Yankees keep it quiet in Bronx as Dodgers make noise at trade deadline
Padres relief pitcher Enyel De Los Santos throws during the ninth inning of a game against the Nationals on July 24 in Washington. Credit: AP/John McDonnell
If you had ‘X’ notifications on for MLB trade deadline news these last two days, your phone screen probably looked a little something like this:
Dodgers trade for Tommy Edman.
Dodgers trade for Michael Kopech.
Dodgers trade for Amed Rosario.
Dodgers trade for Kevin Kiermaier.
Dodgers trade for Jack Flaherty.
And, if you’re a Yankees fan, you might’ve also gotten a bonus tweet Tuesday afternoon: Gerrit Cole was scratched from Tuesday night’s start with general body fatigue.
Felt kind of cruel, didn’t it?
It’s not that the Yankees were completely silent at this year’s deadline: They got Jazz Chisholm Jr. over the weekend, and shored up their bullpen with what could be a sneaky-good acquisition in Mark Leiter Jr., formerly of the Cubs, as well as the Padres’ Enyel De Los Santos. They were in the mix on a number of splashier trades in what shaped up to be an utterly chaotic few hours in Major League Baseball, and Cole’s fatigue currently isn’t believed to be serious (he’s still in line to pitch this weekend against the Blue Jays).
But despite that, and despite the three-game win streak they took into Tuesday evening, the meager moves they managed to make simply didn’t feel like enough. Oh sure, it might’ve looked like plenty a little over a month ago, when they had the best record in baseball. But after a horrific swoon that took them into late July, there’s no denying that this roster still likely needs more.
They could’ve used a starter, but if the gigantic prospect haul the Orioles gave up for a fairly mediocre pitcher in Trevor Rogers is any indication, prices were inordinately high. They definitely needed a corner infielder, but it appears the makeshift solution of Chisholm — who had never played the position professionally — at third and Ben Rice, primarily a catcher, at first will have to do for now, despite the team’s preponderance of contact-heavy pitchers. And though Leiter and De Los Santos bring in a swing-and-miss element the bullpen was looking for, another lefty couldn’t have hurt.
The result is a trade deadline that ranks somewhere between mediocre to OK, but looks far worse when you consider what the Dodgers did, or even what the Padres managed to onload. Heck, the Marlins fire sale got them a veritable super-team of prospects that could very well set them up for years to come.
It’s not a comfortable position to be in, not when the Yankees came into the year with such high hopes and managed to extinguish so many of them in the last few weeks. It also leaves the team in a sort of limbo, a slave to variables: Can the infield defense hold up with players playing out of position? Can the rotation turn things around after a genuinely ugly month-plus? And will the return of injured players — Giancarlo Stanton, Clarke Schmidt, Ian Hamilton, Scott Effross and Nick Burdi — finally prove the tired platitude true: Getting players back really is like making a move at the trade deadline.
The thing is, while it’s a fan’s right to hammer Brian Cashman for this moderate haul, there may legitimately not have been much more that he could do. The Yankees farm system isn’t on par with what the Dodgers and Orioles have to offer, and those teams certainly flexed their prospect muscle this year. The Giants' Blake Snell and Tigers' Tarik Skubal both stayed put — a clear indication that asking costs were too rich for anyone’s blood.
And, for fairness’ sake, let’s also mention that Chisholm was one of the better bats available, can also play the outfield, and hit two homers Tuesday night (in the Yankees' 7-6 win in 12 innings) in addition to the two he hit on Monday.
Sure, De Los Santos will have to be something of a reclamation project — hat tip to pitching coach Matt Blake if he can do something about the fastball that’s been getting hammered all year — but Leiter is far better than his 4.21 ERA would indicate. His expected ERA is 2.61, according to Baseball Savant, and he’s in the 98th percentile in K% and WHIFF%. He also gets high marks for expected batting average (.197) and chase percentage (33.9%).
But all that can be true and you can still be disappointed.
This was the year the Yankees were supposed to go for broke — the year they employed two of the best hitters in the world in Juan Soto and Aaron Judge. They have the reigning Cy Young award winner back from injury. For a minute there in June, they had some of the best pitchers in baseball — that is, before a precipitous downfall put their staff ERA at 4.26 ERA in the last 30 days. Shockingly, they flat-out stopped hitting, though that has (at least temporarily) corrected itself over the previous three games, where they’ve managed to score 33 runs.
But they’ll need more: More hitting, better pitching from Nestor Cortes and Marcus Stroman, in particular, tighter defense and a stronger bullpen. For a while, this trade deadline looked like it could be the answer. But now that 6 p.m. Tuesday has come and gone, it increasingly looks like the real answer will have to come from within.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.