Yankees may be a third-place team, according to one scout who saw them in Anahiem. They need a starter and are looking at Ian Snell of the Pirates. Yanks could move Phil Hughes, plus prospects.

Beyond the obvious (duh any scout looking at the Yankees against the Angels thinks they’re bad), the thought of the Yankees purposely acquiring Ian Snell to fill the hole in the 2009 rotation frightens me.

(And before anyone freaks out the paragraph in question is saying the Yankees “could” move Phil Hughes for Halladay, not Snell.)

If you’re unfamiliar with Ian Snell, he was considered a good pitching prospect with the ceiling of a #3 starter. In 2003 Baseball America ranked him as the 10th best in the Pirates system (he was then known as Ian Oquendo if you’re looking it up), noting that he had a good fastball that “looked deceptively faster” and a very good curveball.

In 2005 Baseball America ranked him as Pittsburgh’s 4th best prospect saying

Snell has a lively fastball that sits around 93 mph and touches 95-96. He throws a sharp curveball with such late break that some opposing hitters and scouts call it a slider.

They then noted that his fastball doesn’t have much movement on it and that his changeup still needed work.

Starting in 2006, Snell found himself in Pittsburgh permanently where he put up the following lines:

Snell was recently was demoted to AAA by his own request, after getting into a bit of a tiff with Neil Huntington, so it seems that the maturity issues that were red flagged years ago haven’t really resolved themselves yet. Pirates fans and maybe even the management think that many of his problems are in his head (maturity issues again!) and sometimes a change of scenery does help. In his first AAA start he destroyed the opposing team, striking out 17 and has posted two solid starts this then. Don’t take this as a sign that he can come in and immediately be awesome, though, as people like Brett Tomko do extremely well in AAA and never carry it over to MLB.

There are concerns beyond what’s going on in Snell’s head as well: As he is a guy of small stature (5’11” and about 200 pounds) there has always been some concern his body wouldn’t be able to handle the workload of a starter. Plus, relying on two pitches is always bad juju if you’re a starter (there aren’t many guys out there like A.J. Burnett and Josh Beckett).

More importantly, beyond his 2008 elbow injury, he just hasn’t pitched that well. While he’s been getting a bit burned by the Pittsburgh defense, the difference between his FIP and ERA isn’t enough to tag him as a major rebound candidate to come in and bolster a struggling/underachieving rotation.

Snell is definitely worth a look by the Yankees if he comes cheap (think Eric Hinkse cheap) as a project or depth guy for this season and next, but if they are viewing him as a piece who can improve the rotation right away the team is going to be very disappointed.

The Yankees New York Yankees , for the second time inside a week, are on the verge of making an eye-popping offer to a free-agent pitcher and behaving like the days when The Boss threw money at free agents with both hands.

The Yankees, according to several industry insiders, spent yesterday preparing an offer – perhaps a five-year deal worth about $80 million – for Toronto righty A.J. Burnett. This would come after they offered Milwaukee lefty CC Sabathia a six-year contract worth between $140 million and $145 million.

And the word on the MLB street is the Yankees have the glue for both. Furthermore, baseball decision-makers believe the Yankees will eventually go after Dodger free-agent righty Derek Lowe.

FIVE YEARS FOR AJ BURNETT? AT 16 MILLION A YEAR? That is so unfathomably crazy I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe it’s real because that is just completely out there and insane. Especially if they’re also looking at Derek Lowe, who I really believe will not be very good in the AL East (remember his last stunt here).

I know “money is no concern” for the Yankees but obviously it is because they’ve said it is. Just bring back Andy Pettitte for a year and fill in that last spot with something, this is no good and it just SCREAMS of the craziness old King George would be taken over by that would inevitably fail horribly.

So yeah, I kind of don’t believe that the offer George King has reportedly heard from reported anonymous sources within the Yankees organization and baseball on the other hand I can’t shake the feeling that it might be true.

According to Impacto Deportivo, the Yankees have agreed to terms with LHP Damaso Marte on a three-year, $12 million contract.

There’s nothing about this in English language papers but I saw this on RotoWorld. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why Cashman would do this. Three years? I thought the Yankees learned their lesson after Farnsworth with these kind of deals. I don’t think he can stay healthy and really while I know he has a track record of being a quality pitcher he also has a track record of letting too many baserunners on for an “elite pitcher”. Is there some rule that the team has to have a relief pitcher everybody hates for an extended period of time??

Anyway, for the time being it’s a less than reputable source but I’d rather see news about Cashman trying to do things like pry Jeremy Hermida out of Florida’s hands while his value is down or get Andy locked up for next year than signing relief pitchers to extended contracts.

Dodgers have an interest in Robinson Cano and might be willing to deal Derek Lowe and outfielder Matt Kemp, but the Yankees aren’t inclined to part with the red-hot second baseman unless there is a front-of-the-rotation-type starter coming to The Bronx. Lowe, who has the stomach for big games and has AL East experience with the Red Sox, doesn’t fit that bill.

Kemp, 23, would be viewed as a replacement for Bobby Abreu in right field next year. Kemp is batting .287 (104-for-362) with 11 homers and 55 RBIs in 94 games this season. His biggest downside is striking out 107 times.

