However, they’re in a tricky situation because they don’t want to raid their farm system and strip the outlook for the future. Trading for Sonny Gray and the White Sox haul already put a dent there. Free agency doesn’t necessarily work, either, because the Yankees are supposedly trying to get under the $197 million luxury tax for next season, especially so they can go hog-wild during the crazy 2018-19 offseason while resetting the luxury tax progressive penalties.

The Yankees have a unique solution sitting right in front of them, however — their surplus of relief talent. They currently have six names — Aroldis Chapman, Dellin Betances, David Robertson, Tommy Kahnle, Chad Green, and Adam Warren — that would profile as an upgrade over one of many teams’ top two relievers.

Trading one of the relievers from that list that comes with cheap team control is ideal for two reasons:

1) As the famous front office adage goes, always be trading relievers. Relievers are so volatile that you shouldn’t count on them being viable MLB players even two years from now. Having a controllable young reliever for four more seasons, for example, doesn’t equate in relative value to a young position player with four more seasons of team control. Because a reliever’s value is so unpredictable, it almost always makes sense to trade him at what you perceive to be peak value.

2) It will help bring back young assets that can be packaged for, say, an upgrade in the Yankees’ starting rotation. This seems to be the only avenue that will minimize depletion of the farm system while also not signing a free agent starting pitcher to a nine-figure contract.

Now, why exactly would the Yankees want to do this? Wouldn’t it just be a lateral move by trading from a position of strength to address a position of weakness?

Well, actually…no, not really. In the playoffs, the value of teams’ best relievers exponentially increases, while the front end of the bullpen becomes significantly less valuable. To illustrate the point, take a look at the Dodgers from this postseason, who had a clear-cut relief ace (Kenley Jansen) and a clear-cut second-in-command (Brandon Morrow). During the regular season, Jansen pitched the whole year without injury and recorded 68.1 innings while appearing in 65 of the Dodgers’ 162 games (40.1 percent of Dodgers’ total games). During the postseason, Jansen appeared in 13 of the Dodgers’ 15 games (86.7 percent, 16.2 innings). When the games mattered the most, Jansen’s value was at its highest. To extrapolate that regular season value, Jansen would have to appear in 140 regular season games (LOL), throwing 180 innings.

Morrow appeared in an even more ridiculous 14 games (93.3 percent, 13.2 innings). If you’re curious about that regular season extrapolation, it’s 151 appearances and 147.2 innings pitched.

The point is that, with the extra days of rest and the importance of playoff games, the highest-leverage relievers tend to throw a ton. A common formula is “starting pitcher for six innings, two relief aces combine for the last three”. That leaves less room for innings for the less-talented relievers, who pitch in low-leverage situations, often blowouts, when they do come in during the playoffs.

So as deep and historically talented as the current Yankees’ relief corps may be, it’s unnecessary. Every additional talented reliever helps, but the marginal value of each is diminishing.

On the other end of the deal, there are countless teams (read: all of them) that could use an extra lockdown reliever. Even for those willing to overpay and dip their toes into the free agent pool, there aren’t a ton of appealing options like there were last offseason. Outside of Wade Davis, and there’s only one Wade Davis to go around, teams will either have to bank on a short track record of dominance (ex. Anthony Swarzak), injury concerns (Greg Holland), or both (Brandon Morrow).

That’s where the Yankees come in.

Photo Credit: Brad Penner / USA TODAY Sports

But he’s apparently compounding poor decisions on each other in this series by electing to start CC Sabathia over Sonny Gray in the do-or-die Game 5. Forget the fact that the Yankees dealt away three prized prospects to acquire Gray in July, because that isn’t part of the calculus here. But there are real, tangible reasons why Gray should be the clear choice.

In fact, Gray is so obviously the better choice that it makes more sense for me to come up with possible reasons why Girardi would even consider choosing Sabathia.

#1 – Sabathia has more playoff experience.

This was the actual reason that Girardi stated to the media when he announced Sabathia as the Game 5 starter. I’m hoping, though, that this was just something that managers say to the media, and Girardi didn’t actually base the fate of the entire season on a silly narrative like this. Ample studies have been done on how “clutch” and “choking” aren’t legitimate phenomena. Good players are usually good and bad players aren’t. When it comes to high-leverage playoff situations, the sample sizes get extremely small, and some results tend to become outliers in these small samples. Sabathia has also had playoff success in the past because he used to be an excellent pitcher.

However, let’s not forget that Gray was excellent in his only taste of playoff baseball with the A’s back in 2013. Besides, even if he were terrible in that series, it would still be a poor reason to decide the Game 5 starter.

#2 – Sabathia is a better pitcher.

Being better at pitching would be, you know, a good reason why a manager would start Pitcher A over Pitcher B. Unfortunately, Sabathia is not in fact better than Gray at the current stages in their respective careers. Girardi might have looked at Sabathia’s 3.69 ERA and noticed that it was lower than Gray’s, which was 3.72 with the Yankees. But of course, ERA never tells the whole story. Gray generates more strikeouts, induces more grounders, allows fewer gopherballs, all while walking a similar number of batters. Sabathia had a 106 cFIP and 4.52 DRA in 2017. Gray’s was 88 and 3.27 on the season, and his numbers were even better (84 cFIP, 2.95 DRA) with the Yankees.

Gray is something like a top-30 starter in the Majors, while Sabathia is probably something representing league average.

#3 – You can use Gray in a multitude of ways out of the bullpen.

