SSTN Mailbag: Durango, Fried, And 2B!

The Yankees' offense is so impotent that it doesn't feel like the Yankees have been playing good baseball, but they have. The Rays and the Red Sox have each hit a stutter-step, and the Yankees have taken advantage, moving to 4 games back of the Rays in the AL East as the Red Sox have fallen back.

The Yankees finally scored a few runs against the Orioles. The Yankee pitching staff must have incredibly sore backs from carrying the team these last couple of months. Hopefully, as the new reinforcements get more comfortable and the lineup mainstays play closer to the back of their baseball cards, the team's offense can normalize even before Judge and Stanton return.

I still very much believe in this team.

As always, thanks for the great questions and keep them coming to SSTNReadermail.com. In this week's SSTN Mailbag, we'll talk about Luis Durango, Max Fried, and the 2B situation! Let's get at it:

David G. asks: What are your thoughts on Luis Durango down in Somerset? I had never heard of him until recently. Is he a real prospect?

I am embarrassed to say that I knew the name but not much else about Luis Durango until a couple of weeks ago. I find this story fascinating. He's basically been a non-prospect for much of his professional career based on a complete lack of power and ability to make consistent contact. Upon entering the Yankee system (once his first partial season with the club was finished), the Yankee hitting staff sat him down and told him to scrap what he'd been doing and play his game.

Prior to playing in the Yankee system, Durango had worked hard to add lift to his swing and try to find gap power. It didn't take and he was in danger of drifting away from professional baseball. Instead, the Yankees told him to lean into everything that makes him exciting: speed. Durango needed to find a way to make his elite speed play at all times. Durango's approach is one I haven't seen in a very long time. His hands are split apart on the bat and he slashes at the ball trying to hit infield grounders and soft liners into the outfield. He's such a good baserunner that a single often effectively turns into a double or a triple with his speed.

The first time I saw his split hand approach, I thought it was a unique way of hitting a swinging bunt. For a player with this profile, the approach is genius, and for now, appears to be working. Durango is running the highest contact rate in professional baseball and he's flying around the field making noise. He is a good outfielder defensively, a fantastic, instinctive baserunner, and he's really making his unique skillset work at the plate. Before the season, I would have told you that Durango is a non-prospect. Now? I think he's firmly inside the Yankees' top-30 list.

Durango himself deserves tons of credit for making such an extreme change, but the Yankees' hitting development staff also deserves a ton of credit, and what they've done here runs very much counter to what their reputation indicates they'd do. Instead of asking him to keep banging his head against a wall, the Yankees asked Durango to follow what he did naturally and take a very unique approach. All deserve credit, and I'm fascinated to see how far Durango can take it.

Mike O. asks: Max Fried is out again with a bone bruise in his elbow - should we expect him back at all this season?

It sounds like Fried's issue is relatively minor, but I'd be lying if my eyebrows weren't raised by the continual use of the term "bone bruise" to describe Fried's injury. I have very little doubt but that Fried will be going for some kind of elbow cleanup, at a minimum, once the season is over. There is something in that elbow causing continual discomfort and damage.

Right now, it sounds like Fried is going to try to pitch, and be ready to do so again in September. I'm not a doctor, but I have trouble counting on Fried, as hard as he's trying to keep himself available. All I know is it would be a lot of fun to see Fried, Cole, Rodon, and Schlittler all healthy at the same time in the playoffs.

Eddie asks: You're the manager. What would you do at 2b for the rest of this year? Would you keep running Jazz out there, go with Cabby, or dig down to AAA and try Luciano?

It's August in a pennant race. Luciano is a completely unknown entity that the Yankees have been working to rebuild as a prospect since he flamed out with the Giants. He's put together a nice season, but digging through the underlying numbers, he's nowhere near ready for prime time.

Caballero is overexposed as an everyday player, and is needed to cover a multitude of positions at the moment. His utility role will become more critical as more players get healthy and difficult decisions are needed to fit everyone. I don't think Caballero is a better player than even a very diminished Jazz Chisholm.

Jazz has had an incredibly frustrating season, and it's obvious that no one is more frustrated than Jazz himself. Despite his protests to the contrary, I do think that Aaron Boone needs to give him a breather for a couple of days to let him cool down. The reality is that Jazz is by far the most talented option at 2B, and the Yankees' best chance of winning the World Series is to get Jazz going. When he's right in all facets of the game, I honestly don't believe anyone on this roster other than Aaron Judge is capable of making the impact that Jazz is capable of making. Jazz has pop, is by far the best baserunner on the roster, is a much better fielder than he's shown recently, and he brings an energy that's infectious.

I don't there's a silver bullet here. The Yankee coaching staff has to find a way to get Jazz going.