Perspectives: Acting Isn't Panicking

by Paul Semendinger

March 14, 2024

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The Yankees are in a quandary.

Their ace pitcher, Gerrit Cole, is hurt. He will be out of action for, at best, a month. It could be longer. Let's be honest, typically, when the injuries the Yankees report are shared with the media, the timeline the Yankees give is not accurate. This has been a pattern for a long time. A game or two becomes a week or two. A few weeks becomes a few months. Not serious becomes, "It's worse than we thought." The Yankees have a very bad track record in regard to responding accurately (or is it honestly?) with the media regarding the severity of player injuries. Why the Yankees do this makes no sense to me. The statements they make are proven wrong time and time again leading many to distrust any statement the team makes. It's a bad look and has been for quite some time. (But that's a point for another day.)

In addition, the Yankees' biggest star, Aaron Judge, is also beat up physically. An MRI on Judge seemed to come back clean, but the fact that the Yankees' superstar and highest paid player is worn out physically already, in March, is not a good sign.

A great deal of very reasonable people on this site, and elsewhere, are praising the Yankees for their cautious approach to the Cole injury. The Yankees could have traded for Dylan Cease (presumably - he was just traded after all), but they did not. It seems that the White Sox were asking a ton for Cease and the Yankees were unwilling to pay that price.

This is all very reasonable. No one wants to be forced into a bad deal.

The main talking point being shared by many is that acting on a trade at this time would be akin to panicking.

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QUICK SIDE NOTE - Unfortunately, as I noted in the comments of last night's Cease article, we cannot take reports of what teams ask for or demand in trades with any sort of reliability or accuracy.

The Yankees traded for Juan Soto on December 5, 2023. Just two days before, Bleacher Report ran an article quoting one of the biggest names in baseball reporting stating the following:

"There's not enough eggnog in all of Manhattan to make them (the Yankees) trade pitcher Michael King, pitching prospect Drew Thorpe, and a handful of other prospects while also taking on Padres center fielder Trent Grisham's projected $5-6 million contract," USA Today's Bob Nightengale wrote of the Yankees..."

Of course, King and Thorpe were in that trade as was Grisham. (I guess Nightengale under-estimated the amount of eggnog in Manhattan.)

My point here is that when we hear, "The Brewers wanted _______ for Burnes" and "The White Sox demanded ______ for Cease" is all nothing more than guessing. It conjecture. It's all hypothetical. And it's often spin. Once a team loses its credibility, it's difficult (if not impossible) to believe anything they say. ("No, this time, I'm telling the truth. I wasn't last time, and I might not tell the truth tomorrow, but this time, I'm telling you the truth.")

No one knows what the Brewers or the White Sox wanted or aked for in a trade. LIke anything a trade is a negotiation. Things that are asked for are not what teams eventually settle on. Sometimes people ask for things they don't think they'll even get, but they ask as a starting point. This is then reported as absolute fact - "They asked for Spencer Jones!" (Of course they did. Every GM will ask for Jones, first, as part of a deal-making process. ) In the end, no one, except those teams and the Yankees knows what was aksed for and what the parameters of any deal would have looked like. Whatever is being reported is speculation, guessing, or spin from one or both organizations.

There is a narrative that I have never believed, because it makes no logical sense, that other teams demand more from the Yankees in trades than they do from other teams. I've refuted that many times and don't wish to again here in this article or discussion, but to me, it's a silly point. Rival teams want to get the best players they can. They don't charge more from the Yankees and give other teams discounts. To do so would be foolish, at best.

The bigger point holds - we do not know what any team asked for any player. The reports we get are, at best, often inaccurate and, at other times, simply untrue.

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To the main point of this article - I agree that teams, the Yankees especially, shouldn't act out of panic or make irrational deals because of circumstances that arise such as the two big injury concerns that came up this week.

But, let's also note that the fact that these injuries are possibly so devastating is because previously, when the Yankees could have been in a better position to withstand these injuries (or others), they did not act.

It's one thing to not be irrationally reactive. That makes sense.

But it also makes sense to be smartly proactive. Being proactive by signing or trading for a quality pitcher before the injury occurred would also have been a prudent course of action. Being proactive by signing a player who could play centerfield and back-up first base to add depth and take some pressure off Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo, and DJ LeMahieu would have also been a prudent plan of action.

Many felt, before the injury to Gerrit Cole, that the Yankees needed one more top of the line starter. There have basically been four available pitchers who met that criteria in recent months: Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery (both free agents) and Corbin Burnes and Dylan Cease (both who were traded in recent weeks). There was a fifth pitcher, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but the Yankees were unwilling or unable to sign that pitcher when the opportunity presented itself in December.

The injury to Gerrit Cole means that while he's out, and no one knows how long that will be, he will be replaced by a minor league pitcher. That's how the Yankees plan to address his absence. There is no other MLB pitcher who can step in and make those starts. At this point, absent a trade or signing, it has to be a kid.

