You Take the Good; You Take the Bad
This is a fact of life: Both the Yankees and Red Sox will need more than five or even six pitchers in 2018. And as they are in a fight for the division title, each would be wise to add another front-line starter.
Otherwise, the Yanks and Sox might find themselves looking back fondly on the roughly 90 innings the teams got from Pineda and Fister, respectively.
The good news is that there are pitchers available. While the Sox can probably only buy a starter, and they should, the Yankees can either buy or trade for one. And they should.
Because, right now, these teams are playing a dangerous game.
They want to wait until the prices come down, either in dollars or farm hands. But both are in win-now mode, the Sox even more so than the Yankees. It would be foolish to squander this opportunity by squeezing the corners.
What if one team loses two starters in May? Then the plan of waiting to improve at the trade deadline becomes moot; that team might not be worth saving by then. Or at least might have surrendered too big of a lead to the other so that only the Wild Card is a reality.
The possible result is that the Yankees might face another one-game playoff instead of a guaranteed five-game series; talk about a precarious situation. But that is precisely the chance both the Red Sox and Yankees are taking.
Any questions?