With the trade deadline quickly approaching, it’s as important as ever for the Yankees to acquire good starting pitching.
Brian Cashman is one of the best GM’s in all of baseball. He has made countless trades that are highway robbery for the Yankees. He got the Yankees Gleyber Torres and still brought Chapman back. He got Luke Voit for a bag of chips, and he got us Aaron Hicks for John Ryan Murphy. I could go on forever with all the great Cashman trades, but there have been two big mistakes that he has made since 2017. He has missed on two trades that would have helped the rotation.
Here are the two huge trade misses Cashman has made in recent memory:
1. Not trading for Justin Verlander
The Astros acquired Justin Verlander minutes before the end of the wavier deadline on August 31, 2017. It was reported that the Yankees didn’t want to take on the rest of Verlander’s contract. Turns out that he was the single person that prevented us from making it to the fall classic that year.
Not only did Verlander end our season that year but he has been one of the leagues best pitchers since joining the Astros. In his time with Houston, Verlander is 34-14 with a 2.52 ERA. The Yankees missed out big time on Verlander and it continues to bite us each year as we still don’t have a dominant rotation.
2. Not trading for Gerrit Cole
On January 13, 2018, the Astros traded for Gerrit Cole to further boost their already strong rotation. The Yankees were heavily linked to Cole all that offseason but Cashman refused to meet the asking price of the Pirates. They were asking for Frazier, Andujar, and Chance Adams. Gerrit Cole has also been one of the AL-best pitchers since being traded.
In two seasons with Houston, Cole is 26-10 with a 2.94 ERA. Cole would have been the perfect guy to put atop the rotation with Luis Severino. Looking back at what the Pirates were asking for it may have been for the best for Cashman to trade those guys for Cole.