New York Yankees News: Yanks willing to make moves, but not too many
MLB.com | Bryan Hoch: The Yankees weren’t great last year, and everyone knows that they need some upgrades. How many and how big, no-one is sure, but the one thing that they’ve made apparent is they’re keeping channels open with almost all of the top options on the market (sorry, Shohei, but it doesn’t seem like it’s happening). For all of their disagreements on how to handle the most recent trade deadline, it appears that the end-of-season war council that Hal Steinbrenner had with Brian Cashman and company has everyone re-aligned with the direction of the team. Now we just have to wait and see what they manage to pull off.
MLB Trade Rumors | Steve Adams: One of the options on the theoretical board just became an official one. The Yokohama Baystars officially put in notice that they will be posting 30-year-old left-hander Shota Imanaga, giving him a 45-day window to negotiate with MLB teams. Imanaga is widely viewed as the No. 2 pitching option coming out of Japan, second only to Yoshinobu Yamamoto who was posted by the Orix Buffaloes a week prior. Imanaga has drawn mid-rotation comparisons and is a solid fall-back option for the teams that lose out on the Yamamoto sweepstakes.
MLB.com | Jonathan Mayo: MLB switched up the draft last year, instituting a lottery format for the top six picks in order to disincentivize tanking (as much). This is the first year that the Yankees will be a part of it after missing out on the playoffs, though their meager 0.6 percent odds will be tough to hit on. Assuming they don’t hit some San Antonio Spurs-esque luck, they’re slotted at pick No. 16 (they have the 15th best odds for the lottery though, thanks to Washington being ineligible for the lottery as a team that was bad but spent major money in back-to-back years). Their draft pick would also slide back 10 spots from there because of the competitive balance tax, though it wouldn’t if they manage to slide into the top six.
The Athletic | Cody Stavenhagen (subscription required): Finally, if you have access and want to ward away the hype of buying into some mega-deals, here’s a buyer-beware list of some of the worst running deals. Shoutout to Josh Donaldson’s deal being over so that he only gets an honorable mention in this instead of an actual feature.
