Yanks finally sign non-Yankee free agent in Russell Martin

Thankfully the Yankees are as sick of talking about Cliff Lee as I am writing and reading about him, and have mercifully thrown us a bone with the signing of Russell Martin. The deal isn’t yet official, as Martin has to pass a physical (and given that he’s coming off a fractured pelvis this is no guarantee), but assuming it does go through it’s a nice add for the Yankees.

We touched on Martin briefly a week and a half ago in the wake of the near-trade that sent him to the Yanks, and he makes sense for a lot of different reasons, the most important of which is that the Francisco Cervelli era should be coming to a close sometime soon. Unless Jesus Montero wins the starting catching job outright, it seems likely that Montero starts the year in AAA with Martin and Cervelli traveling north, with Montero eventually taking Cervelli’s place at some point during the first half of the season. It’s always possible Montero wins the BUC job out of camp, but I’d rather assume he won’t and then be pleasantly surprised if he does.

In the aforelinked post, CAIRO had Martin at a .329 wOBA, although SG reran Martin’s projections as a Yankee and they appear to be even more favorable, with a baseline wOBA of .335. If Martin can play to the level of one standard deviation above that projection, he’d be a .350 wOBA player, which we’d all be very happy with, as his career mark is .337.

All in all, it’s a great depth move for the Yankees, as it not only helps ease Montero into the catching role while ensuring there isn’t a massive black hole taking on catching duties on the days Montero isn’t the backstop, but also effectively ensures that we never have to watch Jorge Posada on “defense” ever again.

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