Yankees Brian Cashman might trade away a blue-chip prospect today

Signs the Death Star will soon be Operational

The signs and portends are not favorable for a few reasons. One, too many players might have only had great first halves. Throwing away the best players in 2019 for players who prove not to be great for all of 2017 is a bad tradeoff. But, if the opposite proves true, the problem solves itself.

This team, as constituted, was good enough to get to the All-Star break four games over and in the Wild Card game. If the players are as good as they have shown, they should be able to repeat that without significant help from outside the organization.

The organization should only make a trade for Sonny Gray if the Yankees can bring up a pitcher who can approximate what Pineda did. And if you’ve ever seen Shark Tank, you’ll understand why. An investor never wants to loan money to keep a business afloat. Instead, she wants to loan money to help a business expand and dominate.

Getting into the Yankees Business

The Yankees should have the same standard. To be a championship club, they need to be able to replace Pineda with a farm hand. That keeps the organization as strong as it was in the first half and, when it adds Gray, makes it better than it was. That should be the vision: to create a better team than we already have.

But many of the most talented pitching prospects got injured, including James Kaprielian, Dietrich Enns, Dillon Tate, and Justus Sheffield. And the team seems disinclined to trust Chance Adams anytime soon. Therefore, the organization is not in a position to win this year.

Because, two, if you get Sonny Gray to replace Pineda–and he or CC or Severino gets injured–the team is in the same situation it is in now, but without some of their best prospects. That destroys the present and the future. Even Doc Brown wouldn’t be able to fix that one.

Instead, you replace Pineda from within and get Gray to replace Jordan Montgomery.