Yankees Offseason Trade Target: Minnesota Pitcher Ervin Santana

While he might seem like a strange target for a rebuilding team, Minnesota Twins starter Ervin Santana would give the New York Yankees a much-needed proven workhorse to solidify a shaky rotation.

Minnesota Twins pitcher Ervin Santana is everything the New York Yankees have tried to avoid the last two years. At 33, he’s not exactly ancient, but he’s definitely approaching his decline phase. With two years and $27 million remaining on his deal, he’s certainly not cheap and won’t help ownership with their plan to get under the luxury tax. His recent 80 game suspension for PED use also gives him unattractive excess baggage.

So why would the Yankees even think about acquiring Santana? For one thing, he wouldn’t cost a ton to acquire in terms of prospects. Presumably the small market Twins would be happy to move a contract that is seen as a disappointing signing for them. Most rebuilding clubs are more than willing to trade their expensive vets at a discount.

Just because New York has a terrific collection of prospects now doesn’t mean they should be eager to give them away, so any moves they can make to get better that cost them just money should be strongly considered. Obviously the free agent market is the best example of that, but compared to the current price of free agent starting pitching, Santana is a relative bargain.

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If he were a free agent this offseason, Santana would likely command another three or four year deal at roughly the same annual value considering how consistent he has been. Two years and $27 million seems like a real bargain considering that, especially when you throw in a reasonable team option for 2019.

Lets be clear, Santana is not a frontline starter. What he is, however, is a prototypical number three. Over the last seven seasons, Santana has had an ERA over 4.00 only once. In that time, the only season he failed to reach 175 innings was due to his suspension.

He’s accumulated 14.1 WAR during that span, averaging almost exactly two wins per season, which is generally seen as the benchmark for a quality major league starter.

Crazily, all of this incredible durability and dependability has come with a partial tear in Santana’s UCL. Sound familiar? He represents basically the best case scenario for Masahiro Tanaka‘s elbow injury. Santana has been pitching with it since 2009. Does that mean he definitely won’t need TJ surgery in the next year or two? At this point, his odds probably aren’t that much worse than any other pitcher.

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While acquiring Ervin Santana wouldn’t turn the Yankees rotation into an American League powerhouse the same way trading for Chris Sale or Sonny Gray might, it would go a long way towards ensuring the team has more than one solid-average MLB starter on the roster for 2017 at a relatively low cost.

In a perfect world, a Santana trade would be paired with a move to acquire a young starter with slightly more upside, giving New York the best of both worlds.