2:06pm: The Yankees announced the claim of Abreu, adding that righty David McKay was designated for assignment to open a spot on the roster.
1:45pm: The Yankees have brought righty Albert Abreu back to the organization, claiming him off waivers from the Royals on Tuesday, Robert Murray of FanSided reports (via Twitter). They’ll need to make a corresponding 40-man move to accommodate Abreu, who was designated for assignment by Kansas City last week.
It’s been just over two months since the Yankees traded Abreu to the Rangers in the deal that brought catcher Jose Trevino to the Bronx. The swap has paid huge dividends for the Yanks, as Trevino has surprised with a .278/.336/.454 batting line through his first 119 plate appearances. He’s also provided excellent defense, as he was previously known for, and generally filled a major void for a Yankees team that otherwise did little to address its catching situation over the winter. New York picked up light-hitting Ben Rortvedt in the trade that sent Gary Sanchez and Gio Urshela to Minnesota, but he’s been sidelined all season due to injury.
Abreu’s time with the Rangers, meanwhile, proved to be brief. Although he posted a 3.12 ERA in his 8 2/3 innings with Texas, he also issued a staggering 12 walks and plunked a batter. The Rangers understandably weren’t enthused with that alarming lack of command and wound up designating Abreu for assignment and trading him to the Royals. He pitched just 4 1/3 innings for Kansas City and wound up with another four walks and a hit batter before being designated for assignment.
Abreu, 26, has long drawn positive scouting grades for a plus fastball and a pair of above-average secondary offerings (changeup, slider). Command has always been his Achilles heel, however, as evidenced by his perennially lofty walk rates in the minors. He’s out of minor league options, so the Yankees will tuck him back into the big league relief corps for now in hopes of again working with him to harness his command of the strike zone.
As for the 27-year-old McKay, he pitched in just two games with the Yankees, hurling two scoreless innings in the process. Like Abreu, he’s been far too prone to issuing walks at the MLB level, however; in 28 2/3 innings between the Mariners, Tigers and Yankees, McKay has walked 20 of the 127 batters he’s faced (15.7%). McKay has whiffed 34.4% of his career opponents in Triple-A, which surely intrigues some clubs, but his command issues have prevented him from finding any sustained MLB success. The Yankees will have a week to trade him release him or attempt to pass him through outright waivers.
Damn
Cashgod
They’ll fake COVID somebody and then dump him after one game.
I’m sure it will work this time?
You say goodbye, and I say hello… hello, hello… don’t know why you say goodbye when I say hello.
Hey Mr. Abreu welcome back! I’m your biggest fan!
He strikes out his fair share of guys, but he walks a ton and gives up a lot of long balls (smallish sample). Don’t be fooled by his ERA. FIP doesn’t think much of his work.
Career ERA of 5.12. and FIP of 6.83 in 51 IP.. He’s overachieving! Here’s to hoping the Yankees can fix him.
I don’t expect much from Abreu, if he even sees time with the big league roster, but seeing him and Trevino both doing well with the Yankees would give me a very good laugh.
Not sure how long he’ll last with Chapman and Loaisiga due to return in the coming weeks. I suspect they’ll try and pass him through waivers, perhaps immediately and see if he’ll accept a minor league assignment. If he made it to the Yankees, that means every other team passed on him.
Gotta be either ManBan released or Marinaccio sent down.
Britton… yeah, that guy…. is also on the mend and has been throwing bullpen sessions.
Love Zach. Was huge for us in Baltimore. Hope he makes it all the way back. Older now (34). Hmm. Will see and hopefully this year! By the way, we still have Tate (28) from that deal. Man, he’s having a breakout year. Era below 2.00 and doing it in late inning situations. He’s a hard worker. Spends time off season with high tech mechanics gurus. The result: fastball velocity is up close to 96 often instead of the 92 – 94 when we got him.
So one pitcher with command issues. For another pitcher with command issues
Im curious if someone decides not to shave their beard is there any true repercussions. I know the yankees wont play them but can they take away any salary or hurt their service time other than dfa/release them?
Lets say they trade for Bryce Harper and he says no im keeping my beard what rule has he broken? Would the yankees keep a 300+ million player on the bench for some facial hair?
I think it’s generally conceded that if any Yankee with a guaranteed contract refused to comply with the military school grooming mandate, the Yankees wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on
bit.ly/3ya8YlK
There are fines they can impose for violating team rules. It happened with Mattingly if I recall correctly (I was about 3, or whatever, so my recollection is from stories about the incident).
They cannot withhold salaries, however. Nobody wants to pay for a beard though because, well, that’s silly.
Teams are allowed to establish their own dress and facial hair codes as part of the CBA. If players refuse to follow the team’s code, they certainly can suspend them without pay.
I believe it’s the Yankees’ policy to fine & sit, not suspend, unless it’s progressive. I may be wrong on that now, however.
The CBA doesn’t supersede New York State labor laws.
It’s probably inevitable that the Yankees eventually get sued by a player and it’ll be interesting to see what repercussions it will have to this player’s career. Hope they drop the policy before it happens.
Fink, I read it, brother, and it’s speaking about two separate issues: racial hair policies, which NYS law protects against due to its discriminatory nature, & religious hair policy, which the Yankees have a specific exception in favor of.
