Miguel Andújar

Should The New York Yankees Keep Miguel Andujar Or Trade Him?

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New York Yankees, Miguel Andujar

Before you come to any conclusions about trading of New York Yankees third-baseman and youth phenomenon Miguel Andujar, it’s important to look at both sides of the story. I will break down the pros and cons while ultimately coming to a conclusion that makes sense for the team.

Why trading Miguel Andujar away from the New York Yankees could make sense:

Allowing Andujar to depart would only be justified in one scenario, and it revolves entirely around pitching. The Yankees are desperately trying to bolster their starting pitching rotation, and with talks of Noah Syndergaard coming across town, it makes the idea of a trade more intriguing.

The Mets are only willing to deal their star pitcher if Andujar is included in the package, which would force the Yankees’ hand. But, would it be worth it to let the young athlete leave?

In 2018, Miguel had an impressive campaign. Over the span of 573 at-bats, Andujar recorded 27 home-runs, 92 RBIs, a .297 batting average, and just 97 strikeouts. Those numbers are similar to Manny Machado’s, given the Dodgers star had an additional 50 at-bats.

Machado line – 632 ABs, 37 home-runs, 107 RBIs, .297 BA, and 107 strikeouts. 

If you look at the math, you can see that Machado hits a home-run about every 17 at-bats, while Andujar hits one every 21. To put more perspective on how great Andujar’s rookie campaign was, Machado hit a homer every 28 at-bats in his first year in the MLB.

After breaking down those numbers, it’s obvious that giving away Andujar hurts the lineup.

But, thecquedtion is does Noah Syndergaard offer more value to the Yankees?

The hard throwing pitcher missed a majority of the 2017 season, but bounced back to finish 13-4 last season. All the more impressive that he pitched that record playing for sub-par Mets team.Entering his fifth season at 26 years old bodes well for the righty. His influence on the Yankees would be significant, and it’s fair to say that giving up Andujar would be worth it,provided they snag Manny as well.

But, Andujar is a young star and he has a promising future/career ahead of him. The return haul has to be more than worth it when giving up a staple in your lineup. Personally, I wouldn’t be willing to give him up unless the deal was too good to be true.

Comment below what you think the Yankees should do!

The New York Yankees Had To ‘Earn’ The Best Record In Baseball

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It was a long, long time ago. The New York Yankees had just lost 8-5 to the Toronto Blue Jays. It was April 20 and the Bombers were 9-9. Giancarlo Stanton was striking out at an alarming rate and fans were ready to burn down the city.

For those same beloved fans, that seems like forever ago. Here we sit on May 10 and the Yankees have only lost once since that horrifying day in April.

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Can they complete the sweep?

The Yankees are looking for a series sweep against the rival Boston Red Sox. They have won 17 of their last 18 games and currently have the best record in baseball at 26-10. Is anyone surprised?

The New York Yankees have one of the most powerful lineups in baseball. Keep up with breaking news, broken bats, and daily updates on your favorite team! Sign up to our free newsletter to get premium Yankees content straight to your email.

Back in December, the Yankees traded a bucket of balls for the reigning NL MVP Giancarlo Stanton. The feeling in the Bronx was that this team was never going to lose again. After a slow start, they figured it out thanks to the play of their young guns.

Miguel Andujar and Gleyber Torres have been spark plugs in this Yankee lineup to go along with Stanton, Aaron Judge and the AL Player of the Month for April, Didi Gregorius.

The Yankees have dealt with minor injuries throughout the season, most notable to Brandon Drury. Jordan Montgomery will be on the shelf for a few weeks but this team will surely not struggle without their fifth starter. Their pitching has been good enough to get by. The catalyst is Luis Severino but the rotation is surviving thanks to the success of ageless wonder, C.C. Sabathia. He holds a 2-0 record with a 1.39 ERA in 32.1 innings.

The Yankees were an early season favorite to win the Fall Classic. They were expected to win 100 games and break all different home run records in a season. Some might have said that it was impossible or too good to be true but here in the now, the Yanks are showing the world that they are for real and it is not a dream.

