Yankees Biggest Moves (and Misses) at the Winter Meetings

With the 2016 Winter Meetings wrapping up on Thursday, its time to take a look at what New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman accomplished during the five-day conference and what work he still has to do.

The New York Yankees entered the annual Winter Meetings with three clear areas of their roster they needed to upgrade: closer, designated hitter, and the starting rotation. Five days later, the front office has taken care of two of those three needs, but one remains a glaring issue both in the short and long-term outlook for the club.

While I’ll get into more depth on the specifics of the team’s transactions shortly, on the whole, the Yankees moves during the Meetings were mostly notable for how boring and predictable they were. Not that they were bad necessarily, just that they could be seen coming a mile away.

One of the fun things about having Cashman as GM has always been that his moves tend to come completely out of nowhere. Trades for guys like Aroldis Chapman, Nathan Eovaldi, Didi Gregorius, Michael Pineda, and Curtis Granderson stand out in my mind as the type of surprising, outside-the-box moves that are signature Cash.

Both of Cashman’s big moves at the Meetings had been predicted by many analysts for weeks before they happened. Maybe that’s a reflection of the fact that they were such good fits for the team that they needed to happen, but it was disappointing as both a fan and a blogger that Cash didn’t get a little more creative.

That said, there was definitely plenty for Yankees fans to get excited about over the last week.