Yankees designate Chance Adams for assignment before Gerrit Cole deal becomes official

The Yankees held their introductory press conference for their newest ace Gerrit Cole on Wednesday after his nine-year, $324M deal finally became official. To make room for Cole on the 40-man roster the team designated former top pitching prospect Chance Adams for assignment.

We all found out Cole agreed to sign with the Yankees last week at the Winter Meetings but the deal didn’t become official until they were able to clear up another roster spot. Prior to the Cole signing the Yankee 40-man roster was already full so Adams ended up being the odd man out.

It’s unclear whether or not the Yankees tried to trade Adams before Wednesday to see if they could get something in return for him. Although even if they did it’s not like they were ever going to get much for him in return. A year or two ago when Adams was one of the top 100 prospects in baseball there would’ve been plenty of teams who showed interest in acquiring him which tells you how far he’s fallen since making his big league debut in 2018.

Adams had limited stints in the big leagues over the past two seasons, but when he was with the Yankees he struggled mightily. In 33 career innings, he has an ERA of 8.18 and in 2019 he posted an 8.53 ERA in 25.1 innings pitched. Most of the time the right-hander has looked overmatched against major league hitters and has already given up 10 home runs in his young career.

Location has been an issue for Adams but really I think a lot of his struggles can be attributed to his lack of overpowering stuff. Ever since he underwent elbow surgery after the 2017 season Adams’ fastball has sat in the low 90s and he doesn’t really have a plus secondary pitch to put hitters away to make up for his dip in velocity.

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We’ve seen hitters square up a lot of balls up against him and foul off a lot of pitches with two strikes. In today’s day and age, that’s not a recipe for success. It’s hard enough to succeed without a fastball that can reach the upper 90s, but when you don’t have a solid mix of secondary pitches you can rely on it’s even harder.

At 25 years old Adams is still young so it wouldn’t surprise me to see a team pick him up and take a chance on him (no pun intended) but it’s also possible he ends up back with the Yankees at Triple-A Scranton. However, if that ends up being the case he won’t rejoin the Railriders as a member of the Yanks 40-man roster.

Next on the offseason agenda for GM Brian Cashman will be deciding how they’ll clear up another 40-man roster spot for Brett Gardner. The longest-tenured Yankee reportedly agreed to a new deal the day after the Cole news broke and returns to New York for what will be his 13th season in pinstripes.

Left-hander Stephen Tarpley could be in danger of losing his roster spot next, but there could be a J.A. Happ trade looming any day now which would be another way to make room for Gardy.