1 trade Yankees can make with every NL East team

Yes, here comes the six-team New York Yankees trade you’ve been waiting for! Get your pencils out and start scribbling, this could take a while…

Naw, just kidding. We’re here to pitch you one trade each the Yankees can make with the five rivals that make up the NL East.

You see one you like? Mark it down. You hate ’em all? Throw ’em back in the ocean. Mets fan? Maybe just scroll to the next article and leave the negotiating to Uncle Steve Cohen, alright?

He swears he’ll cross this boundary, so we’ll choose to believe him.

The Yankees have a myriad of issues to solve when the MLB Lockout is lifted, and we recommend they opt to fix as many as possible with good, ol’ fashioned money.

That’s not how Brian Cashman typically works, though.

He’d rather plunder assets who’ve lost value that he thinks he can turn around. He also likes to “win” the trades he polishes off, so there’s no need to speculate about massive overpays, or instances where he’s got to give to get.

Not his style.

A few of these posited trade targets are names you’ve heard before. One, in fact, is a name the Yankees swung and missed at last year, someone who seemed redundant until the season actually played out and we realized … oh, we don’t really have one of these types of guys after all.

Some are salary matches, some are bets on future earning potential, and some are desperation heaves with one foot out the door of the NL East.

All make sense for the Yankees in some capacity.

5 trades Yankees can make with each NL East team

5. Yankees-Nationals Trade: Josh Bell

Based on the Yankees’ recent behavior, this chunk could’ve easily read, “Desperately Trying to Woo the Recently-Retired Ryan Zimmerman Out of Retirement on March 25″, but no, we decided to pitch an actual trade instead of a rehashing of the Jay Bruce fiasco.

Josh Bell, who torpedoed the baseball in 2021, was available to the Yankees last offseason during their pre-Jameson Taillon discussions with the Pittsburgh Pirates. We vetoed it, in large part because New York already had a “slug first” first baseman installed named Luke Voit. He came with years of cheap control, and he was ours.

Unfortunately, Voit’s knee ran into several issues throughout the 2021 season, some of which seemed degenerative following a bone bruise. His absence led to the Yankees trading for Anthony Rizzo while he fell out of favor down the stretch.

Bell was far better than both of those names with the Nationals in 2021, posting 3.1 WAR, a 124 OPS+ and 27 homers, along with upper-echelon exit velocities and advanced metrics.

The ex-Buc ranks firmly among those who we discounted, with little to no data, because of their poor 2020 seasons. History will look back on this being one of the stupidest things a person can do.

Bell put up an 82 OPS+ and hit .226 in empty stadiums amid the throes of a once-in-a-lifetime (hopefully!) global pandemic. The year prior, he made the All-Star team with 37 bombs and a breakout 142 OPS+.

Maybe Bell’s 2020 wasn’t as determinative as people wanted to think it was, and the Yankees should consider flipping, say, Luis Medina and Everson Pereira for one full year of him (or possibly signing him next offseason if the position remains unfilled).

4. Yankees-Marlins Trade: Elieser Hernandez

And, if not Elieser Hernandez, then how about … someone? The Marlins’ cup runneth over with young pitching, and while you can never have enough, a rotation famously only has five slots.

Until those nerds take over control of a rotation and give every team, like, 12 starting pitchers. Damn stupid nerds! I heard this was happening via Twitter and I believed it. When I go outside, I forget where the inside of my house went.

Hernandez is our target over, say, Pablo Lopez or the damaged Sixto Sanchez because, unlike the other key Marlins pieces, Miami hasn’t totally unlocked him yet.

The nearly-27-year-old right-hander, whom the Marlins shuffled between the bullpen and the rotation a bit back in 2019, finished the 2021 season with 11 appearances (11 starts), a 4.18 ERA, 53 strikeouts in 51.2 innings pitched, and an elevated 1.316 WHIP.

Looking at the advanced metrics, his ’21 season was easily his weakest, blotting out some of the great work he did in ’20 and ’19 behind the scenes. If anything, his poor-ish performance gives us hope the Yankees might be able to swing something at a relative discount — the Brian Cashman specialty — for a depreciated asset.