This is true, but it doesn’t matter if Sabathia buries the Yankees before it ever gets to the bullpen. Also, the Yankees have an excellent bullpen, one that may not need even need the likes of Sonny Gray. With the off day on Tuesday, the bullpen will be more than rested. Game 5 is do-or-die, which means that every out matters, and every batter that Sabathia faces is a batter that the superior Gray does not.

#4 – Girardi would rather go with a lefty against the Indians’ lineup.

This is probably the only defensible argument here. Other than Aroldis Chapman, and Sabathia himself, the Indians have pretty much seen all righties in this series, including the starting pitchers.

Also, consider the lineup — all of Cleveland’s best hitters are either left-handed (Jason Kipnis, Michael Brantley, Jay Bruce) or hit from both sides of the plate (Jose Ramirez, Francisco Lindor, Carlos Santana). Either way, a southpaw on the mound would present them with a different angle. The one big right-handed bat with the Indians, Edwin Encarnacion, is dealing with a sprained ankle.

However, unexpectedly enough, the Indians actually hit better against lefties (.794 OPS) in the regular season than versus righties (.785). The difference isn’t much, but it’s surprising that the number versus lefties is higher even to begin with. Also, the latest reports as of this writing are that Encarnacion is expected to return to the lineup for Game 5.

In a one-game simulation where you get to see the results of how either starter would do, it’s easily possible that Sabathia outperforms Gray. But it’s similar to playing a hand of Texas Hold ‘Em. There are scenarios in which a 3 and 10 off-suit beat pocket kings. But the best play is to go into the hand with the best odds possible. And unlike poker, you don’t have to play the hand that you’re dealt. Albeit with limited options, you can choose your hand, and Girardi is taking the 3/10 off-suit over the pocket kings. That’s just asking for trouble.

Photo Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

It seems like the rumor mill had been predicting Sonny Gray to the Yankees for days leading up to the deadline, but as time went on, the question became — well, then why hasn’t it happened yet?

And the answer probably boiled down to the fact that the A’s had surprisingly little leverage in negotiations. You would think that the team with the pitcher with three playoffs worth of team control would be in the driver’s seat, but that just wasn’t the case. In fact, it was reported that the Dodgers and A’s “talked” about Gray just so that it could be reported, and so that each team could maintain some sort of leverage with the teams they actually wanted to deal with.

There is a reason why these teams were so locked in with each other — the fit was something close to perfect. The A’s are in the midst of a deep rebuild, and their path to contention isn’t immediately apparent in the next couple of seasons. So not only are MLB assets not as important to them, but those assets are arguably less desirable than minor league ones. Why would the A’s want players that are eating away at their service time and team control while the A’s aren’t contending? This also means that they’re willing to take on injured players and wait. An injured prospect, to most teams, would mean a depreciated asset that can’t play for the foreseeable future and comes with additional risk that they don’t return to their former levels. An injured prospect to a team like the A’s means a bargain opportunity.

Now let’s look at it from the Yankees’ side. They didn’t want to move Gleyber Torres or Clint Frazier, and for good reason. Prospect rankings will fluctuate, depending on the source, but the consensus next tier included pitchers Chance Adams, James Kaprielian, Justus Sheffield, Domingo Acevedo, and position players Dustin Fowler, Estevan Florial, Jorge Mateo, and Miguel Andujar. If the Yankees were intent on keeping Gleyber Torres, Clint Frazier, and all of their pieces from their MLB roster, then it was probably going to take three to four of the guys from this tier to acquire a controllable top-25 starting pitcher.

Brian Cashman has repeatedly stated that he thought the position player side of the core was much more set for the future than the pitching side, and he did not want to deal any of his healthy pitching prospects that were close to the majors and ready to contribute in the next year or so. That would cross out Adams, Sheffield, and Acevedo from the list. Now you’re looking at a trade chip cupboard of Kaprielian, Fowler, Florial, Mateo, and Andujar. The issue here is that Kaprielian and Fowler are both done for the season with respective injuries. This would be akin to having three $100 bills to spend, and two chunks of Bitcoin worth about $100 each. Because Bitcoin stock is so volatile, each chunk could easily be worth way less or way more than one of those Benjamin’s in the very near future, but there are some establishments that don’t even accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. Suddenly, the Yankees came across an establishment that not only accepted Bitcoin payment but it actually preferred Bitcoin payment because it could get them for less than $100 a piece.

Dealing with the A’s allowed the Yankees to keep Torres, Frazier, Florial (whom they are reportedly very high on), and all of their healthy pitching prospects. At full strength, the haul of Kaprielian, Fowler, and Mateo is arguably an overpay for Gray, especially if Kaprielian is showing the stuff he had post-draft and pre-injury. And a healthy Fowler can remind you of Charlie Blackmon if you catch Fowler on a good day. But it appeared the Yankees were never that high on Mateo, and they essentially traded three players that they didn’t necessarily want for a player that they absolutely did. That’s an extremely simplified synopsis of the trade from the Yankees’ perspective, but it means that it was a win.

As for Gray, the pitcher, he’s undoubtedly a boon to the current staff, and arguably steps in as the immediate ace of the team. Since his debut in 2013, among starting pitchers with as many innings as him, Gray ranks 18th in baseball with a 3.44 ERA and 20th with a 3.58 FIP. So he’s not a top-10 pitcher, but he’s certainly top-30, and maybe a bit more. That’s what he’s been so far in his career — what about looking forward?

