{"id":53342,"date":"2025-04-16T07:13:49","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T07:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new365.azontree.com\/?p=53342"},"modified":"2025-04-16T07:14:07","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T07:14:07","slug":"yankees-trade-idea-lands-72-5-million-all-star-righty-to-fix-starting-rotation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new365.azontree.com\/?p=53342","title":{"rendered":"Yankees Trade Idea Lands $72.5 Million All-Star Righty to Fix Starting Rotation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"post-featured-container-id\">\n<div id=\"post-featured\">\n<div>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Yankees-Trade-Idea-Pablo-Lopez.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=780\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 820px) 95vw, 780px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Yankees-Trade-Idea-Pablo-Lopez.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=780 780w, https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Yankees-Trade-Idea-Pablo-Lopez.jpg?quality=15&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1100 1100w, https:\/\/heavy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Yankees-Trade-Idea-Pablo-Lopez.jpg?quality=65&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1350 1350w\" alt=\"Yankees Trade Idea Lands $72.5 Million All-Star Righty to Fix Starting Rotation\" width=\"780\" height=\"439\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>Getty<\/p>\n<p>Yankees manager Aaron Boone<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The New York Yankees are off to a 9-7 start and, ahead of Tuesday\u2019s games, hold the top spot in the American League East, albeit by just a half-game over the 9-8 Toronto Blue Jays. While their start has not exactly been torrid, the results show that at least so far, the Bronx Bombers have been good enough.<\/p>\n<p>But their season is only 16 games old \u2014 so is the Yankees\u2019 current level of success sustainable?<\/p>\n<p>That was the question asked by MLB insider and New York Post columnist Jon Heyman on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConsidering the temperature has been consistently unbearable, the bats aren\u2019t quite as blessed as it appeared in that first series vs. the Brew Crew, and they\u2019re missing former MVP Giancarlo Stanton (one of their four former MVPs) and of course the $765M man Juan Soto, the offense is doing its part,\u201d Heyman write. \u201cThey look dangerous now, but you still have to wonder whether it\u2019s enough.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Yankees offensive attack has indeed been the best in the Majors with a 142 OPS+, a stat that measures how a team\u2019s (or player\u2019s) OPS compares to the league average, which is always fixed at 100. In other words, the Yankees have been producing at the plate 45 percent better than an MLB average team.<\/p>\n<p>To put that performance in perspective, the second-best offense in MLB prior to Tuesday\u2019s slate of games was the St. Louis Cardinals with an OPS+ of 128. Only six of the 30 teams registered an OPS+ above 120. With their bats, torpedo or otherwise, the Yankees are lapping the field.<\/p>\n<p>The same cannot be said about the Yankees\u2019 pitching. That is why, as Heyman notes, the Yankees current pace is simply not sustainable without a serious upgrade to their pitching staff \u2014 starting rotation especially. As a staff, the Yankees\u2019 ERA+ (a metric using the same principles as OPS+) stands at 93, seven percent below average and seventh-worst in MLB.<\/p>\n<p>Yankees lefty Max Fried \u2014 who inked an eight-year, $218 million free agent deal with New York over the offseason \u2014 has been stellar, with a 2-0 record allowing just three earned runs over 17 1\/3 innings for an ERA of 1.56. But incredibly, Fried is the only Yankees starter with an ERA under 5.00.<\/p>\n<p>Judged by standard ERA, the Yankees\u2019 starters have been second-worst in the Majors, at 5.17. Yankees relievers have been better but still far from elite at 3.50, 12th in MLB.<\/p>\n<p>While the Yankees expect to get injured starters Clarke Schmidt and Luis Gil on the mound sometime before the end of May \u2014 Schmidt expected sooner than Gil \u2014 <em>Empire Sports Media<\/em> founder Alexander Wilson proposed what could be at least a partial solution to the defending AL champs\u2019 starting woes.<\/p>\n<p>His proposal \u2014 trade with the slumping Minnesota Twins to obtain ninth-year, 29-year-old righty Pablo L\u00f3pez who before being sidelined with a hamstring issue was on a sparkling season-opening run, compiling a 1.62 ERA in 16 2\/3 innings over three starts.<\/p>\n<p>According to Wilson, L\u00f3pez also has \u201ca 77.5 percent left-on-base rate, and a ground ball rate just over 52 percent. He doesn\u2019t walk batters. He doesn\u2019t give up homers. He simply attacks the zone and gets results. L\u00f3pez ranks in the 97th percentile in breaking run value, 87th percentile in chase rate, and 93rd percentile in walk rate. That combination \u2014 getting hitters to chase while rarely issuing free passes \u2014 is exactly what the Yankees need.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With the Twins struggling mightily at 5-12 and already 5 1\/2 games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers in the AL Central, they may be willing to sell off high-priced pieces such as L\u00f3pez who is still owed $65.25 million from 2025 to 2027 on his four-year, $73.5 million Twins contract.<\/p>\n<p>But as Wilson recognizes, a pitcher the caliber of the Cabimas, Venezuela, native \u2014 a 2023 AL All-Star \u2014 will not come without a painful price. The Yankees will have to at least partially mortgage their future by surrendering a top prospect \u2014 at least one \u2014 in return.<\/p>\n<p>Wilson\u2019s suggestion is infielder George Lombard Jr., the Yankees 2023 first-round draft pick, 26th overall, out of Gulliver Preparatory School in Pinecrest, Florida. Lombard, the son of Detroit Tigers bench coach George Lombard, currently ranks as the Yankees\u2019 No. 1 overall prospect, according to <em>MLB Pipeline<\/em>, and 98th overall among all prospects.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt would be a tough pill to swallow,\u201d Wilson wrote. \u201cBut prospects are never guarantees \u2014 and if the Yankees want to push deep into October and stabilize their rotation for years to come, Pablo L\u00f3pez might be worth the gamble.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. Vankin is also the author of five nonfiction books on a variety of topics, as well as nine graphic novels including most recently &#8220;Last of the Gladiators&#8221; published by Dynamite Entertainment. More about Jonathan Vankin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Yankees are off to a 9-7 start and, ahead of Tuesday\u2019s games, hold the top spot in the American League East, albeit by just a half-game over the 9-8 Toronto Blue Jays. While their start has not exactly been torrid, the results show that at least so far, the Bronx Bombers have [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":53343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Yankees Trade Idea Lands $72.5 Million All-Star Righty to Fix Starting Rotation - News 365<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/new365.azontree.com\/?p=53342\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yankees Trade Idea Lands $72.5 Million All-Star Righty to Fix Starting Rotation - News 365\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The New York Yankees are off to a 9-7 start and, ahead of Tuesday\u2019s games, hold the top spot in the American League East, albeit by just a half-game over the 9-8 Toronto Blue Jays. 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