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Why the Yankees' best trade chip is Clarke Schmidt

Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Clarke Schmidt.

On a theoretical level, if the purpose of the trade chip is to net the most value back, the answer is clearly Aaron Judge. He's one of the best players in baseball and he's in his arbitration years. A team could get a couple monster years of production and could choose to extend him or let him walk away into free agency. But let's be real, there is no way Judge is being traded and anyone who suggests that is probably a Russian bot.

Before we can get into why Schmidt makes sense, there are a some components that need to be discussed.

1.) What do the Yankees need the most? That's an easy one: starting pitching. There are clearly concerns with JA Happ maintaining a role as a starter, and to keep things nice and complicated now James Paxton is slightly grazing the alarm button. Even if the current rotation buckles down and has a great year, the team could be losing Paxton, Happ and Masahiro Tanaka in the offseason. Plus there will be major question marks surrounding Severino's return from Tommy John surgery and German's suspension and series of sketchy tweets.

2.) Are the Yankees in win-now mode or rebuild mode? Another easy answer, they're in win-now mode. And not in the "front office says this to placate us in the off-season" kind of way. This team is seriously stacked and has a really good chance to win this year. They also have a great core to continue winning in the years to come.

Based on that information, it would make little to no sense for the Yankees to be trading for a pitching prospect. They already have that in Schmidt. They'd be looking for a pitcher with a proven MLB track record, most likely someone in the midst of their arbitration years or someone earning a higher range salary.

Then we'd have to take a look at what kind of team they'd be trading with. A win-now team is not going to trade away proven MLB caliber pitching, so we can just forget about that. A team that's reaching the tail end of their rebuild also won't be parting with proven MLB pitching. So that leaves teams that are starting their tear down or just beginning the rebuild process.

Based on all of that criteria, Clarke Schmidt would be the best trade chip. He is 23 years old, ranked number 2 in the Yankees system by MLB, and ranked 68 and 88 by Baseball American and Major League Baseball respectively. Both Andujar and Frazier have some things working against them right now, even just having teams know they're expendable by the Yankees brings their value down.

Starting pitching, that's the golden ticket. Good starters are a rare breed, and in order for the Yankees to net one, they're going to need to give up something very valuable. Not only is Clarke Schmidt young and top of their prospect list, but he's not even on their 40 man roster. That means they'd be trading a rebuilding team exactly what they need, a young starter who can be part of their future. While Andujar and Frazier are still young, their service time clocks have started and there is a much more limited group of teams that could use their specific skill set right now. Out of their starting pitching prospects, Schmidt looks the best and would most likely top any team's list of names to ask for.

At the beginning of the season I would have said King or Garcia. King has looked good in the bullpen, and may be on his way to earning a more permanent role with the team. Right now if we were to just evaluate players off of spring training and summer camp, Garcia looked like he's more of a work in progress.

Clarke Schmidt is the Yankee's best trade chip.

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