Well, there’s both good and bad news. Which do you want to hear first? Bad? OK, if you say so. First of all, he comes with injury concerns. He’s been injured in each of the last two seasons. Yes, I hear you yelling from the back; he was durable in the two seasons before that, and every pitcher is an injury concern by definition anyway. But it goes further than that — Gray is a smallish, breaking-ball reliant righty that drops-and-drives with a high elbow. Smallish? Not necessarily bad on its own. Breaking-ball reliant? Not necessarily bad on its own. High elbow with an inverted W? Bad, bad, bad, even on its own.

Aside from the injury specter, there are also concerns surrounding performance. ERA estimators have him around the mid-3’s over his career, but that takes into account a context-neutral environment, not the deathly throes of Yankee Stadium and the rest of the AL East. He was also certifiably terrible last season and comes with a career K/9 below 8. His 7.75 career K/9 isn’t bad, but it’s far from ace-like. He also doesn’t limit walks, either, having never posted a BB/9 below 2.5. All told, he ranks 88th among qualified starting pitchers in K/BB ratio since his debut.

With that being said, he mitigates this by limiting weak contact and being extremely efficient. His career groundball rate is 54.4 percent, and he’s in the top 10 in that category basically every year. That also means he limits the long ball, which is extremely important when moving to Yankee Stadium. He owns a career .279 BABIP, which is looking less like a fluke and more like his norm with every passing season. His average exit velocity allowed isn’t elite, but it’s better than notorious non-hit-allowers like Chris Sale and James Paxton.

He’s also taken a step forward this season that seems subtle on the surface. The strikeout percentage is higher than it has been in any of his full seasons in his career, and the peripherals more than back it up. His chase rate is at an all-time high, while his contact rate is at an all-time low. Interestingly, his first strike percentage is at an all-time high, while his zone percentage is at an all-time low. It appears that he’s doing a better job of getting ahead early, then making hitters chase out of the zone when they’re behind in the count. That would be known as a recipe for success, folks.

Another interesting morsel is that Gray has been throwing his changeup a lot more this season, about double that of his old career-high in usage. He’s also throwing it much harder, at an average of 89.9 mph, and it seems to be working. By both shape and relative velocity it’s almost molded itself into Zack Greinke’s infamous speedy changeup, which has also produced excellent results over his career.

It’s clear that Gray isn’t pitching exactly the same as he ever has, so we may be witnessing a better version of himself than we ever have. Old Sonny Gray would already be an upgrade to the current Yankees rotation; new and improved Sonny Gray would be a massive upgrade.

I wish I could have a contrarian, indie, edgy take for you, but I am unfortunately going to have to agree with the industry consensus. This was a logical move for the Yankees that, given their current position and pieces, was something they had to do.

Photo Credit: Gregory J. Fisher / USA TODAY Sports

First of all, Costco is great. I’ve never walked away from a trip to Costco unhappy with my purchases. Maybe I didn’t get exactly what I came for, or maybe I got way more than what I came for, but the deals were so good that it was just too difficult to pass up.

And that’s basically what happened here with the Yankees. They came into the trade market looking for a starting pitcher and a first baseman, and they kind of got neither in this deal.

Please indulge my silly analogy for a moment, and let’s pretend that Brian Cashman used to shop at Ralph’s in the past. He’s very comfortable with his name-brand granola bars, and when he sees those Chewy bars in Costco, he knows that he just has to have them. He’s familiar with them from previous consumption, and he’s willing to pay fair market value for them for that level of safety. He’s also aware that he may be trying new brands of other items during this trip to Costco, and he wants at least one known quantity.

The Chewy bars are David Robertson. He’s a known quantity with an extensively long track record, and he was never going to go for far above or below his market value. Other than the fact that he’s throwing his curveball a career-high 42.7 percent of the time this season, there’s nothing else I need to tell you about Robertson that you don’t already know. He’s still the same durable, high-strikeout, spotty command reliever that he was back in his previous tenure in pinstripes, and he comes under team control for this season and 2018.

Now, as Cashman continues walking through Costco, he comes across something else — trail mix! He didn’t come into Costco looking for trail mix; he didn’t even come to Costco necessarily looking for granola bars, either. The trail mix is slightly redundant in that niche snack category with granola bars already in the cart, and Cashman already knows that he has plenty of other quality snacks in that similar category in his pantry at home. Further complicating things is that it’s Kirkland-brand trail mix. It looks excellent, and he’s heard great things about it from a friend that recently tried it, and it looks like a similar quality to the name brand but at a cheaper price per ounce, but because this is Cashman’s first time to Costco, it’s still an unknown quantity to him. He finally decides that it’s too good of a deal to pass up, and he’s just going to own the best collection of healthy, outdoorsy, travel-safe snacks in the neighborhood.

The trail mix, as you’ve probably guessed, is Tommy Kahnle. FanGraphs recently wrote an excellent piece on how good Kahnle has been this season, and how much value he represents because of the three remaining years of team control he comes with after this season. I highly suggest reading that FanGraphs piece, but to sum it up, he’s basically figured out how to throw strikes this season, catapulting him into the elite tier of relievers. He’s always been incredibly good at missing bats, and if this newfound control is here to stay, then he is absolutely a lockdown, high-leverage reliever. He may be a more generic name than some of the “name-brand” relievers that we’ve seen moved in recent deadlines, like a Mark Melancon or an Andrew Miller, but he has shown similar skills to suggest that he may not be all that different. Now, out of the three pieces that the Yankees received, he could easily be the one that produces the least amount of value in the stretch run and possibly into the playoffs simply because he’s had a short track record of elite pitching and because relievers are volatile in short samples anyways. However, he’s also the piece that easily represents the most total surplus value, and if we compare what the Yankees gave up to previous hauls for elite relievers in the recent past, it could be argued that the entire package was worth Kahnle by himself.

