They might both be blocked.
Can Yorke play 3B? I'm not giving up on Casas, but I cam imagine a world where he doesn't work out and Devers moves to 1B.
Nick Yorke
- Thread starter The Gray Eagle
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Can Yorke play 3B? I'm not giving up on Casas, but I cam imagine a world where he doesn't work out and Devers moves to 1B.
I was on the "trade Yorke" wagon earlier in the year, but I now think the bat is impressive enough that I want to see what he can do in Boston. Valdez can hit, too, but he's older, he's less of an on-base guy (less consistent at it, anyway), he's similarly defensively challenged, and a team with a better record of turning prospects into useful players already cast him aside. He's not bad or anything, but I don't think I'd trade away Yorke because of him.
As far as either being "blocked," I don't think there's much of a reason to be in a rush to resolve that situation when Mayer has only just arrived at AA and Story has missed significant time in both of his seasons in Boston so far.
Having too many young cost-controlled position players seems like a rich person problem I'm comfortable letting work itself out over the next couple years. It also lets you throw all your budget on the pitching problem rather than your top prospects + your $.
There is a much more likely scenario of Yorke playing first than Devers (who is a plus defender).
Yorke cannot play third. He is barely serviceable at second and LF/1B/DH is his most likely path.
Bat will have to carry. Luckily, it looks pretty special.
I'm willing to believe that Yorke doesn't have the arm for 3B. But Devers is a plus defender at 3B? Not sure the metrics nor the eye test agree with that one.
The most valuable commodity in MLB today is high-end, cost-controlled young talent. The most valuable attribute in a position player is the hit tool. Yorke is *potentially* the kind of prospect you move other players to create room for, and given the overall trend in the game and Bloom’s evident organizational approach, it seems unlikely that he will be traded before being given every opportunity to excel here.
If Yorke is potentially that kind of prospect (and I agree that he is, maybe), than he is also an extremely valuable trade chip to bring back an equally valuable starting pitcher that this team desperately needs. It's not some pie-in-the-sky fantasy to imagine Story and Mayer locked into the middle of the infield by next August. Where does Yorke play in that scenario?
Didn't mean to characterize it as pie in the sky. You certainly could be right. I'm just saying that it seems unlikely for the reasons I mentioned. It's also not a given that Yorke can stick at second. IF he pans out, his bat looks like it could play in left, and he could also be one of those positionally flexlble players, in his case maybe 2B/LF/1B(maybe once a week?) In any case, he seems at least a year away, which should give the Sox enough time to evaluate not just his progress but also Story's post surgery.
Yoshida seems to be working out in LF; I know he's had some issues defensively, but I'd be surprised if they decided to make him a full time DH.
I'm not saying it's impossible to find a role for Yorke, or that the problem can't take care of itself somehow. But given the other MI options on the roster, trading Yorke for staring pitching is something that has to be considered as a possible efficient use of resources. Someone mentioned Jeff Bagwell, which I suppose is in the universe of possible outcomes,. But so is Yoan Moncada, Casey Kelly, Frankie Rodriguez, Carl Pavano...
Where do you project him to play in 2025?
"Unloading" makes it sound like I'm proposing they just give him away, when of course I am talking about getting comparable value in return at a position that is more of an organizational need (pitching). Nobody knows the future. But if in 2026, if Yorke is still in AAA with plummeting trade value, the cries around here that they hold on to their prospects too long will be deafening.
Yeah, I don’t see what the issue is here. Either you clear a spot/path for him, you trade him to help another area, or you keep him around for depth. You eventually have to cash in some chips.
C’mon people, Devers isn’t moving off 3B for awhile, and especially not to move the guy with arm issues (and well below average throwing velocity the last time he even threw in a game) to his position, just so we can squeeze in a AA prospect who only looks to be below average at defensively at 2B.
Yorke’s OBP sits in the .360s at the moment, which would be impressive if it hadn’t been over .400 a month ago. The K rate has climbed to 25%. So what’s up with Yorke? Is he working on some stuff? Playing through an injury? Whatever it is, I’d like to see how he works through it before bringing him to Worcester - and I was on the “fast-track him!” train not so long ago!