Matt Kemp is a very fine baseball player and he is going to become even better, but Robinson Cano has great offense at a premium position and has a great glove (a few mistakes don’t make him bad, folks). Cano has actually been somewhat decent all year, his April was just that awful. Here are his splits by month:

April - .151/.211/.236
May   - .295/.333/.432
June  - .287/.302/.416

I know you have to give up good stuff for good stuff, but I don’t want the Yankees to give up Cano and I know the Dodgers fans don’t want to give up Kemp. It’d probably be a trade of equal value but the Yankees don’t really have anyone of even half Cano’s ability to plug in at 2B.

Other Things Cashman Shouldn’t Do

Take on Jose Vidro along with Jarrod Washburn

The Mariners apparently aren’t satisfied with just dumping Jarrod Washburn and calling it a day. No, they also want to straddle the Yankees with Jose Vidro. Washburn is under contract for two more years, sucks, and could be kind of useful which is why I am okay with that. Jose Vidro just sucks and will not be useful in any way. He has no power and is gimpier than Hideki Matsui to the point where he absolutely cannot play in the field. If the Mariners want to dump Vidro they should just DFA him before they accidentally trigger his option for next year (or who knows maybe they’ve already done this, the number of plate appearances he needs for it to vest has been a closely guarded secret).

To put it briefly: Justin Christian is a better option off the bench than Vidro in a million ways. Salary dumps are for good players, not bad ones.

Give up anything of worth for a lefty reliever

A lefty reliever for the Yankees would be a luxury and really shouldn’t be as high on their list as it is. The bullpen has been good, Edwar is good against lefties. There is no room for one given that someone (probably LaTroy Hawkins) is going to get the boot once Brian Bruney is ready. Who are you going to toss into AAA for this mystical LHP on the 25 man? The asking price for Brian Fuentes is allegedly Ian Kennedy, even with Ian Kennedy’s diminished value that would be a bad trade for the Yankees.

Trade for a catcher

Yes, it sucks that Jorge Posada is not going to be behind the plate for the rest of the season. However, there really aren’t any better options out there right now. You can overpay for say, Jarrod Saltamacchia who is probably not a better option than Jose Molina or Chad Moeller at this stage in his development and then have nowhere for him to stick on the roster next year unless Posada moves to 1B permanently which he doesn’t seem ready to do yet.

Eric Milton was added to the Triple-A roster late Monday night and immediately placed on the disabled list. All of it was retroactive to Saturday.

There are now like a billion starting pitchers on the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre roster, including Russ Ohlendorf who they have got doing starting work until he gets into a groove and stops sucking. That means it’s very likely that the Sidney Ponson Experiment is at a close (it wasn’t a total failure, but it also wasn’t very pretty) and that someone from AAA will probably be joining the roster soon. The most likely candidates are:

• Kei Igawa – I don’t see how he could be better than Ponson, but I also don’t know if he could be worse. Actually, that’s a lie I know he could because I sat through all nine innings of this game and somehow didn’t throw myself off the tier at Yankee Stadium. I know he kills AAA hitters for the most part, but high fastballs don’t work in MLB.
• Jeff Karstens – Pitches about as ugly as he looks but the organization is in love with him. Also generally eats AAA hitters for lunch and is not so successful with MLB.
• Dan McCutchen – Probably the most interesting candidate, I haven’t seen him personally though. It seems like it would likely be a bad idea to rush him up to MLB instead of letting him spend some more time in AAA and having him join the team next year. Primarily a groundball pitcher but his gb:fb ratio hasn’t been that great in AAA which is not really a good sign.
• Ian Kennedy – Hey, remember him? Probably not coming back up to MLB this year (like Phil Hughes) as the organization has pretty much admitted he was rushed. But you never know because desperation makes people do strange things.
• Eric Milton – I don’t even know what to say except “Please, no”. I know his lifetime stats are slightly better than Ponson’s (average rather than below average!), but he is coming off TJ surgery and who knows if that will make him even worse than he was the last two years in Cincinnati.

I recognize that Milton is an emergency option and a flyer case very similar to Ponson, but at least watching Ponson pitch is special kind of comedy as opposed to just painful. I know the team expected Alan Horne to be ready, but I am starting to think the right move would have been to just trade him last year when his value was rather high. He’s 25 and oft-injured and I don’t think he is going to stick as a starter, but at the same time he has control issues that make him somewhat troubling as a reliever.

Beyond Matsui’s value as a player and any emotional attachment I have to him, Matsui also brings the Yankees a lot of coverage and money from Japan that I think it would be foolish to give up. Of course that is also the exact reason why the Giants (maybe) want him. Beyond that whole problem they have scoring runs, with the departure of Barry Bonds they are looking to put people in the seats.

In the end, though, I think Cashman is too smart to make this trade unless a player who is considerably better than Noah Lowry is involved (say that Matt Cain guy mentioned earlier).

The latest reports are that the Yankees have offered up Phil Hughes and Melky Cabrera and this is where my crazy comes in: I don’t want to see this happen! I am probably a few steps ahead of many other people who don’t want to trade Hughes because I admit I am crazy, and I will even tell you that the crazy really just comes from me be very attached to the idea of the Yankees having a very good “homegrown” starting pitcher (we haven’t had one of those since Andy Pettitte, the verdict is out on Chien-Ming Wang until we see how he does next year) and I think that person will be Phil Hughes.

Strangely, I am not attached to Joba Chamberlain this way. If he were included in the trade I would probably whine, but then get over the whole thing.

I am also convinced that if the Yankees trade Hughes for Santana, that Santana will be stabbed by a wandering homeless man or hit by a bus on his way to pitch his first game for the team. Anything involving ACE PITCHER acquisitions has completely backfired on the Yankees since 2002.