Yankees: Ranking the Best Moves of the 2015-2016 Offseason

With the 2016 season officially in the books and a new hot stove league upon us, Yanks Go Yard looks back at the most impactful transactions the New York Yankees made last offseason.

While everyone focused on the fact that the New York Yankees completely swore off free agency last winter, the 2015-2016 offseason was actually pretty eventful for the club. General manager Brian Cashman pulled off seven trades during the winter, made two picks in the Rule 5 draft, and brought in a number of semi-interesting guys on minor league deals. The front office avoided most of the big names, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t busy.

Before we start, two quick honorable mentions. First, nobody really noticed when the team re-signed longtime farmhand Kyle Higashioka to a minor league deal in February rather than let him walk as a free agent. Now, it’s right on the verge of being one of the best moves the team made last offseason.

While he has yet to crack the big leagues, the 26-year-old backstop had one of the best offensive seasons of any Yankees prospect, hitting .276/.337/.511 with 20 homers in the upper minors this year while continuing to be a plus defender behind the plate. Cashman has already said he’ll be added to the 40-man roster this winter and his emergence could be one of the deciding factors if the club chooses to trade Brian McCann.

Another small move that has worked out very well for the Yankees is the trade that sent Rob Segedin to the Los Angeles Dodgers for 27-year old lefty Tyler Olson and 23-year-old infielder Ronald Torreyes. Olson made just one appearance for New York this year, but Torreyes grabbed a bench job out of spring training and somehow managed to hang onto it the whole year, despite sometimes lackluster results.

Torreyes is young, versatile, and put together an incredible August during which he temporarily displaced Chase Headley as the team’s starting third baseman, hitting .438/.471/.719 in 34 plate appearances over 13 games. He looked a lot more pedestrian in September when asked to take over the every day second job with Starlin Castro hurt, but he still showed enough this year to make that trade a total steal for Cashman.

With the two honorable mentions out of the way, lets count down the four moves from the 2015-2016 offseason that had the greatest impact on the team this season and into the future.

Trading Adam Warren to the Chicago Cubs for Starlin Castro

Full disclosure: I hated this trade at the time and still am not Castro’s biggest fan. If given the choice, I would still prefer the Yankees dump him this winter and let Rob Refsnyder hold down the fort until Tyler Wade and eventually Gleyber Torres is ready.

That said, this trade definitely worked out well for the Yankees this year, especially since they were able to re-acquire Warren as a throw in at the trade deadline after he was awful during his brief stint for the Cubs.

Castro hit .270/.300/.433 (93 OPS+) in 610  plate appearances during his first year in pinstripes. That isn’t quite peak Castro when he was one of the National League’s best young shortstops, but it’s better than some of the clunker-seasons he’s put together in recent years.

Notably, Castro hit a career-high 21 home runs and 71 RBI this season, although that could be just as much a reflection of the record-setting home run totals many mediocre hitters racked up this year as much as an improvement by the erratic second baseman.

Overall, Castro was worth just 1.2 wins above replacement according to Baseball-Reference, which is a well below average starter, but like Hicks, he did show the ability to play at a higher level in short spurts this year.

There is a non-zero chance that Castro turns into the superstar he looked like in his first few seasons and this turns into a complete steal for New York. Far more likely however, it is a minor win that provided the club with a placeholder at second base until Gleyber Torres or Jorge Mateo are ready.

Acquiring Luis Cessa and Chad Green from the Detroit Tigers for Justin Wilson

Like the Castro trade, I am a little ashamed to admit I hated this deal initially for the Yankees when it was announced. Justin Wilson was undeniably awesome during his only season in pinstripes, pitching to a 3.10 ERA and 2.69 FIP in 74 appearances, striking out 27.1% of opposing batters and cutting his walks down to a career-low 8.1%.

In retrospect, Cashman probably cashed in Wilson at peak value after what may have been a career year. He was good, but not great for the Tigers this year, more or less an average lefty reliever, not the excellent setup man he looked like in 2015.

In return for Wilson, the Yankees received two starting pitchers who spent much of the second half in the team’s rotation, and are arguably the front runners for the two open starting jobs for 2017.

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Although his peripheral stats were ugly, Luis Cessa especially looks like a real find by Cashman. He’s got four quality pitches that a mixes well, good control, and a rubber arm that is perfect for the back of the rotation.

Green saw a huge spike in his velocity after joining the organization, and his impressive heater alone makes him worth being patient with. He’s another guy who likely tops out as a number four or five (if not a long reliever), but those kind of depth arms are a very valuable and necessary part of any club.

With the team in danger of losing three of their most established veteran starters after next year, the Yankees need all of the controllable rotation depth it can find. Both Cessa and Green have shown the potential to keep their team in games every five days and are controlled cheaply for another five seasons.

Looking around the league at what team’s are paying for even the most washed-up, mediocre starters, it becomes clear what a great deal this was for the franchise going into 2017 and beyond. And as good as this trade looks now, it could look amazing next season if even one of these guys turns into a reliable MLB starter.

Acquiring Aroldis Chapman from the Cinncinnati Reds for…Basically Nothing?

While the Cessa and Green trade is probably my personal favorite, the shrewd evil genius of acquiring Aroldis Chapman last winter when no one would touch him and then flipping him just a few months later for one of the most exciting young talents in baseball as well as three quality secondary pieces is just astounding. It is a historically great trade for Cashman and the Yankees.

Aroldis Chapman’s on-field contributions to the 2016 Yankees, while valuable, are kind of beside the point. The real calculus here is that the front office turned Eric Jagielo, Rookie Davis, Tony Renda, and Caleb Cotham.

Jagielo, Renda, and Cotham were abysmal this year for their new organization, and even Davis, who now looks like the only future MLB contributor that Cincinnati got in return for Chapman, got completely lit up when after being promoted to Triple-A. At best, Davis looks like an OK back of the rotation starter, the kind of guy the Yankees have in spades in the upper minors.

Next: Options at DH if the Yankees Trade McCann

In a very real sense, Cashman traded Davis for Gleyber Torres, Billy McKinney, Adam Warren, and Rashad Crawford. MLB Pipeline ranks Torres as the 17th prospect in baseball, and his performance in the Arizona Fall League suggests he might be closer to big league ready than anyone could have thought. Honestly I probably would have traded Davis for three of those four guys straight up (sorry Rashad), so getting all four is just insane.