New York Yankees: Andujar, Severino And The Youth Movement Continues

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New York Yankees, Miguel Andujar

The New York Yankees took three out of four from the Toronto Blue Jays over the weekend and won their first series since the beginning of the month against the Tampa Bay Rays.

The infield transformed into the infield fans were promised before spring training—Gleyber Torres made his major league debut at second base, finally joining fellow prospect and third baseman Miguel Andujar.

Luis Severino was the ace fans expected, negotiating trouble spots with ease, going seven innings and giving up three hits, one run, one home run (to Teoscar Hernandez) two walks and six strikeouts. He lowered his ERA to 2.32. Yankees manager Aaron Boone told MLB.com’s Danny Knobler:

“To get us through seven was huge,” Boone said. “That’s what an ace looks like.”

Severino is now tied with Patrick Corbin, Rick Porcello, and Max Scherzer for the American League lead in wins with four.

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The story of this game was Andujar’s four hit day against Marcus Stroman and the Jays bullpen—scoring a pair of doubles and two infield singles on the day.

Andujar told Knobler after Sunday’s game:

“To me, it’s about getting an opportunity and doing your job,” Andujar said through an interpreter. “I’m getting a great opportunity.”

Andujar is not only getting opportunities and making the most of them at the plate, he’s begun doing so on a consistent basis. In the last six games, Andujar is hitting .308. He has gone 13-25 with seven doubles, a triple and two home runs.

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While Torres went 0-4 on the day, he looked comfortable in the field and no doubt will relax at the plate and get the bat going soon.

It was a game in which every Yankee player was under 30:

with Austin Romine being the oldest player in the game at 29. Yankee fans can look forward to the energy, elite skills and enthusiasm that this young team brings to the game every night.

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What’s next up? The Yankees meet the Minnesota Twins at the Stadium. RHP Masahiro Tanaka (2-2, 6.45 ERA) takes the mound against RHP Jake Odorizzi (1-1, 3.38 ERA).

New York Yankees: Is Gleyber Torres Next Up?

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New York Yankees, Gleyber Torres

In spring training, the young New York Yankee players, Miguel Andujar, Gleyber Torres and Tyler Wade competed with veterans, Ronald Torreyes, Brandon Drury and Neil Walker for spots on the infield.

The Yankees had the kids, Torres and Andujar, at second base and third base respectively during spring training, and neither was able to win a starting role due to their underwhelming performances, particularly at the plate.

How did they perform?

Although Torres’ struggles at the plate may have been due to the long lay off from the elbow injury he suffered in June, followed by Tommy John surgery, service issues as well appeared to dictate that he begin the season at Triple-A Scranton Wilkes-Barre. Wade and Walker were slated to platoon at second base.

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Andujar was sent down as well in favor of Drury and his experience at the hot corner.

Then came the spate of injuries—Greg Bird with bone spur surgery on his ankle and Drury with migraines and blurred vision—and the best laid plans of spring training for the infield were disrupted.

Instead of Wade and Walker platooning at second base, it is now Walker and Tyler Austin platooning at first base.

Wade has struggled in a full-time role and has hit .094/.171/.156 in 11 games at second base. He has struggled so much, that utility infielder Ronald Torreyes, currently batting .429/.429/.500, started at second base on Friday night in Detroit. Though one might note that Wade has been the victim of the flu in the past week or so, he has also not produced when healthy.

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With the Drury illness, Andujar has been recalled from Triple-A to hold down third base; however, in eight games with the Yankees this season, Andujar is hitting just .156/.176/.250.

With Neil Walker also struggling at the plate, batting .188/.264./208 and sharing first base duties with Austin, who is batting .265/.359/.500 in 10 games, the Yankee infield (including Didi Gregorius, who is having a stellar start to the season batting .311) is batting a collective .240.

Illness, injury and early season struggles for Drury, Wade, Walker and Andujar have left fans calling for the Yankees to bring up Gleyber Torres.

