When you Google Justin Wilson, you have to scroll past a deceased race car driver and a deceased celebrity chef before you get to the lefty reliever.
And yet Yankees fans were absolutely up in arms about dealing Wilson to Detroit during the 2015-16 offseason. What a world.
At the time, though, the move didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The Yanks were taking one of their few existing strengths, the 7-8-9 fellas in the ‘pen, and dismantling the first third of the equation. And not for any great return, either. The secondary piece in the previous summer’s Cespedes-to-the-Mets trade and a depth arm who struggled to find his footing with the Erie SeaWolves. Lovely. Couldn’t Wilson have netted us, I don’t know, Gio Gonzalez if not Bryce Harper? I kid. But, you know, would’ve been nice.
But regardless, who the hell were Luis Cessa and Chad Green, and what were they doing on my roster? Both of their names sounded like when MVP Baseball ’04 tried to get the top prospects we desired into the game, but couldn’t legally pop the names in there and left us with Alton Jarvis (shouts to Alton Jarvis). Were Luis Cessa and Chad Green real people or create-a-players? Or, even worse, “depth arms”, Minor League slang for “sad man hanging onto his dream”?
Turns out, both men possess actual, tangible skills. And Justin Wilson has a balky shoulder.
Ignoring even for a minute that the Yanks decided to fill the Justin Wilson-shaped bullpen gap with literally Aroldis Chapman, this deal could not have turned out any better in the early going. Both men throw 95+ with legitimate movement and a pitch mix that checks the boxes (cut to Luis Severino silently shaking his head in confusion while M&Ms fall out of his open mouth).
Cessa’s first big league start was against the lowly Angels, but calling them that ignores that fact that they did, in fact, spend July leading the league in runs scored. So, weird, but accurate; they can jump on a loser and call a spade a spade. But Cessa hurled six shutout with five K’s, and left Mike Trout late on the four-seamer.
Green took to the mound Sunday in different circumstances; unlike Cessa, he wasn’t quite trying to prove he belonged from the point of genesis. He was simply trying to reinforce the dominance he’d established in his previous start against Toronto. Green showed he could completely control a lineup, dare I say “David Cone-style”, in his last outing in the Bronx, to the tune of 11 off-balance whiffs against a juggernaut that made Anthony Swarzak look like Anthony Kiedis (except the sock’s limp). So it was up to Green, whose face seemed to exude a growing confidence as the Toronto game wore on, to bring that new mindset to Orange County. Clearly, he did. Right now, Chad Green isn’t trying to prove himself a big league option. He’s locked in, and he requires that you prove to him that you belong near his mound.
Now, is Green someone who can legitimately say, “Get off my mound!” or is he just another Dallas Braden? There’s no way of knowing that, yet. This post isn’t presupposing that Green and Cessa are going to hold down rotation spots for a decade, or that Justin Wilson is going to be eating bean dip out of a can by 2018. All I’m saying is that a deal that seemed initially bizarre, and a deal that would seemingly lay all blame or praise on the Yankees’ scouting staff, appears to be a massive victory as 2016 draws towards its “Play The Kids” conclusion.
It’s the perfect season to play the kids, and to give Green and Cessa a chance every time the rotation calls their numbers. It’s also a perfect time to check another one off Brian Cashman’s list. He was given the freedom to deal, and things went right. As for Cashman’s recent trade failures, it’s pretty much just the Eovaldi deal, right? Right. Let’s give him another round of applause for Green and Cessa, who’ll rightfully get every opportunity in the next month to prove they belong.
Justin Wilson’s not very good, you guys.
