Commenting On Davidoff’s Choices

Yesterday, Ken Davidoff of Newsday floated out six options the Yankees could employ to improve the rotation. Let’s take a look and make some comments.

His first option was trading for Felix Hernandez. He knows it’s not going to happen. We know it’s not going to happen. Let’s just move on.

Door number two is a trade for Matt Garza centered around Manny Banuelos or Dellin Betances. This is definitely more likely, but may not be cheap or easy…and I’m okay with that. I’m much more bearish on Garza than most seem to be, though, so take that with a grain of salt.

Next, he throws out the money suggestion (a 4/$48M contract for Edwin Jackson), but quickly dismisses it. I don’t dislike Jackson as much as some do, but I wouldn’t give him four years. If he can be had for 3 years at 10-12 million a year, sure go for it. The odds of that happening? Not likely.

Choice four is the stopgap option of Roy Oswalt or Hiroki Kuroda. This is what I want, but it appears that the Yankees don’t want this. I think that says more about the medicals of Oswalt and Kuroda than it does about anything else. Davidoff has a Kuroda signing as more likely than an Oswalt signing, but given what we’ve heard over the last month or so, I’m not holding my breath on either one.

Number five? One word: BARTOLO. Davidoff suggests bringing back Bartolo Colon for another go ’round. MJR covered that here. I would like to see this, even if Colon is just a swingman at the beginning of the year, ready to swoop in if someone sucks or when someone gets hurt. Davidoff, however, doesn’t think it’s a good idea to bring Colon back. I’ll disagree with him there, especially if Colon takes a deal similar to the one Davidoff suggested ($2M + incentives).

Lastly, he talks about trying to find another lottery ticket with guys like Jeff Francis, Rich Harden, or even Jamie Moyer. If you want to bring one of those guys in on a minor league deal, go ahead. I talked about these guys long ago and think the same thing now: Minor league deal? Awesome. Anything else? No.

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