The soxprospects guys keep talking about his in-zone miss rate being fairly high.
Mass Live had an article that mentioned Yorke. They expect him to start the season in AAA.
https://www.masslive.com/redsox/2023/10/will-red-sox-freak-of-an-athlete-prospect-make-debut-in-24-who-else.html
https://www.masslive.com/redsox/2023/10/will-red-sox-freak-of-an-athlete-prospect-make-debut-in-24-who-else.html
Of course if he's overmatched at AAA that value could quickly fall again. He didin't have a great last season.... it was good. He was still below average age which will be seen as good for his performance. But he's not far removed from an injury plagued season that plummeted his value after his great first season. I'm sure there's a lot of skeptical eyes on him that need more than last season to feel safe in assuming he's a good projectable ML quality 2B
I'm curious about people's thoughts on these players at this time:
Nick Yorke
Blaze Jordan
Chase Meidroth
I know we know nothing about the future but with Grissom at 2b, Story at SS, and Devers at 3b, with Mayer probably on the way up at some point this year, where do these guys fit in? Do any of them have a legit chance of being an impact player at the big league level?
Nick Yorke
Blaze Jordan
Chase Meidroth
I know we know nothing about the future but with Grissom at 2b, Story at SS, and Devers at 3b, with Mayer probably on the way up at some point this year, where do these guys fit in? Do any of them have a legit chance of being an impact player at the big league level?
Blaze and Nick look to be RHH bench corner bats in a role that the Sox have repeatedly tried Dalbec to take over while Meidroth is bench IF. Sogard is the same boat as Meidroth.
If they reach their ceilings, there is certainly room on the Red Sox as currently constituted for at least 2 of them.
As an entry point to this conversation, we have to be realistic about Grissom who is far from a proven commodity. If either Yorke or Meidroth is a better 2nd baseman than him, that's their spot, not Grissom's.
If Grissom is good enough to keep the spot, then a guy like Meidroth slides into a Pablo Reyes type role where he can back up 2B, 3B & SS in case of an emergency.
Yorke doesn't have the 3B flexibility, but they've had him start playing games in LF in Portland, so his role would probably look more like Refsnyder who can also be your back-up 2B.
& Blaze if he reaches his ceiling fills the '23 Justin Turner role as back up 1B, 3B & whose bat will play as a semi-regular DH.
If any of those players become too good for those roles that's a rich person's problem & you have an area of surplus to deal from.
But if you take your bench & replace Dalbec, Reyes/Valdez & Refsnyder with say 60 percentile outcome Blaze, Meidroth & Yorke, that's a much better bench. They just aren't quite ready for that, yet.
Yorke
Yorke is in a make or break year for him in terms of his future with Boston. He's repeating AA, which given his age isn't a disaster but the fact that the organization is giving him reps in Left Field in order to increase his versatility suggests that the team doesn't necessarily think of him as a regular position player at the moment.
The Sox Prospects most recent pod stated that he just doesn't look the same offensively as he did when he was breaking out during his first year in the system. Also, while he's worked very hard on defense, that's never going to be a big part of his game (in the infield anyway).
Overall, I think you have to wait out this year and hopes he regains that offensive upside. If he doesn't he's a pretty marginal prospect. A guy who might be at the end of a bench and that's it.
Blaze Jordan
Came into camp in significantly better shape. Has improved his defense a good bit. Could be a solid defender at 1b, still probably not a 3b.
Again, he's young... but given his defensive limitations he's going to have to hit a ton for him to be a significant piece moving forward. If you want to be an optimist: He's basically hit at every level while being age advanced but again, he really needs to max out the offense to be anything in the majors.
Meidroth
He's not an exciting set of tools, but he's probably the most likely of the 3 to have a lasting MLB career. Versatile, good bat to ball skills good approach. Not a starter but potentially a useful bench piece.
For the Sox, or generally? (I know it sounds weird, but you also have to consider Hamilton in the mix for 2B depth next year.)
My take on where they are now:
Jordan's a bat first guy who has stalled a bit crossing the AA line. His BB/K numbers are fine, but his recent BABIP is shocking low. He's still young (21), and so may be a decent ML RHH someday. There have been some recent stories about his active (mental) engagement, and his diet/exercise and the craft of hitting, so I think he's still quite in play as a hitting prospect.
