Yankees Update

What's Actually On The Farm?
This one is going to be a look at the farm system, because the big league team just burnt down the bridge to the post-season yesterday with their 7-3 and today's 11-3 loss to the Red Sox. I mean, that's it. End of the dynasty thank you very much. So it's time to look at 2009.

Looking at the MiLB stats, it seems to me there is the shortage of position players is only going to get worse before it gets better.

I think it's another year of failure for Eric Duncan, which is really bad news, because he's essentially following the same trajectory as his 3B predecessor Drew Henson - always a bad sign in my books. Both were touted for their power, both never quite mastered the strike zone, both peaked early to go to the Arizona Fall League, and both have struggled afterwards. There's something wrong with the development in Yankees scouting and development when they've made the same mistake twice.

Juan Miranda on the other hand seems to be proving himself. If you discount Melky, Betemit, Broussard, Shelley Duncan and the retreads, the cupboard's actually bare for position players. Whoever the position players a re meant to be, they're not coming up in 2009.

The limiting factor to this problem is that between 2008 and 2009 there might not be a significan turnover of the roster. The Yankees are pretty committed at C, SS, 2B, 3B, and LF/DH. CF is in flux, but it seems hard to see how they'll go back to Melky after his disastrous season. Maybe it's Brett Gardner's job to lose. 1B and RF are up for grabs, but the Yankees seriously need to think about those spots going forwards. To make matters more complicated, their old players actually did all right. It was mostly the young players who failed to turn in the projected performances. It's going to make for an interesting off-season.

Steven Goldman Says...
The Yankees have been drafting nowhere near as well as the Red Sox. I can't reproduce his chart here, so you should go have look, but I can see his point of view.

It took until 2006 for the Yankees to have a better draft than the Red Sox, with a quicker turnaround on the best players. Until then, it wasn't draft position that did them in, but savviness. If the Red Sox are up at the moment and the Yankees down, that's why.

Beyond that, as the saying goes, the Yankees know that if they have any bullets left in their gun they'd better fire them. There's nothing deeper than that that needs to be said — they can keep the Wild Card race interesting, or they can end it. Stay tuned.

It's not even close. The Red Sox farm system has drafted better. That's not to say it's been more fruitful overall, but the Yankee drafts at this point in time are not looking good. After Gerit Cole didn't sign this year, you can almost count the 2008 draft as another lost year for the Yankees.

CJ Henry
2005 top pick by the Yankees, CJ Henry has signed up to go play basketball.

What makes Henry's decision particularly newsworthy is that he is the older brother of 6-6 small forward Xavier Henry, one of the top five players in the 2009 recruiting class.
C.J. Henry said Tuesday he is enrolling in classes at Memphis and will join the Tigers for the 2008-09 season. His contract states the Yankees will pay for his college, so he will be a walk-on for coach John Calipari at Memphis.

It will be Henry's first competitive basketball season in more than three years. He is 6-3 and was a successful high school player with big-time college ambitions before turning pro in baseball.

"It had to be a quick decision," Henry told Sporting News. "It came down to Memphis and Kansas, and I made the choice of Memphis because of the players they have there, and it'd be a great chance to win a national championship. Coach Calipari has a track record of putting players in the NBA."

Henry contacted Memphis and told the coaching staff he wanted to come. Calipari coached Carl Henry, C.J.'s father, when Carl played for Kansas in the mid-1980s.

Xavier Henry also will choose between Memphis and Kansas. A source close to the recruitment told Sporting News in July that Xavier is leaning toward choosing the Tigers.

"Before I even started thinking about which school," C.J. said, "I asked him what he thought about me going back and playing basketball. 'Would you be fine with it?' He said yes. 'What do you think about me going to Memphis?' He said, 'I don't care.' It's not going to affect his decision. I made the choice based on me, the best situation for me. And he's going to do the same."

He's a weird 'prospect', CJ Henry - he sure stretches the definition of the word. It's doubtful he even fits into the definition any more. The weird part is that he's going to come back and pay baseball for the Yankees next year. I sort of doubt it.

Of course in the intervening time since the 2005 draft, he was traded to the Phillies for Bobby Abreu; then cut, then picked up again by the Yankees earlier this year. If his sole function was to make the Bobby Abreu trade, then he has done more than enough for the Yankees, but it is weird that such a non-baseball type has lasted this long in the system. My guess is that he won't amount to much in basketball either, as we saw with Drew Henson and Football - so toegther with Eric Duncan, he underscores the failures of the Yankees to spot and develop the right kind of talent.