Now, Cashman looks back at his shopping list and realizes that he’s already put two items in his cart, but neither were the two items that he had on his shopping list going in. Cashman came in looking for steak and a T-shirt. It turns out that Costco doesn’t have any more appealing steaks. They had one prime piece, but Jed Hoyer had just walked into the store right beforehand and purchased it. All of the other steaks Costco has left look to be either too old or otherwise unappetizing, so Cashman decides to just forego the steaks on this trip.

Cashman then heads to the T-shirt section. As it turns out, Costco does have one type of T-shirt in stock that Cashman would like, but the price tag is way, way out of Cashman’s budget. See, Mr. Cashman is saving up for something really nice down the road, and he doesn’t want to sacrifice something in the long-term by exceeding his budget right now. However, he does find a sweatshirt in stock that he kind of likes. Is it a T-shirt? Well, not exactly. But it seems to be of nice quality, and it is incredibly affordable. There are a couple issues with the sweatshirt. First, it’s made of cheap materials and is likely to wear down after a few wears, when he will likely let it go to another owner. However, this is what makes the sweatshirt so affordable. The second issue is that, well, it’s not a T-shirt. But Mr. Cashman is creative, and he’s planning on cutting off the long sleeves and hood, and it’ll kind of be a T-shirt. Its best purpose is as a sweatshirt, but it’s still a great value as a makeshift T-shirt, so Cashman decides to buy it rather than risk going to another store, where he won’t know whether it will have any T-shirts in stock, or if they would be within his budget.

Todd Frazier is obviously the sweatshirt here, and he’s an interesting get. It’s true that the Yankees would be wasting a lot of his positional value, as Frazier rates somewhere between fine and very good at third base. By all accounts, the Yankees plan on keeping Chase Headley at the hot corner and shifting Frazier to first base, where he does have a little bit of experience. But it isn’t maximizing his value, and Yonder Alonso probably would’ve made more sense. That doesn’t mean that Frazier isn’t an upgrade, though. Don’t be fooled by Frazier’s season line. After a rough start, fueled mainly by extremely poor luck, Frazier has hit .233/.363/.504 since the beginning of June. On the season, Frazier has suffered a .214 BABIP despite no obvious changes to his batted ball profile from the previous two seasons. He’s rocking a career-high 14.3 percent walk rate, and his BB/K ratio is also the best of his career because his strikeout rate hasn’t risen with the walk rate.

Now, as I mentioned before, why would the Yankees go after Frazier if they didn’t plan on using him at his natural position? Well, acquiring a different first baseman, like Yonder Alonso, would’ve required negotiating with another GM and giving up a second package on top of this one, and that still doesn’t address the starting pitching issue. The Yankees were already at their proverbial Costco, and it made sense from a value perspective to simply buy in bulk. It also makes sense for the White Sox. As we’ve seen with the J.D. Martinez deal, the trade market for rentals has seemingly dried up across baseball. Martinez is a superior player to Frazier, and the White Sox probably saw the writing on the wall that Frazier wasn’t going to return much on his own. So it made more sense to package him and extract the best prospects possible.

It’s not like the Yankees gave up nothing. Blake Rutherford is an incredibly toolsy prospect that was pretty universally a top-50 prospect coming into the season, and nothing he’s done as a 20-year-old in full-season ball has greatly changed that. Ian Clarkin has lost some shine from his draft day, but he still represents value, as does Tito Polo, an outfielder with power and speed that has produced everywhere he’s gone each of the last two seasons.

But for the amount of help they got across their MLB roster, and the price at which it cost, this deal was definitely worth taking. It would become more questionable if this deal precluded the Yankees from going out and acquiring a starting pitcher, but they have more than enough ammunition in their deep farm system to do so as well.

At the end of the day, value is value, and Cashman got quite a bit of it in his trip to Costco.

In terms of raw runs scored, New York is second in the AL behind just the Astros. In both on-base and slugging percentage, the Yankees are also second in the league, trailing again only the Astros. In other words, there is room for the Yankees to take a step back and still be quite proficient.

That’s fortunate, because as a team, the Yankees are sporting the highest BABIP in the league. Their mark of .313 is .005 higher than the next-closest AL team and .013 higher than the rough average of .300. That may not seem like a huge margin, but when you consider that it applies to every batted ball by every player on the Yankees, every game, it adds up. A higher BABIP becomes more sustainable when you hit the ball hard, on a line, and/or on the ground. They have certainly been hitting the ball pretty hard, with Aaron Judge ranking second in the majors in average exit velocity behind only Miguel Sano, while Gary Sanchez and Matt Holliday also rank in the upper portion of the MLB. However, the Yankees’ overall batted ball distribution as a team doesn’t indicate a team that should be experiencing such a good fortune on their hits.

They rank 19th in the majors in line drive rate, while they rank 18th among MLB teams in groundball percentage. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this approach, as it’s quite balanced. Besides, when playing in a home ballpark like Yankee Stadium, it makes sense to get the ball in the air. More flyballs mean more dingers. But it also means that the Yankees’ BABIP shouldn’t be anywhere near its current mark. On an individual level, most of the good fortune is coming to the hitters that take up the most amount of team plate appearances. Of the seven hitters that have produced the most offensive value this season, six of them have a BABIP of at least .321.

