Lost in the shuffle of the excitement that surrounded the Jesus Montero-for-Michael Pineda trade earlier this month was the fact that the Yankees also acquired another very solid young pitching prospect in Jose Campos. Campos lit up short-season ball in the Mariners’ system last year, and was ultimately deemed the third best prospect in the Northwestern League by Baseball America. Now, via Anthony McCarron, Baseball America has revised their organizational top 10 prospect lists in the wake of the trade, and they have Campos listed as the fifth best prospect in the Yankees’ system, behind only Manny Banuelos, Dellin Betances, Gary Sanchez, and Mason Williams, in that order. That’s pretty high praise for a 19 year old hurler who hasn’t gotten to full season ball yet, and a good reminder that the big trade wasn’t all about Montero and Pineda.

For my part, I really don’t know very much about Campos at all. As far as the basics go, he’s listed at 6’4″ and 195 pounds, so he has a pretty good pitching frame he could grow into and, like a lot of 19 year olds, he’s heavily reliant on his fastball at this stage in his career. Thankfully, it sounds like his fastball is a really good pitch, with scouting reports having it sitting in the mid-90′s and pounding the strikezone. Campos reportedly has a developing secondary pitch that’s sort of a slurve right now, as well as a nascent change up. In other words, he’s very young, very raw, and a long way from the majors, but there’s a lot to like there and the Yankees managed to add another high ceiling young player to the mix along with the second starter they were looking for this offseason. Hard to argue with that.

According to Bruce Levine of ESPN Chicago, the Yankees have hired former Cubs general manager Jim Hendry as an assistant to Brian Cashman, in a move that looks very similar to the one they made with Kevin Towers after the Padres decided not to keep his as their GM after the 2009 season. Hendry was a bit of a disaster on the North side, signing the number of bad contracts and leaving the Cubs’ minor league system a mess, but prior to taking the top job he worked in scouting and development for the Cubbies, and did help them build some pretty good clubs in the early part of the last decade. I don’t know what, exactly, the Yankees envision Hendry bringing to the table, but considering that this is the second time they’ve retained a former National League general manager in such a fashion, I wonder if they aren’t looking for him to bring a little bit more familiarity with the senior circuit to the table.

Blogger Murray Chass throwing down on Scott Boras sock-puppet and insufferable scold CBS reporter Jon Heyman? Yeah, I’ll read that.

On the other hand, there was this CBSSports.com report quoting one of its reporters, Jon Heyman: “Heyman also notes that the finalists to land Fielder were the Nationals, Tigers and” – look out, here it comes – “one other ‘mystery team.’”

It is no surprise that Heyman would cite a mystery team that no one else knew about, even if he didn’t identify the team. Heyman, according to an Associated Press report on the Fielder signing, “first reported the agreement with Fielder.”

That Heyman is first with a major Boras signing has come to be expected in the baseball and reporting industries. There’s nothing wrong with a reporter having a good relationship with an agent, but the Heyman-Boras link has been so beneficial to Boras that years ago baseball executives told me they understood that Heyman was on Boras’ payroll.

I’m not sure what’s better: seeing crusty ole’ Murray Chass calling out Heyman like that, or the fact that he indirectly cites Rich Lederer to do so.Score this one for the bloggers.

Well, that escalated quickly. I suppose I’m not surprised that there are people who wouldn’t trade David Robertson for Dominic Brown straight up (which I wasn’t even expecting could happen in the first place, which makes the reaction even more interesting), but I am surprised by the vehemence with which some people rejected the notion of trading a relief pitcher with as many career innings pitched as Hiroki Kuroda threw in 2011 alone for one of the top position player prospects out of hand. Especially considering the relative ease with which the Yankees have built quality bullpens in the past few seasons.

The most interesting part of the thread, in my opinion, was when the topic shifted to Mariano Rivera. Long story short, I ended up posing the following question: would you have traded Mariano Rivera for Andruw Jones or Vladimir Guerrero (the top two prospects in baseball at the time) prior to the 1997 season? It’s not a perfect analogy, I suppose, but it’s reasonably close, given that Robertson and Brown are both not quite as good as Rivera and Jones/Vlad were at the time. And honestly, the question isn’t as clear cut as I originally expected it to be, as Mo actually stacks up pretty darn well next to the two outfielders. He’s third on the list in bWAR, but not by much (Mo has been worth 56.3 wins above replacement over his career compared to 59.2 for Vlad and 60.4 for Jones) thanks to Mo’s superior longevity. Factor in the value of Mo’s great work in the postseason and I don’t think it’s at all hard to argue that, for the sum totals of their career, Mariano has been the most valuable player of the three.

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The scrap heap season has officially kicked off, with the Yankees signing former Red Sox reliever Manny Delcarmen to a minor league deal yesterday and reportedly engaging in serious talks with utility player Bill Hall for what I assume would also be a minor league contract. Once upon a time both Delcarmen and Hall were solid big league players with some nice upside, but neither one of them really panned out, with the bottom falling out on both guys in recent years. Hall did manage to squeeze out a decent season in Boston in 2010, but went right back to being awful last year, finishing with a .211/.261/.314 (55 wRC+) slashline. I wouldn’t expect either to contribute much, if anything, to the Yankees this season, but it doesn’t hurt to have a few more see-what-they-can-do bodies hanging around camp.

