but he's not good either, and the Yankees should make a change. The contract is a sunk cost and the Yankees shouldn't continue trotting him out there just because he's a respected veteran. It's time to make a change in this short season. "You just got to keep building. The stuff is coming out fine. Even the secondary -- the changeup and the slider -- were good. You’re just not going to have those days (very often) where a J.A. Happ loses the strike zone like that and walks guys. Obviously, you can’t have that, but we’ll take a little solace in that the ball is coming out well," Aaron Boone said Wednesday, which is a pretty good indication Happ is staying in the rotation. (Moving Happ to the bullpen would also help avoid his $17M vesting option for next season.) 

3. Gary's framing. Two weeks into the season and the MLB leader in pitch-framing is *drumroll* Pirates catcher Jacob Stallings at +0.6 runs above average. Gary Sanchez is second at +0.5 runs though. As I'm sure you know by now, Sanchez improved his blocking last season but his framing went in the tank, so the Yankees hired catching guru Tanner Swanson to help him like he helped Mitch Garver in Minnesota. The super early returns are promising. Swanson had Gary adopt a one-knee catching stance -- the one-knee stance is really catching on around baseball, turn on a random game any night and you're likely to see it --  which is designed to help frame low pitches without sacrificing blocking ability. Sanchez's framing decline last year was tied up almost exclusively on pitches down. He was fine on pitches at the corners. At the knees he was well-below-average. Here are the called strike rates:

The gloveside still isn't very good (to be clear, that is in to righties and away to lefties) but Sanchez has been much better framing low pitches over the middle of the plate and to his armside. His overall called strike rate is up 2.5 percentage points too. Yankees pitchers have averaged 152.2 pitches per nine innings this year, so we're talking four extra strikes per game. That doesn't sound like much, and maybe it's not most days, but there are times the entire complexion of a game can swing because a framed pitch turns a would-be 3-1 count into a 2-2 count, or a 1-1 count into an 0-2 count. Sanchez's blocking has been good too. He's allowed three passed pitches (one passed ball and two wild pitches) in 75 innings this year, or one every 25.0 innings. That's better than last year (20.1) and much better than 2017 (12.8) and 2018 (10.4). (The MLB average is one passed pitch every 20.3 innings.) The season is still extremely young and I would not declare Sanchez's pitch-framing fixed yet. We need more information. For now, the numbers say his framing has been better in the early going, and I think the eye test backs that up. Sanchez does seem to be getting more calls on pitches down, like this one and this one and this one. Last night's homer aside, he's been horrible at the plate in the early going (3-for-31 with 18 strikeouts!) but I'm not really worried about that. Annoyed, yes, but not worried. Gleyber Torres has stunk too and I'm not worried about him either. They'll be fine. Just one of those slumps that gets magnified because it happens at the start of the season rather than get buried in the dogs days somewhere. Sanchez's framing looks better so far and the numbers indicate it's improved, and that's a promising sign seeing how he's made tangible changes to the way he receives pitches. We'll see what happens as the sample grows but I'm encouraged. "He’s been on his game behind the dish, especially pitch calling and picking up some tips here and there. It’s not easy to not take the offense out on the field, but as players we all kind of understand that. It’s easy to rally around a guy that’s really taking pride in his defense even though may be frustrated with how it’s going in the batter’s box," Gerrit Cole said during his postgame conference call earlier this week.

4. Rapid fire thoughts. So much for Aroldis Chapman coming back quickly. I was wrong about that. Chapman threw a bullpen session Wednesday and Aaron Boone said he will throw another one tomorrow, and if that goes well, he'll face hitters early next week. It makes sense to bring him along slowly -- Chapman didn't pitch at all during Summer Camp -- but I thought the Yankees would fast track him rather than waste bullets in Scranton during a short season. With the expanded postseason taking the edge off a bit, the Yankees can be patient with Chapman and let him to get closer to full strength before returning. "I feel like physically, he’s in a good spot, and we’ll just monitor how each bullpen goes, how his live BPs go, and make a smart decision about when to bring him back, but we won’t rush him," Boone said earlier this week ... Chris Iannetta, who was designated for assignment when Masahiro Tanaka returned, cleared waivers and accepted his outright assignment to Scranton, the Yankees announced. He remains with the team as a non-40-man roster player. That's good. Having a 14-year veteran around as your third catcher during a pandemic is a nice little luxury. I imagine Iannetta will travel with the Yankees as part of their taxi squad whenever they go on the road ... Small thing I didn't like that didn't cost the Yankees and doesn't really matter now: Miguel Andujar at third base behind J.A. Happ, as was the case in Game 1 of Wednesday's doubleheader. Andujar is not a good defensive third baseman, we know that, and Happ gets a lot of grounders to the left side of the infield from righty batters. His 2018-19 ball-in-play heat map:

Like I said, this doesn't matter now because Andujar has been sent down (and he did make a few nice plays behind Happ on Wednesday, like this one), but if the Yankees are going to give him spot starts at third base, do it when Gerrit Cole (strikeouts and fly balls) is on the mound, not Happ and all those grounders to the left side ... And finally, is it just me or are umpires really bad this year? The strike zone has seemed far more inconsistent than usual. One inning a certain pitch is a strike, the next it's not. I dug up some numbers:

No real change, though that doesn't rule out the inconsistency I mentioned. This just shows umpires are making the incorrect call at approximately the same rate. I don't know how we could quantify the strike zone varying inning-to-inning without digging through the data manually (I like you guys, but no), so this is all anecdotal. Umpires have to get into game shape too and they had a short Summer Camp -- they usually spend all Spring Training getting ready and now they had what, one or two exhibition games behind the plate? -- so I understand, but it makes it no less frustrating. I can live the strike zone being inconsistent game-to-game. When it's inconsistent inning-to-inning, that's when things really get messy.

Mailbag Questions of the Week

Dan asks: Isn’t Aaron Boone’s contract up at the end of this season? Re-signing him is a no-brainer right? 2018 had its ups and downs but the job he did in 2019 alone, along with the start of this season, shows how much he’s grown as a leader. I’m all of him getting a new deal. Thoughts?

There is a club option for next season in Boone's contract and I assume the Yankees will exercise it. I have no reason to believe they're unhappy with him. There were definitely some growing pains in 2018 -- the slow hook in the postseason still irks me -- but Boone was much better last year, and it's hard to argue with the results. The Yankees have navigated the weirdness masterfully this season and the players seem to love Boone. 

The Yankees typically wait until contracts expire to negotiate new ones, so I could see them picking up Boone's option and not circling back until after next year. Rookie managers were all the rage two years ago and most flopped (Mickey Callaway, Gabe Kapler) or got caught cheating (Alex Cora). No manager is perfect, but the Yankees seem to have a hit home run with Boone. He's grown as a manager and the clubhouse is in great shape. An extension is inevitable, I think. I'm just not sure whether it'll happen this offseason or next.

Noah asks: With Gardner and Andujar in a platoon, why doesn’t Stanton play left field against lefties with Andujar at DH? Stanton has been a pretty good defender in his career (I would assume better than Andujar right now still) and it might be better to not relegate him to DH only with so many years of his contract left.

Aaron Boone insists he and the Yankees are comfortable playing Giancarlo Stanton in the outfield. Their actions say otherwise. He hasn't played the outfield at all this year, so either they don't trust him defensively (unlikely but possible), or they're worried he'll get hurt again (likely). I would not blame them for the latter.

"I do like him for now (at DH),” Boone said during a conference call last week. “He's doing so well. From a performance standpoint, he's been great. I feel like physically he's in a great spot. He's ready to go play the outfield, but I feel like with the roster we have right now, it kind of makes the most sense to go this route."

Miguel Andujar was surprisingly competent in the outfield before being demoted. Not great, obviously, but he's fine for 5-6 innings. Yes, the Yankees would've been better defensively with Stanton in the outfield and Andujar at DH, though I suspect they'd still pull Stanton for a defensive replacement, meaning you lose his bat in the later innings. That's no good.

Gio Urshela is locked in at the hot corner, so the outfield is probably going to be Andujar's long-term home and giving him as many reps out there as possible this year will help him get comfortable. Before he was demoted, the Yankees were able to roll the dice on Andujar in left field on occasion because they're so good overall and the postseason is expanded. 

Brian asks: Like I’m sure many others have asked, would you skip Paxton’s turn next time? 

I would not skip James Paxton's next start unless he and the Yankees feel it's necessary so he can work on things on the side. The Yankees have to get him right before October -- or see enough to determine whether they need another starter at the trade deadline -- and he only has 9-10 starts remaining. Paxton needs as much game action as he can get. The Yankees are close to a lock for the expanded postseason, so they can afford to be patient and let him take his lumps. It's no fun sitting through this, I know, but the expanded postseason format makes these games a little less important. The Yankees should stick with him for the time being in an effort to get him right.

(Send your requests for Tuesday's random Yankee series and questions for Friday's mailbag to RABmailbag at gmail dot com.)