I know Judge has been hitting the ball hard, but .408?!? That seems, to sum it up in one word…unsustainable. Hicks, Holliday, Castro, Ellsbury, and Gregorius all appear to be experiencing good fortune as well, while no one has suffered from exceptionally poor luck.

A lot of that batted ball regression should come in the form of home runs, unfortunately. A home run may not count as a batted ball in the BABIP formula, but a warning track flyball does, and almost every flyball turns into an out, especially at the major league level. The Yankees currently sport a team HR/FB rate of 16.3 percent, which is good for second in the league and third in the majors (behind the Brewers and the Rays). Because of the ballpark, the Yankees will probably naturally have an edge in this department, but even then, their marks the last three seasons have been 12.4, 12.8, and 9.6 percent.

Between the points that the Yankees’ hitters have

A) probably been outperforming their skill, and

B) definitely been outperforming their expected luck,

I’d wager that a wave of regression is coming in the remaining two-thirds of the season. But that doesn’t mean the same thing as pushing the panic button. An offensive regression can be offset by new, better personnel, for example. It isn’t a given that Gleyber Torres will be an upgrade over Chase Headley, but wow has Headley been bad this season. The offense will also be offset by the Yankees’ pitching, which has prevented the third-fewest runs in the league. Besides, the Yankees probably won’t have the second-best run differential in the AL going forward, but that’s fine; banked wins are still wins. Even if New York just splits its remaining 108 games, it still ends up with 86 wins, a total often good enough for at least a wild card spot. In fact, PECOTA’s projected rest-of-season standings on the Baseball Prospectus main page would have the Yankees with the home field advantage in the wild card game.

The Yankees have already outperformed our expectations in 2017, and the season isn’t over. Enjoy it as it goes.

Note: Numbers through the week of June 5.

His slider has lost exactly one mile per hour in each of the last two seasons. And it isn’t like it’s due to declining velocity overall, either. His fastball has actually gotten faster every season, so the velocity gap between the two has grown almost 50% over the last two years. And if you want to take into account the fact that velocity readings are being interpreted differently this season, then he’s taken even more off of his slider than just one MPH.

Intuitively, you’d think that taking a bit off of a breaking ball would create more two-plane break, especially with a slider that was as firm as Severino’s. If you take a look at the rightmost column in that table (pitch movement data courtesy of Brooks Baseball), the data would seem to agree. Remember, vertical movement is measured on a Y-axis, where negative numbers mean downward movement. Sliders with more horizontal break and lower vertical break (or a more positive number in the vertical movement) would look more like the shape of Sergio Romo’s slider, as an extreme example. Sliders with a more negative value in the vertical movement category would look more like Brad Lidge’s slider in his prime, dropping sharply off of the table.

For reference, this is what Severino’s slider looked like during his rookie year in 2015. (This was actually the first punchout of Severino’s career.)

Ignoring the hilarious fact that the pitch was clearly a ball (and Xander Bogaerts’ understandingly accompanying reaction), you can tell that the slider had much more of a cutter-like shape to it. A pitch like this would be useful for busting a lefty in on the hands, but in most other scenarios, it isn’t as effective because it stays on the same bat plane as the fastball.

In contrast, take a look at Severino’s slider during his most recent start on Tuesday.

Sure, the horizontal break away from the right-handed hitter was still useful, but it was the downward break that caused it to avoid the barrel of the hitter. This is especially useful for chases versus lefties. A pitch like a splitter, that relies almost exclusively on downward movement, tends to have neutral platoon splits, while “traditional” sliders tend to run rather extreme platoon results.

“Sure, that’s all good and dandy, but you’re not a scout! I want data! Show me the CarFax!”

I hear you back there, sir — no need to shout.

Although it’s true that this year’s data is still extremely limited, the three-year trend should be pretty evident, especially when coupled with the velocity data from the previous table and the intuitive perspective.

Severino probably isn’t going to run a sub-.400 OPS against on his slider all season. But there’s ample reason to believe that a step forward is coming, and he should think about increasing the usage of the pitch correspondingly. Interestingly, Severino’s slider usage thus far in his career has been remarkably consistent, staying between 34 and 35 percent in each of his three seasons. The only change in his pitch usage has come from his other two offerings, as his increasing fastball utilization has decreased his changeup percentage 14 percent in 2015 all the way down to just 8 percent in 2017. Also interestingly, the scouting report on Severino coming into the league was that his best secondary pitch was his changeup, yet his slider has been his go-to pitch so far in his young MLB career.

Actually, from a scouting perspective, Severino’s three-pitch mix is starting to mirror Chris Archer’s now that Severino is getting so much more downward break on his slider, because the riding four-seam fastball and firm changeup have always been comparable. Now, there are two important facts about Chris Archer that Severino could stand to learn from — first, Chris Archer is very, very good. Second, Chris Archer throws his slider a lot. If I could somehow italicize “a lot” even more than I just did, I would. According to Pitch F/X, over 2016-17, no starting pitcher in all of baseball has thrown his slider more frequently than Archer’s 41.3 percent.

Now, player comps often do more harm than good, but the resemblance between Archer and Severino is starting to become striking. They have similar builds. They have similar deliveries, too, with the straight back, upright posture until foot strike, and lean towards first base.

And now they have similar repertoires too, apparently.

