Heathcott ranked 6th in BA's Top 20 AFL Prospects

Everyone's favorite Texarkana product Slade Heathcott continues to feel the love from Baseball America with his ranking as the 6th best prospect in this year's AFL Top 20, (subscription required).  Slade's in pretty lofty company as the five guys ahead of him (Javier Baez, Jonathan Singleton, Christian Yelich, Kyle Gibson, and George Springer) are all Top 100 candidates.  Heathcott was ranked directly ahead of Mike Zunino and Nick Castellanos.  Lofty company indeed...

As much as BA loves Heathcott, they seem to have equal parts disinterest in Mark Montgomery.  Mark pitched well in the AFL (when does he not pitch well?) despite the league's notoriously hitter friendly conditions.  Hopefully Mark has no interest in making lists like this and will take comfort in knowing he is soon bound for a promising career in the majors.

Congratulations to Slade for his inclusion on yet another top prospect list!

Excellent Read: The Missing Yankees of 2007 - 2009

Sometimes when writting a blog, you have great ideas that you proudly tweet out several, several times, (see: my article on the AL MVP race).  Others, you read someone else's work and think "Damn I wish I had thought of that!"  Such is the case of Steve Goldman's article on the Pinstriped Bible called "The Missing Yankees of 2007 - 2009".  It's an astute observation of the Yankees' woeful drafting from 2007 to 2009 and how it impacts the team today.  Player development, and in particular the draft, are special interests of mine.  If you've read much of my blog, you'll know that I spend an unhealthy amount of time disecting it.  In his article, Steve correctly surmises that had the Yankees been more successful in the draft over these three years, they would be in position to promote players from withing which would make their goal of decreasing their payroll much easier to attain.

I encourage all (three) of my readers to check it out.

Projecting the 2013 Yankee Budget

The New York Yankees are coming to a major crossroads next year.  They have repeatedly expressed their intentions to reduce their 2014 payroll to $189 million in order to avoid major luxury tax ramifications.  Their actions during this offseason could be very telling which path they will take..  The Yankees have approximately $157 million committed to it's 2013 player payroll.  That includes $141 million to players I think will make the 25-man roster, $7 million for the players that will round out the 40-man roster, and $9 million to players that will not be on the roster at all yet the Yankees still have some obligation to pay: AJ Burnett and Pedro Feliciano.

So, there are $157 million committed for 2013, which would have been the third highest payroll in 2012.  The problem is it only represents 31 players, meaning New York has *NINE* positions to fill: 2 starting pitchers, 2 catchers, 1 starting right fielder, 2 reserve outfielders, a reliever and a utility infielder.  There are five free agents from last year's team that I can see New York re-signing: Rivera, Kuroda, Pettitte, Ichiro, and Russell Martin.  If you re-sign them for the same amount of money that you paid them last year (let's give Ichiro $8 million), then that's another $46 million added to the payroll with four bench positions to fill.  Let's give each of those guys $1 million and suddenly you're looking at a payroll of $207 million.  That's a steep budget for a team wanting to shed payroll and it illustrates the team only has two options: stay the course with your huge player budget or start making some big sacrifices.  Here are some options:

• Instead of re-signing the five Yankee free agents listed above, find less valuable players similar to Boston's new catcher David Ross (who signed this week for 2 yrs and $6 million).  Maybe you still want to bring back Mo and Pettitte, which is understandable.  That leaves $22.5 million and if you cut that in half you still have $11.25 million to play with but you're going to be digging through the bargain bin for your starting right-fielder and starting catcher.
• Trade some expensive pieces like Rodriguez or Granderson.  I addressed the idea of trading A-Rod a couple weeks ago and denounced the idea out-right.  Even as an advocate for budget reduction, I think there's no way New York benefits from a trade like that in any way.  Granderson is a little different.  His contract is much more tradeable, despite his poor post-season performance.  New York could probably even get a decent prospect in the trade.  If Cashman could make a shrewd move and pick up a nice package for the Grandy-man, I'd be all for it.  The Yankees could move Brett Gardner over to CF and look for an option cheaper to Granderson and save $10 million or more.
• Package their top prospects for a major league ready piece ala Michael Pineda.  Take a player like Trevor Bauer, for instance.  There has been speculation that the young pitcher is available and could possibly had for two or three of New York's top prospects.  That would be adding a cost-effective stud pitcher to the starting rotation for the price of a couple players who are likely two or three years away from the Bronx.

If I'm going to make a bold prediction for this offseason, it's going to be a trade of a player like Granderson.  I don't think the Yanks will be big players in the free agent market.  I *hope* I'm right about that.  Would a Josh Hamilton make the 2013 Yankees better?  Absolutely.  But ownership has understandably made it clear that they've reached their limit and they refuse to flush their money down the luxury tax drain.  I applaud their position and think if New York could use their resources more efficiently, they could add many more championship flags to the top of Yankee Stadium.

Baseball America Names Mason Williams Yankees' #1 Prospect

Baseball America has yet to release its Top 10 Yankees prospects list publicly, but Josh Norris of the Trentonian tweeted it out Friday.  The list looks like like this (my rankings are in parentheses):

1. Mason Williams (3)
2. Slade Heathcott (5)
3. Gary Sanchez (2)
4. Tyler Austin (1)
5. Jose Campos (13)
6. Brett Marshall (16)
7. Angelo Gumbs (18)
8. Manny Banuelos (6)
9. Ty Hensley (4)
10. Rafael de Paula (24)

There are a few notable surprises here for me.  I'll start with the top four: I understand that, in the eyes of most analysts, Williams, Sanchez, and Austin are all pretty close in terms of talent.  But Austin has unquestionably outperformed the other two thus far in his minor league career.  And this is the first time I've seen anyone include Heathcott in that group, much less put him above Sanchez and Austin.  I like Heathcott and believe he can justify his ranking here, but objective analysis says he's been outperformed by Sanchez and Austin so far.  It's probably not likely, but a Yankee outfield of Heathcott, Austin, and Williams in a few years is kind of a dream of mine.

The rest of the group is a little more surprising than the first four.  By virtue of his #5 ranking, Jose Campos is getting an incredible amount of credit for the 5 starts he made last year in Charleston, (4.01 ERA, 9.49 K/9, 1.14 WHIP).  The strikeout rate was impressive and the WHIP is above average but the ERA is obviously high.  BA is giving virtually no credence to the elbow injury that ended his season in May and he hasn't be heard from since.  Rafael de Paula's inclusion over Mark Montgomery seems like a bit of a stretch.  Montgomery is a dominant stud out of the pen and he has done it in AA while de Paula feasted on inferior talent in the Dominican Summer League.  Don't get me wrong...I HOPE de Paula is as good as his ranking suggests.  I just hesitate to give a lot of credit to his DSL stats.  If Yankee management puts him in at least high A to start 2013, this ranking could be validated.  And, I like Nik Turley over Brett Marshall.  Just my opinion there, although I feel their career performances back me up there.  Turley strikes a lot more batters out, (8.41 career K/9 compared to 7.03), gives up fewer runs, (3.06 ERA compared to 3.76), and allows fewer base runners (1.25 WHIP compared to 1.31).

Speaking of 2013, I'll update my rankings prior to the season once I see player assignments.  And there's always a good chance they'll be adding or subtracting players through trades.