If you missed it over the weekend, Dave Cameron had a pretty interesting piece at Fangraphs last Friday in which he examined the performance of relief pitchers in general since the advent of reliever specialization and the tiered bullpen, and concluded that reliever performance hasn’t actually gotten much better since 1982. Now, as much of a critic of modern bullpen usage as I can be at times, I’m not totally sure I buy Cameron’s conclusion, mostly because there isn’t any mention of expansion in the article. With four new teams added to the league since 1982 in addition to the extra roster spots being occupied by relievers, there are more relief pitchers in the game than there are now which would mean the league average performance should go downward as jobs are created for lesser caliber players if there’s no increase in the performance of the more talented players.

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This is from Kevin Kernan, so make of that what you will, but the Post is reporting that the Yankees “have interest” in outfielder Raul Ibanez, presumably to fill the other half of their DH platoon with Andruw Jones. Ibanez has spent the last three years in Philadelphia after Ruben Amaro did what Ruben Amaro does and gave the then 36 year old Ibanez a three year contract after the 2008 season. Ibanez rewarded him with a solid 2009 season, but it’s been all downhill from there, bottoming out with a .245/.289/.415 slashline (90 wRC+) and a -1.3 fWAR thanks in no small part to his atrocious left field defense.

Platoon splits make Ibanez look a little bit better, as he had a wRC+ of 101 against right-handed pitchers, but I’m still underwhelmed by the prospect of the Yankees adding him. Ideally you’d like to see a platoon hitter be better than average from his strong side, and given that Ibanez will turn 40 this June, there’s certainly a very real chance the bottom will fall out any day now. I suppose I wouldn’t say no to a minor-league deal in this case, but a major league deal doesn’t really make a lot of sense, in my opinion.

Good news everyone; Boone Logan is comin’ back! Okay, so he never really left, because he’s only arbitration eligible, but the Yankees announced today that they’ve settled on a salary figure for their primary LOOGY. Logan will make $1.875 million in 2012, just a touch under the mid-point of the figures he and the team submitted in the arbitration process.

Via Jon Heyman, the Yankees have DFA’d relief pitcher Kevin Whelan in order to make room for Hiroki Kuroda on the 40-man roster. The team made the re-signing of Andruw Jones final yesterday, claiming the final available roster spot and making the additional move necessary. The Yankees may need to clear additional roster space in the coming weeks if they make additional moves for a new designated hitter or utility infielder as well.

We got a tremendous response to our recent announcement that we were seeking new writers, and I’m pleased to announce that we have added five new writers to the staff. So, without any gilding of the lily, allow me to introduce them.

-William Tasker is a name you might recognize as the man behind The Flagrant Fan, from Twitter, or as a regular contributor to the IIATMS comment section. William is a native of Bergen County, New Jersey presently relocated in the upper reaches of enemy territory New England. He’s been writing about baseball online since 2003, and has also published nine non-baseball related books.

-Michael Kuring may be more familiar to you as 3460kuri, the handle he has been contributing to Pinstripe Alley with. Michael has been a Yankee fan for 15 years, and counts as his most memorable experience witnessing Game 5 of the 2009 World Series, giving him the opportunity to potentially witness his favorite team close out a championship season with him in attendance. Unfortunately, A.J. Burnett and Cliff Lee conspired to muck that up. The more things change, eh?

-David and Aziz Nekoukar previously contributed to NJ.com’s Pride of the Yankees blog from 2004-09. They’re lifelong Yankee fans whose grandfather once served as Babe Ruth’s personal cab driver (though he unfortunately gave away his signed memorabilia over the years), and they have fond memories of growing up watching Thurman Munson, Donnie Baseball, and Dave Winfield.

-And last, but certainly not least, Gabe Lezra comes to us by way of Managing Madrid. He has the interesting distinction of having lived everywhere from Madison, Wisconsin, to New York, to the beautiful city of Cadiz, Spain, where he currently resides while teaching middle school English. He can also say that he became a Yankee fan while living in Boston in 1995, watching a young Derek Jeter break into the majors, and creating a Yankee fanatic in the process. Gabe will be moving back stateside this year, bolstering IIAMTS’ Mid-Atlantic contingent while he studies law at Georgetown.

The IIATMS team is very excited to welcome our new contributors on board, and very thankful to everyone who inquired about the openingsbut, unfortunately, we had more intriguing applicants than the number of positions we were prepared to add at this time.

And to leave you on the happiest of notes: pitchers and catchers report in 24 days.

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With the Yankees suddenly in the market for a designated hitter after trading away top prospect Jesus Montero, much speculation has centered on who, exactly, the Yankees might find to fill that role. Publicly, Brian Cashman has said he’s going to look to the trade market for a match, as he attempts to trade away some excess pitching to fill the need, and along those lines many fans and commentators have engaged in heavy speculation as to how Cashman might go about filling the need and getting rid of the much maligned A.J. Burnett in the same deal.

That there are no shortage of hitters with bad contracts out there has made this a pretty easy game to play. Without question, the names I’ve seen mentioned most frequently are Jason Bay, Alfonso Soriano, and Adam Dunn. I discussed Bay this morning, and Soriano is more or less the same story, in my opinion. He’s not really a good hitter anymore, isn’t particularly good at all against right handed pitchers (he hasn’t had a wRC+ against RHP since 2007. Yes, I said 2007), and his contract is awful even in comparison to Burnett’s. Soriano is guaranteed $54 million over the next three seasons, or an extra year and $21 million more than what the Yankees owe Burnett. Add him to the ledger in 2014, and it’s virtually impossible for the Yankees to make any big league moves beyond re-signing Robinson Cano while staying under their payroll target. In other words, Brian Cashman had better not trade for Alfonso Soriano.

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