Top Five Bright Spots of the Yankees 2016 Season

1. The Emergence of the Sanchize

Even after a 1-for-26 slump, the Yankees 23-year-old rookie catcher was hitting .298/.373/.662 (168 OPS+) coming into Saturday’s game. He’s launched 20 home runs in 52 games and has a strong case for having the best first career month in major league history, winning both the American League Rookie of the Month and Player of the Month awards for August.

It’s rare for a player this young to suddenly be handed a major league starting catcher job, one of the more mentally and physically demanding positions in all of sports. What makes Sanchez’s sudden promotion in August even more amazing was the presence of one of the American League’s better backstops already on the roster in Brian McCann.

Even so, there is no question that the Yankees made the right move, as Sanchez has been excellent on both sides of the ball during his MLB debut. Aside from all the dingers, he’s shown excellent plate discipline, shut down the opposing running game with his cannon arm, and shown remarkable maturity in handling the pitching staff.

Maybe most importantly for the organization, Sanchez has become the dynamic face of the franchise New York has been missing since the end of the dynasty years. He’s a fun, marketable, home grown superstar that will keep fans interested and tuning in, even when the rebuilding club has its inevitable growing pains.

2. A Healthy and Dominant Masahiro Tanaka

Masahiro Tanaka put to rest any doubts among fans that he is a “true ace” with his first healthy MLB season. Even after missing his last two arms with a minor forearm strain, Tanaka will finish as the third most valuable starter in the American League with 5.5 wins above replacement according to Baseball-Reference’s metric.

Frustratingly, Tanaka will finish one-hundreth of a point shy of the AL ERA title. If he had gotten the chance to make his final start Saturday (he was reportedly healthy and anxious to finish the season strong regardless of the team’s playoff standings), there was a very real chance he could have finished as the leader in that category.

Another irritating result of Tanaka missing his final start is he will fall just one-third of an inning shy of the 200 IP mark, a milestone the Yankees ace set as a goal for himself before the season. Still, the number is ultimately arbitrary, and the fact is that Tanaka was one of the most durable and reliable arms in baseball, finishing 10th in the AL in innings pitched.

While Tanaka will likely fall shy of the AL Cy Young award, but he can take consolation in being the Yankees team MVP this year (and it isn’t even really close, sorry Gary).

3. The Fire Sale

The August 1st trade deadline was a huge turning point for the franchise. With three trades, general manager Brian Cashman added five players who had been ranked as top 100 prospects by either Baseball America or MLB.com before the season, and turned the already up-and-coming farm system into a powerhouse that is regarded by many as the class of baseball.

The Yankees have been frantically trying to patch holes in a slowly sinking ship over the last decade, continually supplementing their aging core with quick fixes. This summer, Cashman finally was able to convince ownership to let him blow it up and build a new team more or less from scratch.

There has long been a feeling that a complete rebuild isn’t possible for the New York Yankees, that fans would revolt or stop tuning in. Cashman was smart enough to realize that the real soul-crusher for fans is mediocrity. It’s better to endure a year or two of growing pains from homegrown young players than continually watch a team of aging former stars fall just short of the Wild Card.

With their absolutely stacked farm system already beginning to bear fruit, the Yankees future looks brighter than it has at any point since the start of the new millennium. It seems likely that we will look back on this trade deadline as one of the most important moments of the club’s recent history in a few years.

4. The Dynamic Middle-Infield Duo

Didi Gregorius and Starlin Castro recently made headlines when they became the first pair of New York Yankees middle infielders to hit 20 home runs in a season. While neither is a true superstar, New York’s 26-year-old double play combo each took big steps forward this year, and there are reasons to think that neither has quite reached his peak.

Gregorius comes into Saturday with a .274/.303/.446 (97 OPS+) batting line in 593 PA. He set career-highs in almost every major offensive category this season, including hits (153), runs (68), doubles (32), home runs (20), RBI (69), and stolen bases (7). Didi’s numbers have been slowly ticking upward the last three seasons, so this feels like natural growth that could continue rather than a fluky career-year that won’t be replicated.

Few 26-year-olds can match Starlin Castro’s resume, but after turning in two replacement level-ish performances in the previous three seasons, it wasn’t clear what the Yankees were getting when they traded for him last winter.

True to form, fans still probably don’t have a great bead on what Castro will bring to the table going forward. He was awful both at the plate and in the field during the first half, but went on a tear in August and finished the season as the team’s regular cleanup hitter.

5. A Shift in Philosophy

The New York Yankees have been very reluctant to hand regular jobs to their own minor leaguers in recent years, almost always preferring the proven but declining veteran over their own homegrown talent. I can count on one hand the number of quality starting position players the team has developed since the dynasty years.

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The team’s decision makers have made a concerted effort to change that following the trade deadline, handing everyday jobs to top prospects Gary Sanchez and Aaron Judge, while also giving significant playing time to rookies Mason Williams, Rob Refsnyder, Ronald Torreyes, and Tyler Austin, giving them the chance to audition for expanded roles in 2017.

The rotation was another area where the team leaned heavily on its farm system, giving regular turns to Luis Cessa, Chad Green, Bryan Mitchell, and Luis Severino in the second half. There were no knee-jerk moves to bring in a washed up veteran, even as their regular starters were dropping like flies.

While there were occasional missteps (Billy Butler? Really?) the team remained committed to its youth movement. While the team will be connected all winter to guys like Edwin Encarnacion and Rich Hill, I really expect the 2017 Yankees to look pretty similar to the club we saw in the last two months of the season.

Next: Five Yankees Most Likely to Be Traded this Winter

The Yankees have a nice nucleus of both position players and pitchers that showed enough this season to really raise expectations for 2017. This could be a very short rebuild.