An unusually quiet Yankees’ offseason blew up over the weekend with the additions of starting pitchers Hiroki Kuroda and Michael Pineda. With those two added to the pot, the Yankees have assembled quite a surplus of quality starting arms—seven of them to be exact.
Along with staff-ace C.C. Sabathia, the Yankees already had A.J. Burnett, Phil Hughes, Ivan Nova, and the recently re-signed Freddy Garcia in the mix for one of their five spots in the starting rotation. Plus, Joba Chamberlain may return from injury at some point in 2012. In the meantime, they gave up future star catcher/DH Jesus Montero, which creates a pretty big hole at DH heading into the season.
With an abundance of starters and no discernible answer at DH, clearly another move needs to be made. Here are some possible ones, beginning with the most probable:
1. Trade a starting pitcher for a hitter: This is probably what GM Brian Cashman would like to explore first—especially if someone will bite on an A.J. Burnett deal. But Burnett, whose ERA has been above 5.00 each of the past two seasons, is still owed roughly $33 million over the next two years. Any deal involving him would require eating a lot of salary or taking back a similarly bad contract.
The other two candidates for a trade, Phil Hughes and Ivan Nova, would probably be easier to deal, given their lack of salary commitments and decent futures, though who to target at DH is another question in and of itself.
Pros: Dealing from a position of power that few teams have should give the Yanks plenty of options to sift through.
Cons: Spring Training starts next month and some teams may be reluctant to give up an impact bat at this point.
2. Sign a free agent DH, wait to trade a starter: There are still a few good hitters out there that can be signed to replace Montero such as Johnny Damon, Vladimir Guerrero, Hideki Matsui, or Carlos Pena.
