New York Yankees Smart To Send Gary Sanchez To Minors To Start 2016

After enjoying a breakout season in 2015, there were plenty of reasons to believe Gary Sanchez would open 2016 as the backup catcher for the New York Yankees. The Yankees traded John Ryan Murphy and Sanchez’s only real competition was Austin Romine. However, Sanchez was optioned to Triple-A yesterday and the Yankees made the right move, for now.

There were a couple of hurdles Sanchez would have had to overcome. First, the Yankees can delay his free agency by an entire year if they keep him in the minors for 35 days. While the Yankees don’t really need to save money by delaying a player’s free agency, it does give them another year to really see what they have in Sanchez who is arguably the best catching prospect in baseball.

Sanchez didn’t help his case this spring. In 21 at-bats with the Yankees in spring training he had just one hit for a .048 average. He only struck out twice, but you could clearly see he was pressing at times. After making his MLB debut last season and seeing a big league job right in front of him, he probably put too much pressure on himself and was just missing some pitches.

When it came to the backup catcher competition, Romine had a bit of an advantage. He was out of options and would have to be outrighted off of the 40-man roster since he can’t be sent down to the minors. Since that already happened to him after spring training last year, he can elect free agency if he clears waivers instead of going to Triple-A. He would almost surely do that, because catchers who are solid defensively and have shown some competence with the bat are hard to come by. Some team would give Romine a backup job. Plus, he had a solid spring, posting a .273 average along with four doubles in 22 at-bats.

The Yankees have done something like this in the past with Francisco Cervelli and Chris Stewart. In 2012, they chose to keep Stewart as the backup to Russell Martin because he was out of options and Cervelli, despite being the better player, was sent down to Triple-A. Catching depth isn’t easy to come by, and sometimes you have to go to drastic measures to keep viable candidates around.

Sending Sanchez down to Triple-A is a wise move right now. He is still just 23 and has some rough edges to his game that can be smoothed out, especially on defense. His time will come, and he could force the Yankees’ hand sometime in the middle of the year and get his shot. For now, it is smart to keep him in the minors where he can get more work both at and behind the plate.