Photo: Noah K. Murray/USATSI

Through the first two games of the season, Joe Girardi has stuck with the same lineup, and it appears that it will likely be his regular lineup going forward (at least against right-handed starting pitchers) until Didi Gregorius returns.

As far as lineup construction goes, lineup optimization matters far less than most fans like to think, but it can still make the difference between one or two wins over the course of an entire season. And although the 2017 Yankees are in a position where even the most optimal lineup may not earn them a spot in the playoffs, the converse is not true. If they do make the playoffs, it’s likely that every win will matter. So let’s have some fun with roster construction, starting with Girardi’s current iteration:

1) Brett Gardner

2) Gary Sanchez

3) Greg Bird

4) Matt Holliday

5) Jacoby Ellsbury

6) Starlin Castro

7) Chase Headley

8) Aaron Judge

9) Ronald Torreyes

This lineup is interesting in and of itself. Ellsbury batting fifth has already made some waves, while Sanchez batting second is also a bit intriguing. But let’s see how we can do building the ‘optimal lineup’.

For reference, here is a handy and easily digestible guide on the basics of optimal lineup construction via Beyond the Box Score.

1) Lineup optimization says that speed is important in the leadoff spot, but not nearly as important as on-base ability. If possible when deciding between two on-base machines for this spot, especially ones with similar speed and baserunning acumen, it’s better to prioritize the one with less power because leadoff home runs are more of a waste than with runners on.

Brett Gardner actually fits this description to a tee. On-base ability? Check. Speed and baserunning? Check. Minimal power? Check. Good job, Joe, you got this one right.

Chase Headley (.343 career OBP) and Matt Holliday (career .382 OBP) represent unorthodox but justified options here as well.

2) This represents the biggest gap among all the lineup positions between old-school and new-school. The classic old-school #2 hitter is good at the so-called “little things”, including sacrifice bunting, hitting grounders to the right side, and executing hit-and-runs — oh, and he’s probably a second baseman.

The data tells us that you want one of your two best hitters here, and if there’s a tie, prioritize on-base ability.

Now, Gary Sanchez wasn’t a bad choice here, and he certainly was the Yankees’ best hitter during his time in the majors last season. However, it isn’t guaranteed that he will be again this season, and even if you do believe that, Matt Holliday is probably the best choice here.

3) Modern data tells us that the #3 hitter is less important than the other slots in the top five, and it rewards hitters that hit home runs. I will explain the thought process later, but Aaron Judge is actually the correct selection here, especially if we go by the PECOTA projections (.235/.323/.434, 20 HR).

Depending on how optimistic you are on Starlin Castro (or pessimistic on Judge), Castro could be an arguable selection here.

4) Remember that the cleanup hitter should be one of the two best hitters in the lineup, particularly favoring power over on-base ability, and this is therefore a no-brainer — Gary Sanchez.

5) The #5 hitter should be the best hitter available after #1, #2, and #4 are filled. Greg Bird is the easy selection here, as his PECOTA-projected .270 TAv is comfortably better than any of the non-Gardner, Holliday, Sanchez candidates. I also tend to be rather bullish on Bird and expect him to exceed PECOTA’s projections.

6) The #6 spot belongs to, boringly, the 6th best hitter. Chase Headley belongs here, with his on-base skills giving him an edge over the other candidates.

7) The #7 hitter is generally the 7th best hitter, but this is where the debate gets rather interesting. Speed on the basepaths is optimized by placing it directly ahead of high-contact singles hitters, and the #8 spot should go to the worst hitter in the lineup if he happens to definitively be the worst. Ronald Torreyes fits both categories, making him the obvious #8 hitter. So that would make Jacoby Ellsbury the de facto #7 hitter, except that he projects slightly worse than Starlin Castro.

I’m going to make an executive decision as an author and put Ellsbury here because his track record as a hitter puts enough of an upside on his projection that he could conceivably outpace Castro this season.

8) As I mentioned above, Torreyes belongs here.

9) By process of elimination, Castro goes here, although 7-9 could’ve been either Castro/Torreyes/Ellsbury or Castro/Ellsbury/Torreyes as well.

Our final ‘optimal lineup’ should look something like this:

1) Brett Gardner

2) Matt Holliday

3) Aaron Judge

4) Gary Sanchez

5) Greg Bird

6) Chase Headley

7) Jacoby Ellsbury

8) Ronald Torreyes

9) Starlin Castro

Note: when Didi Gregorius returns, 7-9 becomes Castro/Gregorius/Ellsbury.

Despite our lineup only matching Girardi’s in exactly one spot in the order, both lineups look relatively similar. Anyways, keep a lookout for this lineup, because we’ll know if Joe Girardi read this article or not.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but spring training stats are to be taken with a grain of salt. In other words, Brett Gardner isn’t all of a sudden a terrible baseball player because of his .194/.216/.278 line, and Tyler Wade isn’t the second coming of Derek Jeter because of his .464/.500/.571. Out of all of the most common sabermetric stats that we have out there that we like to use, the one that takes the shortest sample size to stabilize is strikeout rate, and that takes about 60 plate appearances. Aaron Judge leads the Yankees with 42 plate appearances currently. None of the Yankees will probably reach 60 plate appearances this spring, and remember, strikeout rate is the first metric to stabilize. A sample this small shouldn’t cause you to question everything you know about baseball and baseball players.

