Yankees trade Tyler Austin for Lance Lynn, Adam Warren to the Mariners

Less than an hour after the Yankees traded reliever Adam Warren to the Mariners for international slot money the team made another trade to acquire Lance Lynn from the Twins for Tyler Austin and pitching prospect Luis Rijo.

The Yankees keep making deals before today’s 4 pm trade deadline and they still might not be done yet. The team is still expected to add an outfielder today to give them some more depth with Aaron Judge out for another three to four weeks.

The deals they made on Monday were quite surprising, to say the least, but both are part of GM Brian Cashman’s master plan. First the Warren deal:

Warren was so solid for the Yankees in whatever role they asked him to fill during his time with the team. He’s been a valuable part of their pitching staff for years, but he was a free agent at season’s end and became expendable after the team’s recent acquisition of Zach Britton. Along with the recently dealt Chasen Shreve, Warren’s role was going to be diminished moving forward so the Yankees traded him for $1.25 million in international slot money.

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This is now the third trade they’ve made in recent days where the return was international slot money instead of any players. That’s because the team has a heavy interest in some of the top international talents on the market.

They already used some of that money to sign the top pitcher available in 16-year-old Cuban right-hander Osiel Rodriguez. The Yankees now have the maximum amount of slot money you can use to sign players ($3.75M) so expect them to continue to be active and add more young talent to their farm system.

The move to trade Lynn for Austin was a bit of a shocker but it makes sense now knowing that Lynn will be pitching out of the bullpen when he joins the team.

The former All-Star Lynn was having a down year pitching out of the Twins rotation but with the Yankees, he’ll only be used as a spot starter and will give the team insurance in the case of an injury.

With injury concerns always surrounding the Yankees starting staff Cashman wanted to replace Warren with Lynn because he could slide right into the rotation if someone got hurt. The Yankees also think Lynn’s stuff will play well out of the bullpen much like A.J Cole’s has since he moved to the bullpen after the team acquired him back in late April.

Dealing Austin made sense because he was blocked from playing on the big league roster and now he’ll get an opportunity to get consistent at-bats with the Twins from here on out. It also opened up another 40-man roster spot for some of their top prospects to join in the very near future.

The Yankees have now made six trades this month and they did do without having to give away any of their top-tier prospects. Because they have so much depth throughout their minor league system they were able to acquire J.A. Happ, Britton and Lynn and because they had so much depth in their bullpen they were able to turn Warren and Chasen Shreve into international slot money.

Now they will use that money on international signings to boost their farm system and replace some of the talent they lost. These players might not even have a future in New York but they will be valuable assets moving forward who the Yankees can include in trades to improve their team down the road.

Brian Cashman is truly a genius and year after year he continues to show why he is the best GM in baseball.