Yesterday it was announced that Miguel Andujar has found his way to a new team, and are the Yankees really looking to DFA a reliever?
Miguel Andujar (2017-2022)
After parts of 6 Major League seasons with the New York Yankees, Miguel Andujar has finally been DFA'ed and has now found a new placement with the Pittsburgh Pirates. It was no surprise to hear that Andujar was quickly picked up after being available for free.
Miguel Andujar and the New York Yankees had a visual beef, much to the point that Andujar had expressed a desire to be traded by his former team after being demoted back to Triple-A this June. After that sentiment was released, the Yankees took a month before calling him up again to the MLB level and even then had sparse playing time for the converted infielder-to-outfielder.
During the 2022 season (over a scattered 27 games), Andujar hit his way to a .229/.250/.281/.531 quadruple slash. This came with a 52 OPS+, 1 Home Run, and 8 RBI's which led to a +0.2 bWAR.
In his Yankees career, Miguel Andujar hit to a combined .273/.303/.449/.752 (104 OPS+) extended quadruple slash with 35 Home Runs and 122 RBI's in 259 games over parts of 6 seasons. And, that's held up in almost its entirety by Andujar's 2018 campaign where he had a 130 OPS+ and played 149 games.
Now, Miguel Andujar did also deal with the injury bug during his time in New York. This included 2 different IL stints in 2019- one of which was a season-ending right labrum tear (from Mid-May)- and 2 different IL stints during the 2021 season- one of which was a 60-Day IL left wrist sprain.
Andujar now joins a slew of former Yankees on the Pittsburgh Pirates roster. This list now includes:
Greg Allen
Manny Banuelos
Diego Castillo
Roansy Contreras
Ben Gamel
Hoy Park
Miguel Yajure
So shame here for Andujar. He was electric during that 2018 season as the man who only hit doubles. I wish him the best in Pittsburgh. (It is a beautiful place to place.)
Aroldis Chapman (2016, 2017-2022?)
Are the Yankees really looking to DFA a member of their (already thinning) bullpen? The quick answer is no.
This CBS article, which has been making the rounds on Yankees websites and twitter in the past day or so, but it does not come from any internal source from the team. Instead, it came from a Joel Sherman article from the NY Post where he is speculating about the idea of the Yankees getting rid of Chapman.
I hate to spoil the excitement, but it's not going to happen. Consider it the sunk cost fallacy, but the Yankees are not going to go into the playoffs with even less bullpen depth after they've already lost Chad Green and Michael King for the season/playoffs and currently has Wandy Peralta, Clarke Schmidt, Stephen Ridings, Albert Abreu, and Miguel Castro on the IL. Additionally, Zack Britton has thrown just 0.1 inning in the MLB this year.
The Yankees have 3 weeks until playoff baseball. To believe that all 6 of those players above will come back, shake off the rust, and pitch better than Aroldis Chapman during the stretch and playoffs is to believe in insanity.
Am I the worlds biggest Aroldis Chapman fan? No. I am perpetually frustrated by his inability to find the strike-zone and seeing him get beat twice (in 2017 and 2019) by the Houston Astros was horrific.
However, he is Aroldis Chapman. He deserves the benefit of the doubt, which should be extremely short given his 4.36 ERA this season, but he deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Also, however, this should be the end of Chapman's time in New York regardless of what happens in the playoffs. (For that same note, it should also be the end of Zack Britton.) The Yankees don't have the resources- given how they've spent money in the past few years- to have room for expensive relievers. They are very good at finding good relievers. They don't need a Chapman/Britton taking up $15M+ each season anymore.
