With Aaron Judge set to return tonight, the New York Yankees were left with a tough decision to make room on the 25-man roster. Unfortunately, they may have sent down the wrong guy.
Over the last week, with news of New York Yankees RF Aaron Judge‘s imminent return, fans have toiled with the decision of which player should be sent down or DFA’d to make room on the roster.
Several weeks ago, the obvious answer would’ve been Cameron Maybin, who the Yanks acquired from the Cleveland Indians for chump change. Maybin, however, has quickly earned the support of fans by slashing .308 / .386 / .496 in 41 games.
Remaining relatively silent, the Yankees organization gave fans, analysts, and experts no clue as to what the decision would be. Still, everyone had an opinion and the ideas continued to flow.
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Ideas like trading Luis Cessa who in 21 games this season, has underwhelmed; or demoting Jonathan Holder who’s 4.93 ERA in 34.2 IP just isn’t cutting it; or, how about demoting David Hale, who has spent his 6-year career on four different teams and features a career ERA of 4.41.
Who would’ve thought that the return of a team’s best player would spark such a debate?
Well, the day has come and with Judge set to make his return in tonight’s matchup against the Houston Astros at home, the Yankees have decided that Nestor Cortes Jr. will be the roster casualty.
To be fair, this could very much be a temporary demotion as Cortes threw 57-pitches last night against the Astros, but what if it isn’t?
With the Yankees still short on starting pitchers, it seems that they will have to continue “bullpenning” every 5th day and It seems that Cortes has found his groove entering in relief of Chad Green. In fact, the last 3x the Yanks used the opener, Cortes has earned 2-wins while pitching to a 3.27 ERA.
As for the team, the Yanks have utilized the opener 6x this season, and have won every one of those games. It just feels like in demoting Cortes, they could potentially be messing with a good thing.