3 Yankees who should be traded by 2022 deadline

2. Luis Medina

Get out while you still can! Many top Yankees pitching prospects other than Luis Medina have taken lumps throughout the early portions of the 2022 campaign, and it already appears the Yanks may have missed their chance to sell Deivi Garcia (2.03 WHIP, 7.84 ERA in three starts) and possibly Luis Gil (14.63 ERA in three starts to begin the season, what in God’s name?!).

Medina? He’s the only frequently-mocked-to-the-A’s arm left who hasn’t collapsed into a pile of snakes and bugs, and … how can we put this … the elevated WHIP (1.75 in two extremely short starts) indicates he’s been very lucky not to crater so far.

The Yankees seem to have created a pitching factory that spits out prospects with upper-echelon stuff and ridiculous arm talent (Gil, Medina, Will Warren, Ken Waldichuk, even Glenn Otto). As of yet, none of those arms have made it all the way to the bigs and thrived with any consistency, though; Gil made an excellent cameo, but has backslid yet again to start 2022.

Matt Blake and Co. have worked wonders with the big leaguers they’ve inherited and claimed, but haven’t been able to get any of their prospects all the way past the finish line yet.

We’ve called on the Yankees to be more willing to trade their prospects in the recent past — specifically the pitchers. At a certain point, an organization must be willing to take a chance and bet on one player over another, especially as more and more pitching prospects bust. Medina is electric, but teetering on the edge, and the Yankees should use him as a chip before it’s too late — especially if they believe they can grow pitchers in a lab to replace him.