In eight games in Triple-A this season, Torres is scalding the ball, hitting .387/.412/.548 in 31 at-bats. In the field with Scranton, Torres has split time between second and third base. If the Yankees wait until after April 18 to call Torres up to the big leagues, then they get another year of control regarding free agency.

Will the Yankees tap into the minor league system to solve its major league problems? Boone told George A King III of the New York Post regarding Torres:

“He is off to a good start, getting a lot of hits. I don’€™t think he is swinging great, necessarily,” Boone said. “Eventually, we feel like he will come up here and help us. We want him to come here when he is in a good place and contribute to the long haul instead of a short-term knee-jerk need.”

The question is where are the Yankees now as far as the infield is concerned? Is it a short-term situation, as Boone suggests, in which Drury can be expected to return sooner rather than later, Wade can be expected to begin hitting, and Walker can once again be effective at the plate?

Or is Torres, the number one prospect in the Yankee organization, ready to bring his elite skills to the big leagues and solve one of the Yankees pressing needs at second or third base?

It will be interesting to see which path the Yankees take after April 18 when Torres is able to come up to the big club. Will Yankee fans see Torres in his big league debut in the near future?

3 Keys to Success for the 2018 New York Yankees

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New York Yankees, Aaron Judge

Started From the Bottom Now We’re Here:

Prior to the start of the 2017 season the New York Yankees were a young team in unfamiliar territory; they were supposed to be rebuilding. A team on the verge of competition but not quite yet ready to contend. However, how wrong those “experts” were, the 2017 New York Yankees came within one game of reaching the World Series.

So we turn the page to the 2018 season for the New York Yankees to continue their success from 2017, and go even further in the upcoming 2018 season.

These are the top 3 keys to that success:

  • Consistency

The key to any winning season in baseball does have an element of luck to it. There’s the old idiom that sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. And for the Yankees first baseman Greg Bird, he has been extremely unlucky during his brief Major League tenure.  If Bird can stay consistently healthy in 2018, he will have an opportunity to have a huge impact on the Yankees chance at a World Series win.

Gary Sanchez has done a wonderful job during Spring Training of providing consistent defense, namely blocking balls in the dirt. Blocking balls was the one part of Sanchez’ game that plagued him last season.

Sanchez put in work this off-season to become more flexible to assist him with this defensive lapse from last season. So, if Gary can continue to put the effort toward his journey to improvement, we could see a drastically different catcher behind the plate, defensively.

All rise the honorable Aaron Judge is now presiding over his court!

Aaron had an incredible and historic rookie campaign. He dealt with the peaks that allowed him to dine with Zeus in Olympus and the pits that saw him battle with Hades in Hell.

This season, Aaron looked more determined than before. In the Spring of 2017 Judge came in battling for a job with the inscription of his .179 batting average as motivation. This spring, Judge remains motivated by the six weeks that costed him the opportunity to be not only the unanimous selection for Rookie of the Year, but also MVP, along with his personal desire to not be a one hit wonder.

If Judge can find that happy medium from his highs and lows of 2017, there’s only one thing to say, quoting the retiring Yankees commentator Kenny Singleton “LOOKOUT.”

  • In Cashman We Trust

In following up the 2017 campaign, the Yankees will no longer be sneaking up on teams as a underdog story. The rest of the world is now aware of what the entire Yankee Universe already knew, and that’s that the New York Yankees do everything better than the rest of baseball.

The Yankees “rebuild” lasted all of 6 months (maybe). When the Yankees began to “sell off” players during the trade deadline of 2016, everyone thought that this would be the time the Bombers reset and journey through what the Chicago Cubs or the Houston Astros endured, a full tear down and reset. But the Yankees magical wizard of a General Manager Brian Cashman had other plans.

Cashman stock piled top echelon talent very quickly taking a farm system ranked 21st by Baseball Prospectus back in 2015. Now with having graduated talent to the Major Leagues, the Yankees are still the number six farm system according to MLB Pipeline.