Maybe a 2025/26 guy? Fielding is more the issue there, as he seems to be a 1B/DH type. So, if he hits, eventually fitting him on the 26 man would be a thing. But by then, maybe something will have changed. Time is on his side in several senses.
Meidroth is a fringe guy with a narrow but possible path. As a batter he's a low-power, good contact RHH. Excellent BB/K, with a high OBP due to taking walks. I think of him as a sort of mini-RH-Boggs. At 23, he's successfully and rapidly crossed the AA and AAA lines, but in a way modestly and without much fanfare. The question is - will he keep up his high OPB/low SLG numbers against AAA and MLB pitching? Or will the OBP fall, making him a .500-.600 OPS guy? Fielding is also mixed - he might play well at 2B, but a weak arm means he's an average 3B at best, or emergency SS.
If he were a notch better at defense, I'd think he's a candidate to replace Pablo Reyes, perhaps even this year. But he's not.
If his bat were a bit more certain, I'd think he'd be a candidate to displace an ice-cold Valdez in holding down 2B, pretty much right now.
But barring him taking a step forward, I don't see him as more than emergency replacement, and even there he's got a lot of competition at 2B among our various flawed candidates. I'd love to see him play his way more fully into the mix though.
Yorke's a bit of a bugbear around these parts. RHH, with a reasonably attainable upside of an average ML 2B. Which is not nothing. He's 22 on his second Portland tour. His main batting downside is his swing-and-miss - will his 25% K rate hold or balloon as he climbs? On defense, he's pretty much a dedicated 2B, but the Sox are playing him in LF a bit this year.
If Yorke were a year further along with roughly the same numbers, I think he'd be the presumptive 2B behind Grissom. Not as good a hitter as Valdez might be perhaps, but certainly a better defender. Adequate/average on both sides of the ball goes a long way. Given Valdez's cold start, I'd have called up this hypothetical Yorke some time ago.
He may end up short of a 2024 callup, and so be a threshold 2025 guy, and if Grissom is who we think he is, and stays on 2B, I'm not sure there's much room for Yorke in the immediate future.
That said, what we wouldn't give for a competent 2B at the moment? So I think he stays in the org for a bit.
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Generally worth noting that all these guys were impacted by a void 2020 year.
I'll bet the under on 20 WAR combined, or 10 WAR from any one of them. Happy to be proven wrong.
Neither has played a game this year due to injury & both are a few years away.
Yoeilin Cespedes is the most interesting guy on that timeline at the moment.
Romero is 20 now and, if healthy, will be starting A+ ball? Where he's had a total of 10 ABs so far.
You never want to say someone's done this early into their pro career, but recurring back injuries in an age 19 middle infielder is (IMO) just not a good sign. If it was TJ surgery or a freak broken bone or something, I'd shrug and say we'll see.
Do we have any clear reporting on what happened to him?
This might be a conversation worthy of its own thread, rather than being buried in the Nick Yorke thread.
Just a thought.
Just a thought.
I think the question about Yorke (and Blaze and Meidroth) is an important one because the ability to decide which of these guys are more valuable to other teams than to the Sox is going to be crucial. I think about the Vazquez trade which netted us two useful players in Valdez and Abreu, even thought neither of those guys were very highly-rated, if I recall correctly.
I also wonder if they are keeping this group of prospects together a little more by keeping Yorke in Portland at least until Grissom seems ready to join the MLB club.
Yorke, Anthony, Mayer at least seem really tight, and they had them with Teel and Blaze last year and over the winter a bit. I have also gotten impression Yorke is kind of the clubhouse leader of those guys, so it may be a nice thing for all of them to play together for a bit.
If Grissom goes up, Yorke is playing decent, and still doesn’t move up, then he’s really “repeating” the level.
My understanding is that he probably came back from the injury too soon rather than building up strength & had it recur. & he's healthy-ish now, but they want to take it slow & work him back slowly for the long-term.
I don't think anything has been particularly clear, though.
His line drive rates were really good last year so there is some reason for optimism, but he'll really need to get 100% & get out there every day.