The author attempts to tether policy references of beards & long hair to dreads, and therefore to African Americans. They conveniently minimize and later acknowledge that since the policy is non-racial and non-religious in its exemptions (it applies to everyone equally, with the exception of those who have a religious claim), it may very well be enforceable.
I believe, based on the manner in which their policy is written, it is enforceable unless they attempt to counter a religious exemption claim or specifically identify “dreadlocks” or some such racially-biased language.
Think of law enforcement as an analogous example. They can & do force officers to shave and keep hair a specific length in many departments in NYS and elsewhere. Unless, of course, there’s a religious exemption.
If a non-white player had dreadlocks and refused to cut his hair, New York law would be on his side.
YBC: I don’t care if they drop their policy, honestly. I’m personally more old-school with grooming as I was raised in a military household; BUT, to not allow the Thurman Munson/Goose Gossage-style mustaches is a sin! Those ‘staches define Yankee greatness.
I also wouldn’t mind if they were a bit more lax on the length of hair, like Mattingly used to have before he was benched (collar-length). Not like femme fatale, Bo Bichette though…lol. That’s just embarrassing.
Thurman deserves to be in the HOF, BTW, just sayin’.
It’s about baseball, drop the race card.
@Fink Ployed
That’s just incorrect sir. As referenced above by another poster there are jobs that do have grooming policies. I work in law enforcement, and in New York State, and my department does not allow facial hair or “long hair”, which they quantify as anything past an arbitrary number like 2 inches. I’m allowed to have a beard as an investigator and one of our road deputies challenged the policy last year because of that. He was soundly defeated by the department because it’s a non-discriminatory policy and he had no religious or otherwise protected grounds
I think that any employer in America can have a standard for dress code. In fact, I think the only way they would get in trouble is if they allowed Harper to have a beard but not Josh Donaldson. So long as it is applied evenly, it should be good! JP
Albert, welcome back and meet Matt Blake
“Matt, so you think you can fix him?”
“Pffft, can I fix him…ha! Did the Astros cheat to win a World Series?”
Would McKay have blown an 8-3 lead?
It’s moves like this that makes me remain skeptical of this team. Cashman traded McCann to the Astros for Abreu and he became one of Cashman’s favorites. Despite frequent injuries and mediocre performances throughout Abreu’s minor league career, Cashman stubbornly stuck with him including keeping him over Whitlock in the Rule V draft. When it was obvious that Abreu wasn’t going to bear fruit, Cashman makes brilliant trade to get Trevino.
Now, like a bad penny, Abreu’s back. Looking at their current roster and their minor league system, do the Yankees really needed to bring Abreu back? Ah stubbornness, you are the worst form of stupidity.
He netted a free Trevino.
Really? That never occurred to me.
On another note, I wanted to like Cameron Maybin as an announcer, but I can’t do it.
Still better than Flaherty.
Cameron seems a nice guy, and Flash was my least-favorite before him — but Cam’s incessant repetition of cliches is too much for me. If he’d just stop talking for longer stretches, he might be more tolerable.
Not a Cam fan, uh? I tend to prefer the Kay/Coney/Pauly trio, or some combination thereof myself. But, we are pretty spoiled with those guys too…
Flaherty can be painful to listen to at times..lol. It’s like it’s sooo much effort for a simple sentence. Kind of reminds me of the DMV sloth in the kids movie, Zootopia. Hey, come to think of it, his name was Flash too!
Any combo of Kay, Cone and Paul is the best — in the absence of Ken Singleton, who was great. Ruocco isn’t bad either. He teams well with Paul.
Obviously, this is just an expression of my personal taste. There’s no objective good, better or best.
Yeah, man, Ken Singleton… he was just awesome to listen to. I was so sad to hear him retire, then super excited when he came back, then crushed when he left again. What an emotional roller coaster he sent me on!
Ken is the best in a long, long time though, imo. I never heard Vin with any consistency, but he was a legend – out of the contemporary announcers though, I don’t know of any I liked more than Ken.
Absolutely agree that Singleton was outstanding.
I also really enjoyed when Bobby Murcer was part of the broadcast team. At this point Kay Nd ONeill are the best pairing.
Agreed @Clip. I know Zootopia all too well…. Flash! Our worst is still better than many other teams’ best.
Was one of the funniest moments in a kid’s movie I had seen. Perhaps it was from all the first-hand accounts of going to the DMV….
I think Maybin will get better. Beltran sucks though.
Yeah, I’ve tried to be objective with Beltran, despite my personal feelings about his cheating. But, I agree, Cam is semi-entertaining and provides some good context, whereas Beltran is just…..ooof.
Love hearing Pauly though. He and Kay make a great team.
Totally agree. I miss Ken Singleton a lot. Beltran and Maybin are both really bad, and I tried to like them.
But they still employ Susan Waldman so…
The circle of life is complete!
Thank the Good Lord we didn’t actually bring Simba here though…. Whew, that would’ve been tough to watch, huh?
Love being a Yankees fan…. Gehrig had it right, man. Dude was a visionary and set the expectations for the Yankees culture, a culture in place 100 years later.
Royals gave up a minor-league reliever for 2 weeks of Abreu. He will go to NYY and do well I’m sure.