This is spun off from the Judge thread, where I mentioned that over the weekend, in one of my geekier moments, I wrote down the whole current Yankee roster to see how many spots I thought could be internally upgraded, based solely on talent, no contract or team control factors. The idea here is if the NY organization had to put together a team today to win as many games in the next few weeks as they could. I came up with 7 out of 25, which surprised even me, as follows (guys not on the 25 man roster now are starred):
1B: Bird* (replaces Carter)
2B: Castro
SS: Didi
3B: Torres* (replaces Headley)
LF: Gardner
CF: Hicks
RF: Judge
DH: Holliday
Bench: Fowler*, Austin*, Wade*, Romine (replacing Refsnyder, Gallegos, Torreyes)
SP: Severino, Pineda, CC, Montgomery, Adams* (replacing Tanaka)
RP: Chapman* (replacing Heller), Betances, Warren, Clippard, Holder, Shreve, Green
This doesn't include two more moves which NY would like to happen at some point in the next year or so, Clint Frazier in LF replacing Gardner and Miguel Andujar to 3B with Torres to 2B bumping Castro (whose defense is awful.) Also since Ellsbury is currently on the concussion DL, it doesn't include him, but clearly NY would like to move him as soon as possible.
So I don't think any of those is controversial except Adams for Tanaka, and again that's just because of the short term window of this exercise, I don't really think Adams is quite ready and I also think it would be dumb to give up on Tanaka now, not to mention I don't know how that would happen logisitically with his upcoming player option. Fowler and Wade both add flexibility (Fowler has played all 3 OF positions this year and is a good defender, Wade has played six positions, I think everything but 1B/C/P), and Austin would bump the unnecessary 8th reliever.
1B: Bird* (replaces Carter)
2B: Castro
SS: Didi
3B: Torres* (replaces Headley)
LF: Gardner
CF: Hicks
RF: Judge
DH: Holliday
Bench: Fowler*, Austin*, Wade*, Romine (replacing Refsnyder, Gallegos, Torreyes)
SP: Severino, Pineda, CC, Montgomery, Adams* (replacing Tanaka)
RP: Chapman* (replacing Heller), Betances, Warren, Clippard, Holder, Shreve, Green
This doesn't include two more moves which NY would like to happen at some point in the next year or so, Clint Frazier in LF replacing Gardner and Miguel Andujar to 3B with Torres to 2B bumping Castro (whose defense is awful.) Also since Ellsbury is currently on the concussion DL, it doesn't include him, but clearly NY would like to move him as soon as possible.
So I don't think any of those is controversial except Adams for Tanaka, and again that's just because of the short term window of this exercise, I don't really think Adams is quite ready and I also think it would be dumb to give up on Tanaka now, not to mention I don't know how that would happen logisitically with his upcoming player option. Fowler and Wade both add flexibility (Fowler has played all 3 OF positions this year and is a good defender, Wade has played six positions, I think everything but 1B/C/P), and Austin would bump the unnecessary 8th reliever.