Yankees Mailbag: Opening the prospect floodgates and rearranging the front office

Good afternoon everyone, it’s time to dive back into the mailbag and answer some of your questions. Remember to send in your questions for our weekly call by e-mail to pinstripealleyblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

ConorGallogly asks: Would you be content if the Yankees went into 2024 with a youth movement focused roster even if it was projected to finish with 75 wins?

No, I don't think that would be an acceptable course to take. The Yankees have already - barring a miracle comeback - burned an entire year of Aaron Judge and Gerrit Cole's competitive window, and accepting a rebuild year that would burn a second would be a foolish move to make. The injection of youth that they're getting is a desperately needed boost, don't get me wrong, but it needs to be balanced with smart signings and deals to immediately move back into contention or else a larger problem will loom over them.

Jasson Domínguez and Austin Wells showing that they could be a part of the plan from Day One in 2024 is a significant step towards constructing that team's roster, and there's a number of young arms that could augment the pitching staff at some point next year. However, most of those arms won't be ready right away, and the Yankees will have a number of spots open with Luis Severino and Frankie Montas scheduled to be free agents and a sizeable amount of money opening up. At least some of that should be injected back into the team, perhaps grabbing an arm and a position player to boost the floor that this year's team had fall out from underneath them.

Hankflorida asks: Peraza said in an interview that a month ago, he wasn’t doing well in the minors with his leg kick stance and switched to the toe tapping stance; when he came to the majors, his new stance wasn’t working so he went back to his leg kick one and got three hits. My question is why did the Yankees bring up a player who was having problems batting and was experimenting when he had a better chance of righting himself with less pressure on the farm?

Peraza's season has been a curious one, but overall his Triple-A numbers would suggest that he went past experimenting and outright found a successful adaptation for himself there. There were several points where the Yankees could've used Peraza in place of Josh Donaldson or DJ LeMahieu throughout the summer, but they let him stay down and work on his development instead. Now with the rest of the top prospects in the Bronx, it was high time for another shot at seeing whether Peraza was ready to jump to the next level, but he still needed to make adaptations. An immediate positive in the statsheet like his multi-hit day are reasons to be hopeful, but its ultimately a fraction of the sample size that we need to see out of him. Peraza's never had the batting projections that the rest of the team's blue chip prospects have had, but at this point he may need to make it or break it spending a full year in the majors like Anthony Volpe just did.

YankeesJetsFan91 asks: Since Cashman is likely not going anywhere, the next best thing is to make him POBO and get someone from another team’s FO to be GM and take an outsider’s look at the organization and ways to improve certain areas(analytics, developing hitters, etc....). Do you agree with this idea?

I'm leaning towards it not making as much of a difference as you may think. First, even in a different role Cashman would still have high influemce and the last say sans an intervention from Hal Steinbrenner if he were to become President of Baseball Operations instead of General Manager. In addition, Cashman currently has several highly respected lieutenants with GM experience like Brian Sabean involved in the front office - I just don't see much of a difference between promoting Cashman and hiring a new GM versus the dichotomy they currently have.