The Yankees aren’t very good right now.
The truth is, the two significant aspects of the team which were supposed to be terrific (batting and bullpen) are faltering. And if you haven’t noticed, the Red Sox just can’t stop winning. They beat the crap out of baseball’s new demigod Shohei Ohtani (he did leave with a blister issue) recently, and the Yankees are currently 6.5 games back in the AL East. We knew the Red Sox were going to be good, but who knew they would be off to this hot of a start. Especially without Dustin Pedroia and David Price still not fully back to ace-like form.
When bad things are happening around them, people tend to start questioning every move they ever made. They start second-guessing every decision they ever made. The same goes for their baseball team when they are struggling. Yankees fans start questioning every move Brian Cashman made. Cashman is one of the best GMs in the game, and at this point in his spectacular career, the questioning should cease. But it doesn’t stop fans from going down the rabbit hole of the past.
When searching the web, I came across many different posts involving fans questioning past decisions made by the franchise. The major one is: should the Yankees have traded for Giancarlo Stanton?
Did the Yankees actually win the Stanton trade? First off, when this trade came to fruition, I didn’t care that much. Honestly. I didn’t think the Yankees needed Stanton, but I’ll take one of the five best players in the world in his prime. Kind of like when Kevin Durant signed with the Golden State Warriors. The Warriors don’t need KD, but he pushes them over the edge. I viewed the Stanton trade like that.
I honestly would have just kept Starlin Castro, who was dynamite last year, but the transaction made sense for how the Yankees think nowadays. Why pay for Bryce Harper, Manny Machado or Mike Trout in the winter of 2018 when we can get one of the best bats in baseball in a trade beforehand. And as crazy as it sounds, for probably cheaper than any of the three will cost this summer.
But to answer the question: did the Yankees win the Giancarlo Stanton trade? MY GOD YES. Cashman traded a great but not elite second baseman and two prospects (Jorge Guzman and Jose Devers) that weren’t top ones for a lumberjack disguised as a ballplayer that utterly destroys baseballs.
Yes, Stanton might be off to a horrendous start, but the Yankees still won the trade. By the way, Stanton was off to a rough start last season as well and turned it around to be NL MVP.
On this date last year, Giancarlo Stanton was hitting .226 with three home runs and a .715 OPS. He wound up winning NL MVP.
In other words… Yankees fans, take a deep breath.
— Alex Putterman (@AlexPutterman) April 18, 2018
Stanton will bounce back; baseball has a ridiculously long season. But yes, the Yankees should move him down in the batting order to limit his strikeouts and protect the lineup. They did it to Judge last year; now they should do the same to Stanton.
Fans are missing the production of Castro. Right now the Yankees can’t find a steady hand at second base. Tyler Wade can’t hit anything. The Yankees started Ronald Torreyes yesterday at third base, probably making him the shortest third baseman in baseball (this is an assumption) because Miguel Andujar (even though he hit his first home run the other day) has been struggling. Veteran presence Neil Walker has not done anything for the Yankees thus far this season. That’s why I wrote an article last week asking for the Yankees to bring up Gleyber Torres. There were logistics to Torres’ case, but hopefully, we will be seeing him soon.
The Yankees need infield help, but it doesn’t mean that fans should be looking back at Castro and second-guessing Cashman’s decision to let him go. We shouldn’t second guess the decision to trade Castro. We should take this team for what it is: an underachieving 9-8 team with as much talent as anyone in baseball, and that can turn things around in a split second.
The Yankees have had a lot of injuries, thus letting players like Tyler Wade and Torreyes jump into more prominent roles. When players like Stanton are struggling, others that shouldn’t need to impact the game as much, need to produce more and currently, they aren’t. Thus, the team struggles and that is what we see now. Everything snowballs, every swing-and-miss is amplified. Stanton’s struggling impacts the team as a whole, especially when no one can step up to replace the production needed.
Let’s pull something out of the Aaron Rodgers playbook; everyone should R-E-L-A-X. The Yankees should be the team we all thought they would be soon. Giancarlo Stanton got a single last night, and that’s more like Castro production, but when Stanton hits a mammoth home run that escapes into the New York twilight on a consistent basis; fans will start saying Castro who?
