Top Five Bright Spots of the Yankees 2016 Season

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.