Alex Verdugo Just Isn't Enough

The New York Yankees used to be an organization solely dedicated to winning championships by any means necessary. The team is now owned by the sons of Steinbrenner—who have none of the same obsession with winning, resulting in cute little trades for guys like Alex Verdugo instead of Juan Soto or a real impact player.

BREAKING: The New York Yankees are acquiring outfielder Alex Verdugo in a trade with the Boston Red Sox for right-handeres Richard Fitts, Greg Weissert and Nicholas Judice, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 6, 2023

Shohei Ohtani and Cody Bellinger are free agents.

The San Diego Padres are openly shopping Juan Soto. And the New York Yankees have acquired Alex fucking Verdugo.

Ok.

What does Alex Verdugo bring to the Bronx?

The Yankees desperately needed a left-handed outfield to take advantage of the short porch.

It’s insane to have a ballpark built for left-handed batters to dominate while running out a lineup full of right-handers.

Just atrocious team-building.

Last season, the Yankees outfield was in shambles.

Jake Bauers, Billy McKinney, Willie Calhoun. Bums.

Verdugo is better than Oswaldo Cabrera.

Here’s what Alex Verdugo did in Boston last season:

142 games
13 homers
54 RBIs
81 runs
.264 batting average
.324 on-base percentage
.421 slugging
98 wRC+
100 OPS+

Cool. He is the definition of average.

Verdugo might be asked to play centerfield and he is not a great defender by any means.

Still, if he doesn’t play centerfield then that responsibility goes on Aaron Judge’s shoulders and the last thing that man needs is more opportunities to injure himself.

The Yankees finished 2 games above .500 last year and the solution was to get a guy Boston was desperately trying to rid themselves of.

Why did Boston want to trade Alex Verdugo away?

Last season, Verdugo and Alex Cora were on different pages.

Cora benched Verdugo in early August when Verdugo showed up late to a game.

He also wasn’t hustling to first base and essentially quit on the team.

Alex Verdugo a lefty who hits .238/.301/.314 against left-handed pitchers which means he can’t even play every day.

He’s also in the final year of his contract before entering an arbitration that’ll reward him with around $10 million salary which you cannot pay a guy who you can’t even play every single day.

What about the pitchers the Yankees gave up?

Shout out to Richard Fitts, Greg Weissert and Nicholas Judice but none of them are considered the Yankees top prospects and even if they were, would it matter?

This organization has proven they are incapable of developing prospects into stars.

Remember when Chance Adams was untradable and now he’s out of the Majors?

Deivi Garcia was supposed to be a future Ace and now he’s long gone and completely irrelevant

The New York Yankees have real infrastructure problems causing young prospects to fail to reach their potential.

Personally, it sucks not being able to root for my guy, Dick Fitts but ultimately, the best-case scenario for Fitts was being a decent middle reliever for a couple years before being traded to St. Louis or Texas at a random trade deadline and completely ruining their families lives by forcing them to move to a different time zone in the middle of the summer.

Okay, let’s pretend to be positive about this trade

Alex Verdugo seems like an asshole but the Yankees desperately need a guy who can give them a spark.

Last season, it felt like the team frequently gave up.

You could tell the vibes of the clubhouse by how lazily Giancarlo Stanton would swing through a strike-three fastball down the middle.

Sure, Verdugo would have to shave his face and leave his Paul Wall grills in his car’s glove compartment at his Yankee Stadium parking space before the games but he sounds like he hates Alex Cora as much as this team already does so expect an immediate boost in morale.

He also does most of his work against righties including hitting 12 of his 13 homers last season against righties so he might be able to get a few extra in this Yankee Stadium where the right field wall is 15 feet away from pulling lefties.

And although I typically hate corner outfielders who can’t hit for power, the Yankees should probably be focusing more on contact hitters anyway.

Alex Verdugo doesn’t strike out often.

Every Yankee wants to break Barry Bonds’s home run record AND Mark Reynolds’s strikeout record.

If the Yankees get Juan Soto, none of this article will even matter.

I’ll take the lefty with grills and gold chains over another Jake Bauers at-bat. Always.

Maybe he’ll get the aux in the locker room and finally throw on some HEAT back there to motivate these guys. Jim Jones is going to perform live in the clubhouse.

The Yankees aren’t going to the World Series next year thanks to Alex fucking Verdugo. But maybe they’ll be cool again.

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