Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Joel Sherman and I Completely Agree: Demote Melky

I know I've been saying for, oh about two years now that the Yankees should trade Melky Cabrera because his value in a trade was higher than his major league projections. When I heard teh YES guys go apeshit over Damon on the bench and Christian in the field, immediately I thought to myself "they're avoiding the really big issue here." I'll let Joel take it from here:
The Yankees were held scorleess against the Twins to open a three-game series. It marked the 38th time that the Yanks scored two or fewer runs. That is the second most in the AL. This was the team that was supposed to lead the majors in scoring with 900-plus runs. Instead, they are on pace for 775 runs. They have big problems getting clutch hits and it might be that there is no remedy to unleash a breakout and save this Yankee season. But I think the Yanks should at least try and one way to do that would be to send Melky Cabrera to the minors. He simply is not having competitive at-bats. The YES announcers made a big deal that the AL's leading hitter, Johnny Damon, wasn't playing on Monday night, but Justin Christian was. Forget Christian.

Cabrera began the game with a .221 average against southpaws. However, whichever side Cabrera is hitting from, he hardly ever makes solid contact. He has three extra-base hits since the All-Star break, two RBIs and two walks. If I ran the Yanks, I would bring Brett Gardner back up and have a lefty-righty possibility in center with Christian. But I certainly would run the injury/defense risk by playing Johnny Damon more in center to get a better offensive lineup. And I would hope real soon that Hideki Matsui can play again, and you could have Matsui as the DH, Damon in left and Jason Giambi at first, and hope that jump starts the offense.

Last year, you could say the Yankees had no one else who could play center, but I'm with Sherman - Damon can handle this in the short term, or a platoon of Gardner/Christian with Damon in the mix. Melky is bringing absolutely nothing to the table right now. Look, the Braves demoted Jeff Francoeur earlier this season to try and get him back on track, and Franceour had a much better major league track record than Cabrera. To me, Melky has always projected to be a 4th outfielder. People send me messages and posted comments earlier thsi season when Cabrera led the team with 8 homers to me saying essentially, "See? You were wrong about Melky. He's the next Bernie Williams!"

Melky is not the next Bernie Williams. He's the next Gerald Williams, and that's not even close to good enough to be playing everyday for this team.

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posted by Mr. Faded Glory @ 12:07 PM   0 comments







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