Yankees playoffs: Judgment day arrives in the ALCS

Too Much of a Good Thing

There is a sad fact of life that Yankees fans are going to have to embrace at some point between now and July of 2018: The team has too many exceptional infielders.

And while that is a good problem to have, it still must be resolved. Next year, Girardi and Cashman are going to look out and see at least five players for four spots: Greg Bird, Starlin Castro, Didi Gregorius, Gleyber Torres, and Miguel Andujar.

Some of you, gentle readers, might suggest keeping all five, rotating akin to a four-man outfield. That makes sense in many ways. Except it is bad baseball business to have a glut of great players in one position, while other positions need reinforcements.

And since teams can never have enough pitching, someone will be traded for a pitcher. But who to trade?

As Long as they Don’t Become Red Sox

It won’t be the young Yankees. That would make little long-term physical or fiscal sense. That means it will have to be either Didi or Starlin.

Coming into the season, I was convinced it would be Starlin because of his power potential. By the end of the season, Didi’s leadership and career high in home runs convinced me that he was destined to wear pinstripes for a long, long time.

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His home runs in both the Wild Card game and, more notably, game five of the ALDS cemented that thinking.

But look at where we are now, before game four. Starlin continues to contribute to the offense on a remarkably consistent basis. He batted .273/.304/.364 in the ALDS with a double, RBI, and three runs scored while collecting eight total bases.

Here in the ALCS, he is batting .273/.273/.273, and no that is not a mistake. Starlin has scored once and accounted for three total bases.

Didi has been more feast or famine. He did end the ALDS with a slash of .235/.435/.588 with two home runs, but almost all of that came in the last game. Coming in to that contest, the talk was about how Didi needed to produce more.

We Just Changed the D to a C

That talk is back at this point in the ALCS. Gregorius is slashing his own repetitive line of .167/.167/.167.

So, which player is having the better postseason, and who should the Yankees keep? Didi won the deciding ALDS game almost by himself, but has been an easy out in almost every other game. Starlin has been in the middle of most of the Yankees rallies but has not had any impactful home runs.

Who is more valuable? As I wrote a few days ago, I am not making any more predictions during the 2017 postseason, because I suck at them so very, very much. I’ll leave this one to the readers and the comments section.

Some futures are just too easy to read, though.