Before the injury, the rotation was: Cole, Stroman, Rodon, Cortes, Schmidt

Now the rotation is: Stroman, Rodon, Cortes, Schmidt, and Minor League Guy

The new rotation is, obviously, a lot weaker.

If the Yankees had traded for Corbin Burnes, or Dylan Cease, the rotation would look a lot better. A ton better. That is undeniable.

This isn't to say that one of the rookies won't be very good or great. Hey, one of the rookies just might be the next star Yankees pitcher. As an unproven kid in 1981, Dave Righetti went 8-4, 2.05 and won the Rookie of the Year Award. A great season can happen. (Of course, Righetti was seen all along as a future star, but the point remains, every great pitcher was once a rookie.) But, for every Righetti, there are a few pitchers like Manny Banuelos, a can't-miss prospect that has all of the fanbase excited for the talent and skills he'll bring to the team, who doesn't ever come close to realizing his potential.

The sad reality is that most prospects don't pan out. That's just the way it is. In this case, they might, or one might, but for a team looking to be a World Series contender, right now, this is a huge step backwards. The Yankees had planned to go into this season with the knowledge that for each of Gerrit Cole's 30+ starts, they would be the team with the better pitcher and would be the more likely team to win. That is no longer the case. For each of the starts that Cole misses, the Yankees will be hoping for a victory, but going with an unknown.

Because of the injury to Cole, the Yankees will now be rushing a rookie into a situation that they didn't plan for him to be in. (Wait, isn't that, in a sense, a type of panicking - being forced by circumstances to take an action you didn't wish to take nor plan for?)

(I also understand that, in reality, Cole's starts will be made by Marcus Stroman or Carlos Rodon, but the point remains. When previously, the Yankees were comprised of five "known" starting pitchers, now approximately 20% of the team's starts will be made by an untested rookie. I also understand that with days off, rain outs, and such, that if Cole comes back quickly, the impact of the games he missed will be lessened. Still, on the whole, of the five starts made by the starting rotation, one of those starts immediately goes from a likely win (Cole's) to, at best, an unknown (the rookie's). The last argument, "Well the rookie will also be pitching against another team's number five guy" is negated by the fact that the Yankees' number two guy will now now pitching against the other team's number one (and such) throughout the rotation as each lower pitcher will now be slotted one spot forward.)

Also, and this is the big point of this article, while we can praise restraint, and the team's ability to not panic, when situations occur, taking a sound reasonable action, also isn't a bad thing. Taking action isn't panicking. The reality is sometimes the absence of any action is, in itself, a panic move. Like a deer in the headlights, inaction isn't necessarily a sign of strength, it can be a sign of fear and weakness and confusion. The fact that the Yankees couldn't or didn't trade for Dylan Cease might be less that they showed restraint, but more that the situation overwhelmed their decision-making abilities. The truth is probably somewhere in between, and it's also something we'll never truly know.

Also, I caution all those who feel the Yankees are being smart by not acting to remember that this isn't a club built for the future where restraint will pay off years in advance. This is a ballclub built for today - right now. This was a big reason why trading for Burnes or Cease and signing a player like Cody Bellinger made a ton of sense for the Yankees of 2024. This team has an older core made up of players that do not have great histories of health. Anthony Rizzo, DJ LeMahieu, Aaron Judge, Jose Trevino, and Giancarlo Stanton have all missed significant time due to injury and are all on the wrong side of 30-years-old. This Yankees core doesn't have a budding future. They only have the hope of now. In addition, the two best young players on the team (Gleyber Torres and Juan Soto) will both be free agents at year's end. There is no guarantee either or both will be back in 2025. In short, THIS was the year to go all-in.

Finally, there is this belief that Gerrit Cole, when he comes back, will be the ace pitcher he was as in Cy Young Worthy Ace Starter Gerrit Cole. The sad reality is that that pitcher might never be back. No one knows how his arm will respond to rest. No one knows if he has the ability to trust his elbow enough the break off pitches as he used to. No one knows if he can make 30 starts a year or pitch deep into games any longer. Not every player coming back from a serious injury returns as the player he was before getting injured. The Yankees might get back a reasonable facsimile of Gerrit Cole, or they might get back, months into the season, a much lesser version of their former ace. Planning for that possibility right now wouldn't be a panic move, it would actually be smart. Had the Yankees been proactive, months before, that would have even been smarter.

The Yankees are in this situation, in large part, because they didn't act when they had the opportunities to act - weeks ago and months ago. By continuing to not address these concerns, it sn't necessary showing restraint, it's quite possibly, and it looks to me, to be the exact opposite.

The inability or unwillingness to act in a moment of crisis isn't strength, it's weakness.

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Quick note to our readers - I'm happy to discuss and debate the big points I made above, but please, if you're going to discuss this with me, discuss the entirety of the article, the main point, not simply a line or two (often) taken out of context. Feel free to disagree with me, but let's discuss the entire point.

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