His barrel percentage rose to 11%, up from 7.7 and 9.0 in 2020 and 2019. His xBA rose from .214 and .210 to .249. He ran cold throughout 2021, even though the surface numbers seemed to be an improvement … and here’s the portion of the article where we try to turn Hernandez and his changeup (used 12.2% of the time) over to Matt Blake.

Acquiring Pablo Lopez would be a ready-made dream, but there’s a lot to work with in Hernandez’s case, even if he ends up being valuable swingman.

2. Yankees-Phillies Trade: Aaron Nola

We’re doing it! We’re pulling off the Zack Wheeler trade the Yankees have failed to orchestrate no less than six full times since 2019!

Nah, just kidding. But that would be helpful, especially since the Yanks have been lacking a defined No. 2 since right around the same time they passed on importing Wheeler during Gerrit Cole’s offseason. So, what about Philly’s other ace? The more inconsistent and less expensive (though still somewhat expensive) one?

If “kicking our ass” was a primary trade motivator, then Aaron Nola would already be on the Jersey Turnpike heading to the Bronx. In three starts against the Yankees career, Nola is 1-1 with a 2.37 ERA and 26 whiffs in 19 innings. In a much larger sample size against the crosstown Mets, he’s 9-3 with a 3.12 ERA and 147 strikeouts in 115.1 innings pitched.

We could get into that.

Nola’s currently tied to Philadelphia’s payroll on a pre-arbitration extension that locks him in for $15 million in 2022, up from $11.75 million last season (a very Rays-esque way to structure a long-term deal). He’s also got a team option good for $16 million in 2023, which will presumably be picked up if a Nola trade turns out the way we hope it would.

The whiff numbers were once again there for Nola in 2021, as was the dependability (223 Ks in 180.1 innings pitched), neither of which matched the ERA (4.63). All of his Statcast metrics (xWOBA, hard-hit percentage, K percentage, BB percentage) are upper-echelon; only his average exit velocity lagged in any way last season, slipping slightly into the bottom half of all eligible pitchers.

Nola looks like a clear No. 2 who ran into some bad luck last season, a charge the Yankees could give him ample opportunity to bounce back from next year. Maybe this is how Brian Cashman clears up his infield logjam with a Gleyber Torres trade, as long as he’s able to get permission to extend his payroll?

1. Yankees-Braves Trade: Cristian Pache

Let this serve as yet another reminder to trade your prospects, even your most prized ones, if you suspect they might not be ready to be thrown into the fire and can help your big-league club in another capacity.

Don’t sacrifice long-term success for short-term stardom, either, but … it’s safe to say the 2021 Braves got very lucky hitting on seven different short-term outfield fixes en route to the World Series, something they probably wouldn’t have had to do so feverishly if Cristian Pache had been the superstar we were promised.

The now-23-year-old’s results have been subpar by any metric since his 2020 promotion. Pache garnered a single hit in four at-bats in 2020 while the pandemic removed the minor-league season, then got tossed onto the fire for a postseason Andruw Jones-style “learning experience” that resulted in one NLCS home run paired with a .182 average.

In his age-22 season, everything cratered; he posted a .744 OPS at Triple-A Gwinnett and a destructive .111 average with a single home run in 22 big-league games.

Though previously we would’ve been on board for a Torres-for-Pache swap of somewhat devalued assets, only someone tipped delusionally in the other direction would claim Torres, who hit .300 down the stretch at second base and has a 38-homer season to his name, has contributed an equal amount to Pache, who hasn’t performed since he burst onto the scene in 2019. The former consensus top prospect remains just … toolsy, which isn’t what you want to have marked on your ledger when you turn 23.

Pache hasn’t been “Deivi Garcia” bad, and a one-for-one swap is just what they want me to type here, but how about a deal centered around the two reclamation projects with some legitimate talent added on the Yankees’ side. Pache for Garcia, Luis Medina and Brandon Lockridge, a potential 40-man center field casualty who could slide onto the Braves’ bench?

Even that feels like an overpay, but it’s so difficult to properly assess the value of talent that’s midway through being wasted. Regardless of the cost, Pache would be an interesting buy for a team that lacks a long-term center fielder.

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