Somewhere around the time it began to become clear that Jesus Montero probably wouldn’t have much of a career as a catcher, a lot of people picked up the notion that Montero would still have value as a first baseman/designated hitter because of his offensive production. And in a vacuum this is certainly true, especially if Montero developed rapidly into a good-to-great hitter during his team control years. But then people began saying that Montero would mitigate the decline of the Yankees aging lineup, particularly Alex Rodriguez who, in case you’d forgotten, is still under contract with the Yankees for six more seasons. This is a pretty good summation of the premise.

I understand that having Pineda in the rotation probably makes the 2012 Yankees a better team than they would have been with Montero as the DH. But in 2013? And 2014?

Arod and Teixeira are already fractions of what they once were and they will be declining in the lineup for years to come. The Yankees have one big hitter in his prime, Cano, who is fierce but not flawless. You don’t have to squint too hard to see a Yankee team desperate for hitting.

There’s truth in this, to be sure, but what’s done is done. A-Rod and Tex are signed 6 and 5 years, respectively, and with A-Rod’s age and health issues it’s basically a given that he’ll have to become a primary DH sometime in the near future. So obviously, if Montero is ultimately a 1B/DH player, there isn’t room for him in the lineup if Teixeira and A-Rod are already slotted into those spots in the long term.

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Believe it or not (and frankly I wouldn’t really have thought it possible), the Yankees’ acquisition of Michael Pineda has actually made A.J. Burnett an even larger albatross around their neck. No, it probably won’t make him pitch any more poorly than he has in the past two seasons, and it won’t make Burnett cost any more money, but rather it puts Burnett in the more uncomfortable position of potentially wasting something even more valuable than dollars to the Yankees: a roster spot.

The problem is that the Yankees now have seven starting pitchers penciled in for their 25 man roster. Add the five relievers who are likely a lock to be on the opening day roster (Mariano Rivera, David Robertson, Rafael Soriano, Boone Logan, and Cory Wade), and suddenly you have 12 total pitchers, or a full staff, with two natural starters occupying relief roles. That’s not exactly an ideal way to build a pitching staff by any means. So how can the logjam be resolved? Here are some potential solutions.

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There haven’t been too many truly negative reactions to the Jesus Montero-for-Michael Pineda trade over the last few days, which is a little surprising to me. Sure, there’s been plenty of “it will be sad to see Montero play elsewhere” sentiment, but even most people expressing that haven’t really disliked the trade, or at least it seems. This morning, RAB’s Larry Koestler mounted the most comprehensive criticism of the deal I’ve seen yet. It’s a good read and I highly recommend it if you’re looking for the counter viewpoint, but I have to take a bit of an issue with this:

Now, we all know comping anyone to [Miguel] Cabrera is the epitome of an overzealous expectation, but even though Montero is unlikely to reach that particular historically-good level of hitting, his bat has been near-universally regarded as an impact, middle-of-the-order force, one that doesn’t seem outrageous to expect possible .300/.400/.500 lines from in the future. I realize both the opportunity cost and scarcity of acquiring a young, cost-controlled starter in Pineda, especially when compared to adding an offensive-oriented player, but more than four days in and I’m still not entirely sold on this being the right move.

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Because Nick Johnson will play an entire MLB season without a single trip to the disabled list before you get tired of hearing about Michael Pineda, here are some MSM links regarding the Yankees’ young new starting pitcher.

First, ESPN New York’s Andrew Marchand notes that Pineda is not a finished product, and particularly that he needs to develop a third pitch to be more effective against left-handed batters if he’s ever going to develop into an ace. Personally I think this angle is being over played a little bit due to the understandable nerves that go along with making a big trade for a young pitcher. Yes, Pineda is a two-pitch pitcher right now but a) those two pitches provide him with a solid floor in the big leagues already, even if he doesn’t develop a serviceable changeup and b) Pineda is still only 23 years old and coming into his second big league season, so it’s not as though he’s behind in the development curve for a pitcher with his profile.

Also, because his fastball-slider combo is so good, Pineda doesn’t need to develop a great changeup so much as a serviceable one he can mix in to keep lefties off balance. So long as he can get it in the strikezone and miss enough bats with it to keep it in hitters’ minds, he’ll be just fine. And there’s nothing that says his third pitch has to be a changeup, either. Maybe he develops a hard sinker variant on his fastball. Maybe it becomes a split-finger fastball. Maybe Mo teaches him to throw a 95 MPH cutter. Whatever it is, he only needs to develop a serviceable third pitch to show to opposite plate hitters to set up the fastball and that tremendous slider.

Secondly, MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch talks to someone who thinks Pineda might not be the Yankees’ number two starter after all. As in, he might not start the second game of the season for them. Personally I’m a little surprised people are still fixated on this question. After the first week of the season, the order in which a team’s starting pitchers make their seasonal debut makes pretty much no difference whatsoever. So if someone thinks starting the third or fourth game of the season instead of the second one will take some pressure off of Pineda or tamp down the expectations on him this season, go for it, I guess. There’s no downside.

