Advertisement

Yankees demote familiar outfielder with recent MLB cameo all the way down to Double-A

Adam Weinrib
Adam Weinrib

Yanks Go Yard

Diablos Rojos v New York Yankees / Jam Media/GettyImages

The last time we saw Greg Allen in pinstripes, he was ducking the tag against the Diablos Rojos in the Yankees' season precursor series in Mexico City (we don't want to talk about it).

Allen, signed on Jan. 30 for depth purposes, will make $1.1 million this season if he's elevated to the big-league roster. Unfortunately for Allen, he's getting further away from that possibility.

In a move that's sure to bug any player with an upward mobility clause, the outfielder was reinstated from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre's injured list on Wednesday morning and ... demoted to the Somerset Patriots. Yes, even after the Yankees traded Brandon Lockridge to San Diego and decreased their Triple-A outfield depth.

Allen's contract purportedly included clauses dictating that, if the Yankees didn't intend to promote him to MLB by May 15 and June 15 and another team did, New York would have to waive him and clear a path towards those opportunities. That never happened, and now he's riding the wrong kind of shuttle.

Yankees demote familiar face Greg Allen to Double-A

Allen's been a Yankee several times before, to varying degrees of success. In 15 games in 2021, he starred during a COVID wave, hitting .270 with an .849 OPS/136 OPS+ in a tiny sample size. That likelyled to his return during an injury ravaged 2023, where he posted an .812 OPS/119 OPS+ overall in 22 games, but notably found himself injured just 10 appearances into his first run, pulling up lame at Dodger Stadium.

This season, Allen did representative work in Scranton, hitting .261 with a .384 OBP and an .819 OPS, but now finds himself sliding down the ladder instead of flexing his upward mobility. It's tough to ask for much more from someone who's a known commodity just trying to hang on below the big-league surface. Something tells us Allen won't be thrilled to be moving backward, but ... if there were another MLB team interested, he would've been gone months ago. Sorry. Tough break.

Adam Weinrib

Adam Weinrib

Adam Weinrib is a Content Director on the FanSided network, and has been the co-editor at Yanks Go Yard for 6 years. He also co-hosts The Baseball Insiders Podcast thrice weekly, alongside FanSided MLB insider Robert Murray, as well as the Yanks Go Yard Podcast. Previously, he was a Senior Editor at 12up.com, and has been covering MLB and NFL for 10 years. He was also a headline and features contributor at ClickHole and Onion Sports, as well as the Associate Producer of the ESPN 30 for 30 film "Believeland". An avowed fan of the New York sports teams -- specifically the Yankees -- as well as the North Carolina Tar Heels, you can find Adam complaining mid-game on Twitter, as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn if the game goes really poorly.