Depth on the bench should be a priority for the New York Yankees

The New York Yankees have been busy the past two days, re-signing third basemen Chase Headley to a four-year, $52 million contract and inking left-handed pitcher Chris Capuano to a one-year, $5 million pact. The signing of Headley essentially completes the Yankees’ starting lineup whereas the Capuano addition gives their rotation much-needed depth — after all, Masahiro Tanaka, C.C. Sabathia, Michael Pineda, and Ivan Nova all have health questions surrounding them. Seeing as how 80% of their projected rotation has health problems, it is obvious New York should sign another starting pitcher before the 2015 season commences. The addition of one starter, however, should not be the only thing for the Bronx Bombers to do the rest of the offseason, as depth on the bench should be, as well as acquiring a starter, a priority.

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According to Roster Resources updated projected rosters, the Yankees current four-man bench is as follows: catcher

, infielder

, infielder/outfielder

and outfielder

. With the exception of Young, — and even he comes with uncertainty due to his atrocious play with the New York Mets in the first-half of 2014 — there is not a lot of offense on their projected bench. Actually, that may not be necessarily true.

The rookie, Pirela, has a pretty nice minor-league track record and if one is optimistic about his future output then it is reasonable to be fairly content with the current state of the Yankees’ bench. Ryan is a defensive whiz, Young is better than he was with the Mets but worse than he was in his short time with the Yankees, Pirela could turn into a serviceable bench player and Romine appears to be a pretty good pitch framer. Overall, this bench does not look horrible and New York could be happy with it if it was not for one thing: all four of their projected bench players bat right-handed; meaning, they do not have a left-handed hitting option off the bench if, in fact, this is the bench they decide to roll with, which in all likelihood it won’t be.

It should be evident that certain teams have personnel geared to do better against right-handed heavy lineups and others against left-handed heavy lineups. Sometimes this happens incidentally and other times it occurs purposely. Regardless of how it comes about it does happen; thus, I feel it is imperative that teams have a balance on their team to counteract this semi-strategical imbalance.

The Yankees projected lineup currently features four left-handed hitters (Brett Gardner, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, and Didi Gregorius), three switch-hitters who perform close to equally well against both righties and southpaws (Chase Headley, Mark Teixeira, and Carlos Beltran), and two right-handed hitters (Martin Prado and Alex Rodriguez). Considering New York’s starting lineup has more left-handed hitters than right-handed hitters, it is sensible that a majority of their bench is comprised with right-handed hitters. But to have all four of your bench players bat right-handed when the majority of pitchers in baseball are right-handed (and do better against right-handed hitters), is just not smart. Especially when one of your right-handed batters is coming off a lengthy suspension.

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Right-handed hitter Alex Rodriguez is slated to be the Yankees’ predominate designated hitter in 2015 after missing a whole season’s worth of action. He is 39 years of age and produced a 113 wRC+ in both of his last two partial seasons; an above-average mark but one that isn’t great for a DH. All said, Rodriguez is a huge question mark and consequently it would be wise of Brian Cashman to pursue an insurance policy behind him in case he can’t play well enough to hold down the designated hitter position. Also, for what it is worth, Teixeira and Beltran dealt with injuries last year that held both players to south of 125 games.

A combination of the uncertainty of A-Rod and the uncertainty of Tex and Beltran’s health should drive the Yankees to get a capable backup; one who — sorry, Pirela — has more than 25 plate appearances in the bigs and swings from the left side of the plate. This said player could be acquired via trade for not much in return or on the free agent market — think Jonny Gomes, Mike Carp or Andy Dirks — for a relatively cheap price.

Now, this is nothing more than a suggestion for the Yankees to improve themselves, but I think it would do them some good to have a guy who forges their bench to be more diverse, and better and more reliable on the whole.