Yankees: Five moves the team should make without blinking

Make Provisions At Third Base

Chase Headley took a beating over the winter with calls for a trade that sent him anywhere but the Bronx. Joe Girardi stuck with him and for the first month of the season, he thunderstruck the Yankees lineup.

The law of averages for a .260 hitter would dictate that he couldn’t keep up the .400 pace he was setting, and naturally, he didn’t.

He hit the skids in May, and his manager gave him what were couched as “mental health days” without saying so, and Headley is now bouncing back and giving the bottom of the Yankees lineup some life.

But the question remains, is what Headley can and will produce from here on in enough to contribute to a team that has World Series on their mind.

Until yesterday, virtually everyone believed that at some point in the season Gleyber Torres would be called up, move in gracefully, and seize the spot from Headley. That’s gone by the wayside now, though, as Torres will be having season-ending surgery.

And even discounting the fact that, according to General Manager Brian Cashman, Torres was never in the Yankees plans for this season anyway, there remains a need to call up another infielder.

Cashman himself has previously tagged Tyler Wade as the player who would be called up, “if the Yankees needed to.” Hey Brian, we need to.

Wade’s numbers speak for themselves. He’s scored 53 runs in 64 games with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and he’s hitting .322 with a .386 on-base percentage.

Wade was in the mix when the Yankees were deciding their pick to replace the injured Didi Gregorius when the season opened, only to have Joe Girardi‘s choosing Ronald Torreyes.

That choice worked out well for the Yankees with Torreyes doing a man’s job at short during the month of April.

But now, it’s time for reality to set in and for the Yankees to ask themselves – who would you really want to have as your everyday backup infielder – Torreyes or Wade?