Yankees trade Mike Ford to Rays for cash considerations

The writing had long since been on the wall for first baseman Mike Ford and the Yankees to go their separate ways. The team demoted him to Triple-A on June 2nd in favor of the hot-hitting Chris Gittens and designated him for assignment on June 12th when Zack Britton was activated from the IL.

At that point, Ford wasn’t even making a case to hang around Scranton, as following a measly .133/.278/.283 performance with 3 homers in 72 plate appearances in the majors, he fell into a 2-for-24 (.083) slump in Triple-A. He failed to record even a single extra base hit during what ended up being his final week within the Yankees’ organization after joining them as an undrafted free agent out of Princeton in 2013.

Now, Ford is officially gone. The Yankees traded him today to the Rays for cash considerations ($100,000, per reports) and a player to be named later. Ford will turn 29 on July 4th and is hoping to rediscover that form he once had in 2019, when he became one of the Yankees’ surprising stories of the year with 12 homers in just 50 games.

It doesn’t take a baseball expert to know that Ford will definitely be looking to stick it to the Yankees with an AL East rival if he ever gets the chance. I don’t blame the Yankees one bit for moving on from Ford — and it’s certainly possible that even if they just released him, he would’ve found his way onto the Rays anyway — but rest assured, if Ford does in fact hit a late-season homer against them, I will be annoyed. It’s the Rays Way.™