Some players work on their swing maniacally in the offseason so that they’re absolutely 100% game-ready by the start of spring because they’re so eager to impress the coaching staff. Other players don’t do anything other than tee work until January or even early-February. Oftentimes, pitchers aren’t in regular season form, either. They may be working on a new pitch or a new delivery, or even a new pre-game routine, and because spring wins and losses don’t matter, they’re not worried about the results. Maybe some of the hitters are working on something as well that they may not be trying if it were in the regular season. Not all of the pitchers that the hitters face in the spring will be of major league-caliber, either. Because of rest and big roster sizes and the World Baseball Classic and split squads and extreme injury risk aversion and plenty of other reasons, there are countless players appearing in spring games that will never step foot in a major league game this season. In other words, the sample size for spring training stats is too small to draw any conclusions from, but even if it were large enough, the games and the match-ups aren’t indicative of what will go on over the majority of the major league regular season.

However, there is another camp that believes that spring training performance means absolutely nothing simply because it’s in spring training, and I don’t believe that to be a wise line of thinking, either.

When I say “performance”, I’m not just referring to statistics and results. I’m also talking about everything else physical (and maybe mental) that happens in game situations in spring training. Don’t forget that statistics are just one half of the game of projections — scouting is the other. When a pitcher adds a new pitch to his arsenal, and you can tell from the eye test that it’s looking sharp, that pitch doesn’t need a sample size to “stabilize”. If you watched CC Sabathia last spring and noticed his increased cutter usage leading to weaker contact, you probably weren’t surprised with the regular season results. Sabathia’s ERA dropped almost a full run from 2015 to 2016 as his cutter usage went from 3.0 percent to 29.3 percent. We did indeed witness weaker contact as well — Sabathia’s home run rate dropped from 1.51 per nine innings to 1.10, while his batting average against went from .281 to .248. Perhaps most evidently, CC Sabathia allowed an average exit velocity of 88.1 miles per hour in 2015 (outside of the top 60, among pitchers with min. 190 batted balls recorded), but that number plummeted to 85.3 mph in 2016 (second in all of baseball among pitchers with the same qualifier).

It’s not just about a pitcher with a new pitch, though. A hitter can have new, improved swing mechanics, or laser surgery, or a new mental approach, or a whole other cast of tangible and intangible improvements. But the point is that they may matter, and you may first witness it in spring training. Maybe a hitter lays off two tough breaking balls in two-strike counts, then rifles a ball the other way that just happens to catch the second baseman in the square of the chest. We won’t know if those were things that he worked on in the offseason, but that at-bat is still another data point.

If you happen to be in the second camp that believes spring means nothing, then I have a question for you — what is even the point of spring training? If stats don’t matter, then why not just give all of the spring in-game repetitions to the players that the front office thinks are the best 25? Why have non-roster invites (other than in case of injury), and why play the entire 40-man roster?

I truly believe that the average readership here is of a much higher level than the casual baseball fan, but this is still a disclaimer worth mentioning. Spring training doesn’t matter, but it also does.

Photo: Steve Mitchell/USATSI

The Yankees probably thought they got a bargain, adding premium power for just $3 million and a non-risky one-year commitment. However, the Yankees probably should’ve taken queues from the rest of the league, because Carter doesn’t have a place on this roster, either.

To begin, Carter is basically unplayable in left field, or any position on the diamond besides first base, where he rates as below-average as well. That limits his utility to first base and designated hitter, where the Yankees have more desirable options for the present/future.

Greg Bird is the projected everyday starter at first base and understandably so. Besides the fact that PECOTA projects him for a serviceable .244/.328/.456 line, he’s also the one out of the 1B/DH players with the most upside for the future. In addition, Bird’s a more agile defender at first than Carter, making him the easy choice to start. An argument could be made that Bird should be platooned with Carter, but that really should only apply if the Yankees were in a higher position on the win curve. And, Bird hit a respectable .238/.347/.405 against southpaws in his debut season, meaning Carter may not even be a meaningful upgrade in a platoon, the Yankees should be more focused on developing Bird and getting him repetitions against left-handers while the plate appearances aren’t as meaningful as they will (hopefully) be in future seasons.

Designated hitter would be the other spot for Carter, but the Yankees inked Matt Holliday this offseason, a veteran who happens to be a superior hitter (.303/.382/.515 career, .262/.352/.447 projected) to Carter (.218/.314/.463 career, .222/.318/.466 projected). Carter is therefore probably relegated to being a bench bat for this season. However, as teams like the Rays, Cubs, Dodgers, and Pirates have shown in recent years through their own bench construction, positional flexibility is often more valuable than a one-dimensional slugger that doesn’t offer value in the field or on the basepaths.

In none of this have I even mentioned Tyler Austin, who will be out for the next six weeks but should be available to play for five-plus months of the regular season. Once Austin returns, the playing time for everyone I’ve been discussing becomes even more scarce, and Austin is in the category of “young player that could use developmental at-bats in the majors.”

Assuming health, one of two scenarios will play out this season:

1) The Yankees make a surprising run for the playoffs, and every win matters.

In this case, the Yankees start Bird and Holliday at first base and DH, respectively.

2) The Yankees fall out of contention and turn both eyes towards developing the young core for the future.

In this case, the Yankees start Bird and Austin at first base and DH, respectively. Moreover, they may also want to use the DH position to provide additional at-bats for an outfield that could become more crowded with younger players like Aaron Hicks, Mason Williams, Clint Frazier, Billy McKinney, Dustin Fowler, etc.