Cashman has also been able to provide the Yankees with real talent for not a real devastating cost. Cash recently acquired Brandon Drury in a deal eerily similar to the deal that brought us Didi Gregorius several years back. Cashman and his lieutenants have been able to bring the organization to a level of real sustainability without overpaying for talent.

Which brings us to the final key point of the Yankees ability to be successful in 2018.

  • Dominance in Development

As previously stated, Cashman and his team have been able to draft and trade for some very high level talent. Talent that will ultimately help the team in one way or another.

There are three camps in the Yankees Universe, there are your “George-ian Candidates” who say trade every prospect to bring in high priced established veterans who can provide consistent year in and year out numbers.

There are the “Prospect Huggers” that don’t want to spend on any free agents that may block the kids. And lastly there are the “Cashman-ites” (credit to Mike Calendrillo of YGY for this name) who believes that the “Cream of the Crop” (using my best Macho Man Randy Savage voice) top prospects will stick and some of the others will be used in trade.

No matter what camp you fall into there’s no denying that the following prospects will have an impact on the Yankees World Series aspirations in 2018 and beyond. (The players below will be ranked based on their MLB Pipeline rankings).

  1. Gleyber Torres
  2. Estevan Florial
  3. Justus Sheffield
  4. Miguel Andújar
  5. Chance Adams (6th overall behind RHP Albert Abreu)

Another guy who is no longer a prospect but who’s development will determine his place on this team in 2018 and going forward is Clint Frazier. Frazier plays will a lot of fire and intensity, some of his behaviors/mannerisms rub people the wrong way, but I believe that if Frazier can stay hungry and humble he can be an incredible player in Pinstripes.

New York Yankees Player Preview: Miguel Andújar

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The New York Yankees have a highly valued farm system, and one of the crown jewels of that system is our next player preview Miguel Andújar. Andújar is the number six prospect for the Yankees. The 23 year old is currently billed as the third baseman of the future for the bombers.

The question is however….is the future now?

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Major League Debut Recap

Miguel made his Major League debut on June 28 against the Chicago White Sox, earning three hits in four at bats with four rbi’s (runs batted in). With only a very small sample size of Major League plate appearances (8) Andújar did have 4 hits 1 BB (base on balls), 1 SB (stolen base), and 2 of his 4 hits were doubles.

However to get a better picture of Andújar’s ability at the plate we take a look at his minor league numbers for the 2017 season. Andújar 2017 MLB numbers: .315 AVG/ .352 OBP/ .498 SLG, 16 HR, 82 RBI. as per Baseball Reference.

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Miguel came into Spring Training (2018) with a chance to compete for the opening day starters job at third base. Andújar came out of the gate hot this Spring, driving nearly every ball he hit with authority.

However, since his hot start Andújar has cooled off a bit in the production category  over the last week or so. Yet Miguel is still hitting the ball hard as evidence by his .714 Slugging percentage during Spring Training. But hitting was never the concern with Miguel, as all of the Yankees top brass know he can hit.

The question has been his defense. And so far this Spring, Andújar has played extremely well in the field converting all of his 19 chances in the field.

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It was thought that Miguel seemingly had an opportunity to secure his position as the Yankees Opening Day third baseman when Todd Frazier signed with the cross town rival New York Mets. But when Brandon Drury was acquired just prior to the start of Spring Training games from the Arizona Diamondbacks, that picture was put in doubt.

As Yankees GM Brian Cashman all but confirmed Drury would be the third baseman. And then factoring in the recent signing of veteran infielder Neil Walker coupled with Andújar’s lack of positional versatility (as he is only a third baseman), Miguel will more than likely begin the season at Scranton.

Offensively, Miguel has nothing left to prove at Triple A but his defense still needs to be improved, though it isn’t as bad as it has been made out to be.

Miguel Andújar will have a chance in 2018 to prove himself at the Major League level, and when he does, just look out; as Andújar may be able to cement himself in as the everyday third baseman for the New York Yankees and potentially make the Yankees upper management and their fans forget about a shortstop down I95.