Your premature Yankees winter wrap-up

It seems early to be wrapping up the offseason.  I don't remember the last time we sat here on January 11th and had as many big names still on the free-agent market as there are today but logic would dictate the Yankees are just about done restructuring for 2016.  And while it's never out of the realm of possibility for Cashman to make an unforeseen splash, I wouldn't expect the depth chart to look a whole lot different today than it will on April 4th before the rematch with Dallas Keuchel.

There were a few swaps made in the Bronx this winter but the pieces that moved around weren't necessarily the one's we'd expected going into December.  The market for Brett Gardner seems to have followed that of every other major league outfielder without a job right now...Ivan Nova is staying here while his value is low...and it looks like the Andrew Miller trade talks were just a ploy by Cashman to see what kind of haul he could get back while the closer market was booming.  

The Yankees mirrored their 2014-2015 offseason this winter; buying low on once highly-touted prospects who are still young, cost-controlled and with uncertain potential.  One of the most depressing fallouts from the wildcard loss to Houston was the realization that the 2016 Yankees were pretty much going to be the 2015 Yankees, just a year older.  But Cashman deserves a tip of the cap - I did not expect the dynamic of the team to change as much as it has since that abysmal night.

The first real move the Yankees made this offseason was bringing in Aaron Hicks in exchange for John Ryan Murphy.  JR really had himself a nice season and was fun to watch but he became expendable with Gary Sanchez's resurgence in Scranton and the AFL.  Hicks, a former first round pick who's just 26-years-old, will play the Marcus Thames/Andruw Jones/Chris Young role and stands to be an improvement in the field.

While the deal for Chapman garnered a lot of attention for many reasons (some good, some bad) the trade for Starlin Castro was the most impactful move the team made this winter.  He makes the lineup younger, gives them balance from the other side of the plate that they desperately needed and fills what was a glaring hole at second base.  He's a 25-year-old, three-time All-Star who's already amassed 991 career major league hits.  This guy can ball.  He may have baggage, he may be coming off an awful year but I think players like Starlin Castro can always be a change of scenery away from realizing their true potential.  I'll miss Adam Warren but he too became expendable.  Once he was relegated to the bullpen last year he became a ghost.  If they stuck him there again with this unit he'd be even harder to find.  I'm sure we'll all be clamoring for him when Pineda goes down with an oblique strain his third turn through the rotation but it's not unreasonable to think that Nova and/or Bryan Mitchell would be capable of stepping in and patching things together.

Trading Justin Wilson was curious.  To give away a top reliever who was essential to the team last year just to avoid his "money-making years" didn't sit well with a lot of fans but it hardly seems relevant now.  The Yankees have their big three and whatever money they saved on Wilson they gave to a better reliever and managed to enrich their minor league starting pitching depth in the process.  It goes without saying how the Chapman deal changes the entire complexion of the bullpen.  These are 6 inning games now.  The rotation, loaded with question marks from top to bottom is now prepared to go into each and every start with a massive safety net.  Three of the top five relievers in baseball back-to-back-to-back.  That's Brian Cashman just looking at Major League Baseball in the year 2016 and swimming with the current.

It seemed impossible to upgrade next year's team without mortgaging the future and/or locking into more longterm crippling contracts.  But Cash managed to make this upcoming version of the Yankees younger, more balanced and more talented and he did it all without carelessly throwing money around or trading any blue-chippers.  The Blue Jays are still scary, the Sox are on the upswing but there's plenty of reasons to think that the 2016 Yankees as presently constituted can go bumper-to-bumper with any team in the American League.