Evil Empire Yankees Blog

One of the common sentiments among Yankees fans since the end of the season has been the desire to sign Todd Frazier this offseason to keep him in pinstripes. Believe it or not, the two alternatives of this decision form a complex and difficult conundrum for the Yankees and actually could shape the entire offseason strategy for the front office. Time to elaborate. It starts with simple question. Do we want to bring Todd Frazier back? Or not? The answer actually has far reaching implications. This is possibly the most difficult question to answer of all. There are many pertinent considerations. Frazier is a bit of a hometown hero, dating back to the little league world series in 1998 when he was the star of his team. They won the Little League World Series that year. Fast forward 13 years and Frazier made his professional baseball debut with the Reds. He has had a solid career over seven years. He has hit .245/.321/.459/.779 with 175 homeruns. This past season he hit .213/.

As a relatively young, coordinated, athletic man who played baseball growing up and continues to play softball now, I have never felt unsafe at any baseball game, regardless of the netting. How often, however, do you see people sitting along the first and third baseline that are not lucky enough to feel so safe? It’s all too often. The recent events with the young girl who was hit in the head by a batted ball off the bat of Todd Frazier and was subsequently hospitalized called this to everyone’s attention. I don’t mean to speculate, but as an Emergency Medicine physician, I know that you don’t get hospitalized for over a week for a concussion, regardless of age. Unfortunately, something more happened to this girl, and I just hope and pray that it does not affect her in the long term. That would be a tragedy. Selfishly, putting up nets would do nothing for me personally. In fact, going to games would become slightly less enjoyable from those first and third baseline seats.

Several players in the Yankees' system are no longer eligible for the top 50 prospects list, but are still young enough to deserve mention in the discussion. These are the players who have already played in the major leagues in some capacity. They are still a huge indication of the success and health of the farm system, and here is where we will discuss that. When you combine this list with the top 50 prospects, it is staggering how much talent this farm system has produced. To take it a step further, when you consider some of the guys who are not on this list, but are products of the Yankees' farm system, it's even more staggering. Guys like Greg Bird, Gary Sanchez, Luis Severino, David Robertson, Tommy Kahnle, Austin Romine, Dellin Betances, and Tyler Austin have all made an impact at varying levels to the major league team. Here is a list of the guys who have had limited exposure to the majors still, or were rookies this year. 1. Aaron Judge – RF, 6-foot-7, 282-po