Grading Yankees’ transformative 2022 MLB trade deadline moves

Grading Yankees’ Scott Effross Trade: A

Without Michael King’s extremely tough-to-swallow injury, a Scott Effross trade likely doesn’t happen, based on the cost of its completion. Hayden Wesneski is a helium balloon right now, and the Yankees probably would not have pulled the trigger on a reliever with 5.5 years of control attached if they could still count on King.

A reliever this good who’ll be around for this long costs more than a rental like Mychal Givens or David Robertson, though, and the Yankees gave to get, silencing some mounting instability in the back end of their bullpen.

Most assumed the Yankees would try to swing a summer deal for “The Next Clay Holmes” — and they did, we’ll get to that shortly — but The Original Clay Holmes is hitting an unfortunate wall at the moment. Factor in recent slowly-but-surely progressions from Aroldis Chapman and Jonathan Loaisiga, and the complexion of the Yankees’ bullpen is about to shift once again midseason.

Effross has been special, the type of change-of-pace arm who could own the late innings in the Bronx with his sweeping slider and devastating cutter. In order to get 5.5 years of bullpen production, you need to surrender a top-10 pitching prospect on the verge of the big leagues, who brings a sweeping breaker of his own alongside a bulldog mentality.

Wesneski should be nails in Chicago, but Effross was needed now, and he’ll be needed next year, the year after, and three years from now. Luckily, he’ll still be under team control then.