Yankees 2018 Roster Report Card: Miscellaneous Position Players

Every year, without fail, there will be some players on the roster that you have completely forgotten about. You might even forget some that played a decent chunk of games. It was only in 2017 that Garrett Cooper played for the Yankees. That is a completely different person than Garrett Jones, who was on the team in 2015.

In the past 10 years, players like Donovan Solano, Scott Sizemore, Thomas Neal, Darnell McDonald, Chris Dickerson, and Greg Golson make up just a sampling of the position players who have had short stints with the team. There’s a non-zero chance some of their families had forgotten that those players had spells on the Yankees.

As far as position players go, there’s two that will almost assuredly be forgotten about the further we get away from 2018. One will take a little longer because of how much he had to play. The other you might not have even known played for the Yankees this season, if you happened to have missed the three games he played in.

Shane Robinson

Grade: D-

Statistics: 25 games, 54 plate appearances, .143/.208/.224, 1 home run, 2 RBI, 8 runs, 0.0 WAR, 16 wRC+

Contract Status: Free Agent

Twenty-five games as a Yankee somehow simultaneously seems like way more and way less than how long Shane Robinson was on the team in 2018.

After a very short stint in the majors towards the beginning of the season, Robinson was sent back down to Triple-A, where he seemed destined to play out the remainder of the season. Then, Aaron Judge went down with an injury, and Robinson was recalled.

Upon returning to the majors, Robinson got way more plate appearances than anyone would have liked, and didn’t do much with them. He did so little, that you could make a legitimate argument that a bat-less Judge could hit better than him. The month of August was made far more agonizing thanks to the Yankees’ insistence on trotting Robinson out in Judge’s stead night after night

Thankfully, he didn’t get any further playing time after the Yankees’ acquisition of Andrew McCutchen.

Jace Peterson

Grade: Incomplete

2018 Statistics: (with Yankees) 3 games, 11 plate appearances, .300/.364/.300, 0 home runs, 0 RBI, 0 runs, -0.2 WAR, 88 wRC+

Before becoming an Orioles legend, Peterson played in three games for the Yankees. Funnily enough, the first two were against Baltimore, and he picked up a combined three hits. Little would he know that the struggling opposition he faced would soon be his home.

Peterson didn’t do much as a Yankee, and was only up as an injury replacement for Billy McKinney, who himself was an injury replacement for Aaron Hicks. He was designated for assignment to clear room for Robinson, and was then picked up by the Orioles a couple days later.

Of the players with 200 or more plate appearances who finished the season with the Orioles, Peterson had the eighth-highest OPS on their team. So, that’s good for him, I think.