Of course, there’s one scenario in which the Carter signing becomes a win, and that’s if Holliday or Bird gets injured early on in the season. Carter would then step in as the starter, and should he produce, he would either help the Yankees’ playoff chances or build enough trade value for himself for a late-July swap. The Cubs showed just how valuable this type of one-year contract can be for a rebuilding team when they signed Scott Feldman in the winter of 2013 and dealt him mid-season for Jake Arrieta and Pedro Strop.

Still, if everyone’s healthy, the Carter signing doesn’t make a ton of sense, and the upside for even a full season of his peak is quite limited. We actually saw last year what a 40-plus home run season from him would look like, and it resulted in 0.8 WARP. The lack of defense, baserunning, and positional flexibility severely limits both his ceiling and his floor, and in late-February, the signing just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Photo: Kim Klement / USA Today Sports

He’s essentially Billy Hamilton with the bat — the issue there is that a player of Hamilton’s offensive caliber (or lack thereof) needs that blazing speed and outrageous defense to be a quality major leaguer, and while Hicks excels in those categories, he’s probably one to two full grades below Hamilton on defense and three below on baserunning value. In other words, the current iteration of Aaron Hicks is not a usable MLB player.

However, the good news is that speed and defense don’t tend to fluctuate as much as the bat — they’re more reliable skills to have as a base. And fortunately, there is hope for Hicks on the offensive end.

The first ray of hope is Hicks’ former prospect pedigree. He was in the Baseball Prospectus top 100 prospects four times as a minor leaguer, finishing no worse than 51st in any of those rankings. He also had strong numbers in the minors (.808 OPS), and he’s still young enough (age 27 in 2017) that there is still room for improvement as he enters his prime. If you’re looking for bright sides, his career minor league .276/.379/.429 looks a lot like a facsimile Dexter Fowler-type player, and his current MLB failures and skill set at this moment in time aren’t too different than Jackie Bradley, Jr. pre-2015.

However, all of those reasons are more or less blind hopes rather than statistical indicators that would objectively project success next season. Thankfully, there is one thing going for Hicks at the plate, and that’s his amazing plate discipline.

Aaron Hicks posted a fantastic chase rate of 23.1 percent (per Pitch F/X data) in 2016, which ranked second among Yankees (min. 75 PA) behind Brett Gardner (22.9 percent). In simpler terms, Hicks offered at fewer than one out of every four pitches out of the strike zone thrown to him last year. For reference, the average in the MLB is always around 30 percent, and only 10 qualified MLB hitters finished with a lower rate than Hicks:

This table should illustrate:

1) Just how elite this chase rate is, and

2) The extremely strong positive correlation between plate discipline and offensive success.

Among these leaders, you’ll find baseball royalty in guys like Mike Trout and Paul Goldschmidt, while the aggregate OPS+ of this group is 124, meaning that the collection of the ten most disciplined hitters in baseball hit a combined 24 percent above the league average. And it’s no coincidence.

Even if Hicks was the worst of these hitters, also known as Brett Gardner, he would possess a Brett Gardner skill set while being able to capably handle center field, making him quite a good player. Alas, Hicks’ OPS+ was just 65 last season.

Hicks didn’t quite have enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, anyways, but he would’ve placed 11th on this list, and he had more than enough of a sample size, checking into the batter’s box 361 times last season. (Swing rates stabilize around 50 PA, making this way more than enough of a sample size to be legitimate.) Even further proof that this plate discipline wasn’t a fluke is the fact that his 23.1 percent mark in 2016 was right around (and even slightly worse than) his career mark of 22.0 percent.

The good news doesn’t end there, though. Chase rate doesn’t fully encapsulate plate discipline because many players with elite chase rates accomplish the feat largely by not swinging as much in general. It makes sense — if you never offer at any pitches, you will not be offering at plenty of balls out of the zone.

However, Hicks also posted a career-high 68.1 percent in-zone swing rate, meaning that he swung at over two-thirds of pitches in the strike zone. How does that compare to the other deans of plate discipline? Take a look for yourself:

As it turns out, his in-zone swing rate is leaps and bounds higher than his fellow non-chasers. In addition, as you can see in the column on the far right, the gap between Hicks’ in-zone swing rate and chase rate of 45.0 percent is better than every one of those in the top ten. In fact, only Andrew McCutchen’s 45.3 percent “chase minus in-zone rate” was better among qualifiers than Hicks last season.

This combination of plate discipline is exactly what you want your hitters to do, and it’s what coaches have been preaching since Little League — swing at strikes, don’t swing at balls.

Aaron Hicks follows this advice to a tee — so it’s baffling as to why he doesn’t have more success at the plate, especially because his contact rates aren’t outrageously low, either.

The answer I have for you is — well, I don’t really have an answer. He did suffer from an extremely low .248 BABIP, which should rebound enormously for a player like Hicks that has speed and has a relatively normal batted ball distribution.

This would explain most of it, but it still doesn’t quite explain why he didn’t do more damage with regards to power last season. Maybe he was swinging at the right pitches but just not punishing opposing pitchers. Maybe, though, he just suffered from the machinations of ‘baseball is unpredictable’, and he might find more success in 2017 from hitting the exact same way.

If the latter is truly the case, as it very well might be, hopefully the Yankees’ coaching staff and/or Aaron Hicks himself doesn’t panic from last year’s lack of success and try to drastically change Hicks’ approach, because it’s excellent. It’s just time for luck to turn his way.

Photo: Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today Sports