Yankees Prospect Links: 3-7-14

There have been several articles on or about Yankee prospects the last couple days and some of them are linked below.

** In the first link, Fangraphs looks at the prospect status of Taylor Dugas. Dugas is an interesting prospect who I have written on before. I always liked Dugas's hitting ability, as he really has done well throughout his career. Dugas is a pesky hitter, who grinds out at-bats and really makes a pitcher work. You can think of him as a slower Brett Gardner. He may not have Brett's speed but he doesn't strikeout nearly as much. Anyway, the article is linked below, it contains some videos of his at-bats and features great analysis.

http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/taylor-dugas-on-base-machine/

** The second link is a part of Baseball America's 2013 intentional review series.  In this part of the series Ben Badler reviews some of the teams 2013 international free agent (IFA) signings. Badler notes that the team spent most of their money on one player--Leonardo Molina-- but that one player may have the best raw tools from the 2013-2014 IFA class.

He also wrote about Yonauris Rodriguez, who was the Yankees second biggest signing. Rodriguez was essentially described as a glove first shortstop who can hit line-drives. The only other signing Badler mention from the 2013-2014 class was Orby Taveras. Taveras is a very recent signing; he signed for 50,000 in October.. Based off of Badler's writeup, he sound like an intriguing pitcher. The 19 year old righty throws a 90 MPH fastball. His secondary pitch is a changeup, and he also throws a slider/cutter. 

Badler also mentioned two players from the previous year IFA class that might not have been signed by the time he wrote last years review. These two players are Frank Frias and Jhon Morban. Both of these players played in the DSL last season, and did pretty well.
 
Here is the link for the entire article: http://www.baseballamerica.com/international/international-reviews-new-york-yankees/

** Brian Hoch, from MLB.com, had a little info on Yangervis Solarte. It was a short interview that really painted Solarte as a player desperate to finally make it to the majors. One interesting note from the article was that the Rangers apparently promised to promote him to the majors last season but didn't. This is interesting after hearing what Ian Kinsler recently said about his former team, but this type of thing probably happens a lot.

http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20140304&content_id=68703342&notebook_id=68704008&vkey=notebook_nyy&c_id=nyy

** Lastly, Chad Jennings reports that Tyler Austin is feeling a lot better. Hopefully his wrist is fine but I'm scarred that he will eventually need surgery. After all he has been struggling with this wrist injury for almost a year now.

https://twitter.com/LoHudYankees/status/440977835159609345

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Josh Sabo is minor league writer for Yanks Beat Blog

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Warming up: Cashman, Yankees links, and Spring Training, baby!

For starters: More than four months after Curtis Granderson recorded the final out in Houston to end the Yankees' 2013 season, the Bombers are back on the field, doing baseball activities as a team for the first time in 2014. The new baseball season is upon us!

And with that comes a boatload of questions that need to be answered. We've asked a lot of them over the past couple of weeks here on the blog, but won't get answers for most of them until the spring is over.

This next question fall into the pile of ones that we won't know until the next offseason: is Brian Cashman in his final season as Yankees General Manager?

Entering the final year of his contract, my gut feeling is no, this won't be his last season, but a lot can between now and the next six or seven months.

Regardless of what many raging Yankees fans think, Cashman has been one of the better GM's in the game for more than a decade. He's always helped make sure that the Yankees are putting the best product on the field -- it's not his fault that he couldn't spend money last winter -- and for the most part, he's done a good job of doing that.

This offseason in particular, with the go-ahead from Hal Steinbrenner, he committed almost $500 million to Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury, Carlos Beltran and Masahiro Tanaka.

This kind of spending spree is exactly what Yankees fans wanted, but if it doesn't work out, and those players turn out to be flops, then Cashman will be the man they blame. Unrightfully so, but it'll do down that way, regardless.

But Hal is not the kind of guy to point the finger and play the blame-game. He's not his father, rather to fire someone without hesitation.

It would take an absolutely terrible season from the Yankees to keep him from coming back. As long as the Yankees are able to get back to the playoffs after missing for the second time in two decades, the Hal won't have any trouble bringing Cashman back.

If he even wants to come back.....

Yankees links worth sharing:

* ESPNNewYork.com's Wallace Matthews wrote a post about Jeter being able to take a nice victory lap around the league in 2014 -- one that he truly deserves.

* Alex Rodriguez really wanted to be a member of the Boston Red Sox, and he almost was until the Players' Union stopped a trade from the Texas Rangers from ever happening, leaving to him eventually being traded to the Yankees. This ESPN 30for30 documents those events in the 2003-2004 offseason.

* A lot like the questions that have been asked by my this spring, including the one above, Matthews came up with 12 burning questions for the Yankees that need to be answered at some point.

* Another from ESPN New York: Ian O'Connor writes that making Tanaka out to be a "solid, consistent No. 3 starter" is not what the Yankees should be doing. They need him to be an ace, and very soon.

* Tanaka won't be the only Japanese star coming to spring training with the Yankees this year, as Hideki Matsui has accepted an invitation to be a guest instructor, reports the NY Post. That'll be a fun time.

Today's warmup song: "Enter Sandman" by Metallica. Just for old times sake, you know. I wanted to go with something else, but it just had to be done.

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Gavin Ewbank is the Lead Writer of Yanks Beat Blog, and you can follow him on Twitter (below).

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