I suppose this was inevitable:

there has been some contact between matsui and #yankees. decent fit, considering team budget, his background

Matsui will have nostalgia working in his favor, but other than that I’m not sure this makes much sense. Godzilla hit just .251/.321/.375 with Oakland last year, .242/.318/.336 against right-handers. That puts him in the same category as someone like Russell Branyan, Ryan Ludwick, or J.D Drew as players who have hit right-handers well throughout their careers but hit poorly in 2011, but unlike those guys Matsui’s balky knees make it pretty much impossible to play the field at all. That means that, if he’s going to be a platoon mate for Andruw Jones, he’d represent an essentially wasted bench spot on the days he wasn’t in the starting lineup. If you’re going to go that route, you might as well try to cajole Jorge Posada into coming back. He’d bring more in the way of nostalgic value, and he at least had decent numbers against right-handed pitchers last season.

With a sudden need for a designated hitter, at least part time, and a desire to get such a player at a bargain, many fans are bringing up one name to answer the question of who the Yankees should add to their active roster to DH opposite Andruw Jones: Jorge Vazquez. It’s not hard to see why some fans have fallen for Vazquez. He did, after all, 32 home runs for the Triple-A Yankees after flashing some light-tower power in the Grapefruit League in 2010, and because of that he remains a tantalizing shiny object; the power hitter stashed away in Triple-A. There’s just on teeny-tiny problem with this plan; Vazquez isn’t actually a very good hitter.

Honestly, once you get past the home runs, there’s just not much there to like about Vazquez’s bat. He hit just .262/.314/.516 in 2011 and struck out 166 times in 500 plate appearances while drawing a mere 30 walks. Those are not good numbers, to say the least. That’s comparable to Russell Branyan circa 2001, except that Branyan was a 25 year old big leaguer while Vazquez is a 29 year old playing against much younger competition in Triple-A. There’s just no reason to think he could be a serviceable hitter at the major league level, and if he does wind up getting a large number of plate appearances as the DH in the Bronx, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Via his agent, Phil Hughes has agreed to a one year contract and avoided arbitration with the Yankees. The deal will pay him $3.2 million plus incentives.

Right now, Hughes is at a fork in his career. Once one of the top pitching prospects in all of baseball, Hughes has had a rough go of things since Joe Girardi named him to the All-Star team in 2010 after a good first half as a starter and a tremendous performance out of the bullpen in the Yankees 2009 championship season. By all accounts, the Yankees still view him as a starter and hope that re-committing himself to his offseason training will help him recover some lost velocity and effectiveness on his fastball, but a lack of a good secondary pitch and a sudden logjam of starting pitchers on the roster may well mean that 2012 becomes the year Hughes heads to a relief role for good. He’ll certainly have a lot riding on his performance in Spring Training which, I might add, is suddenly right around the corner.

So we’re back to this, are we?

#yankees are telling people they only have $1-2M for dh spot. So no pena. And damon doesn’t seem likely at that price, either

Excuse me while I stifle a chuckle.

Seriously though, this news probably isn’t too noteworthy. Yesterday, I outlined a handful of candidates the Yankees could look into if they’re seeking a platoon partner for Andruw Jones, and at least a few of them can probably be had within this price range. That would work well enough for the cost while requiring basically no financial risk. If the Yankees signed, say, Russell Branyan and he didn’t bounce back from his poor 2011 season, they could just DFA him and move on.

On the other hand, aren’t the Yankees pretty much pot committed now? They’ve already traded their best prospect and expanded their budget to bring in a $10 million starting pitcher, if Carlos Pena informed Hal Steinbrenner that he would sign a contract with the Yankees to play a primarily platoon role for, say, $8 million, are you really going to say no at that point?

Of course, once upon a time the Yankees didn’t have the money to sign Kuroda either, and then they did. Whether that was the plan all along or the brass got antsy and changed their mind on the payroll number I don’t know, and I still think Pena is just using the Yankees to get a deal done with someone else, but I won’t be surprised if the Yankees wind up “expanding” their budget one more time this winter.

Though the Yankees have made a big splash and clearly improved their present roster by acquiring Michael Pineda and Hiroki Kuroda this weekend, in the process they’ve also opened a hole in their starting lineup. Jesus Montero had previously figured to get most of the available at bats as the team’s designated hitter, so who fills that role now that Montero is Seattle bound?

There are multiple ways to fill the spot, but the most attractive is clearly adding a solid bat at a solid price via free agency. To that end, the Yankees are reportedly checking in with former Rays’ and Cubs’ first baseman Carlos Pena, a player whose addition would be pretty incredible. Pena was a little bit overrated back in 2008-09 because of his home run numbers, but he has a solid blend of power and patience, and he mashes right-handed pitchers. A Pena signing would likely portend a platoon of Pena and Andruw Jones in the DH role, a combination that would project to be downright murderous at the plate.

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