THE SANCHEZ DILEMMA

(in photo: Gary Sanchez)
All eyes are on Jesus Montero in the Yankees fan-base. Despite a sub-par Spring Training, casual and obsessive fans alike are drooling at his bat. Even in a bad spring he hit .250. That's about the same as Robinson Cano's Spring Training. Jesus had some huge doubles, one of which should’ve been a home run, and was somehow knocking in runs with drives to the outfield, even while shattering his bat.(in photo: Jesus Montero)
Looking at his minor league stats doesn’t exactly help stop the drooling either. Career, he's got a .316 average, 59 home runs (22 in AAA in 2010), an .884 OPS, 254 RBI's, and 104 extra base hits. Talk about stats to get excited. I'd say those are it.

For the sake of comparison, I looked up A-Rod and Albert Pujols’ minor league statistics. His stats compares to them and are frequently better than their numbers. He’s following the same path as probably the two best offensive players of the least decade. If the stats don’t convince you, Baseball America named him the best minor league batter for average and the #1 power hitter in the Yankees organization. There’s no doubt this kid is going to be a massive slugger and if all goes as planned, Montero should hit well over .300 with about 30 home runs every single year.

Most people who follow the Yankees prospects close enough say they'd be shocked if Montero isn’t in the big leagues by July, at the very least to split starts with Russell Martin, unless Martin manages to keep us his current hot hitting performance. I'm not so sure, yet I'm happy with what Martin's been able to do. But back to my point, if Jesus isn't behind the plate in the post-season, something will have gone wrong, whether it’s a big speed bump in his development or if the Yanks somehow didn’t make the playoffs and he didn’t even get the opportunity. I don’t see either of those happening, so I think it’s safe to say Jesus will be both catching and slugging at or around the plate very soon.(in photo: Gary Sanchez)
Well that’s all fine and dandy… But what about Gary Sanchez? Even among the most obsessive fans, it’s easy to forget about this 18 year old kid named Gary Sanchez, but I won't get you. Gary Sanchez had a massive first year as a professional ball player. He simply put the Gulf and low A leagues to shame. In 47 games between the two leagues, Sanchez hit .329 with 8 HR, 45 RBI, 13 doubles, and an OPS of .936. He hasn’t started off 2011 too badly either. In his first game of the season he went 2 for 4 with a single and a 2 run homer. Unlike Montero, his defense is very highly praised, perhaps even more so than Austin Romine whose bat is far weaker than Sanchez’s.(in photo: Austin Romine)
In a farm system built on catchers, Sanchez might just be the crown jewel, which is saying a ton considering the things Montero is projected to do. It’s not hard to see that Sanchez is the real deal and is going to do huge things at the major league level. But he’s not going to be doing any of those things for quite a while. Sanchez is very, very young. To put it in perspective, Sanchez is 23 years younger than Mariano Rivera, who is well over twice his age. Put simply, he’s not going to get to the pros for at least a few years, especially not as the role of catcher, the position with the oldest average debut age. So even if he’s ultimately the better choice at backstop weighed against Montero, we’ll be seeing Jesus standing near that big NY logo in the Bronx a lot sooner than Sanchez. If Montero even comes close to achieving what is expected of him, he’s going to become a fan favorite and the Yanks’every day catcher.

So, from everything I told you comes the dilemma: How are we going to find room for Sanchez once Montero’s there? We aren’t going to trade Montero or let him go. His bat is much too valuable and he’d be a huge loss to the offense, not to mention the kind of backlash we’d see from fans. But there are a few options:

• Trade Montero now: This would be along the lines of shooting ourselves in the foot… then taking a knife to it before sticking it in an oven. We’d trade him away then the second we played the team we traded him to, he'd be knocking balls out of the park and we'd be thinking “Man wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t trade Montero?” There’s no reason to trade Montero unless Felix Hernandez becomes available, in my opinion. If Hernandez were be be available, we should pull the trigger. That would make sense. It’d be worth dealing with Romine’s mediocre offense or resigning Russell Martin for a while before Sanchez came up to catch Hernandez.

• Move Montero to the Outfield when Sanchez comes to the Bronx: I guess there’s a chance that this will happen. Curtis Granderson and Brett Gardner are both young and figure to be around for a while, but depending on how long it is until Sanchez comes up, Swisher could be pushing 36 and maybe looking at a DH spot. Sanchez would clearly be a defensive upgrade over Montero, but we wouldn’t have to sacrifice Montero’s monstrous offense to improve the catching defense.

• Move Montero to 1B, Teixeira to 3rd, and A-Rod to DH when Sanchez arrives: Tex and A-Rod are both in their deals for the long haul. Their contracts don’t expire until 2017 and 2018 respectively. However if Sanchez comes up in 3-5 years, A-Rod is gonna be anywhere between 38 and 41 years old. I’m sure he’d love to still be playing 3rd, but at that age, even if it’s A-Rod, he’d be sacrificing valuable offense by fatiguing himself at the hot corner. It’ll only makes sense to move him to DH. Tex on the other hand will be 33-36 and still more than capable of fielding without compensating offense. He’s a 4x Gold Glover at first base and grew up playing 3rd, so there’s absolutely no reason he couldn’t play 3rd instead. If this was what we need to do to get both Montero and Sanchez in the lineup, I’m all for it. In fact it’s by far my favorite option.

• Trade Sanchez now, or later when his trade value is up: NO! At this moment, his trade value is solid, but not worth the potential he has. In a few years there will be little to no reason to trade him away seeing as our pitching woes should be fixed up by then, and when he’s that close to making a huge impact at the major league level there will be no way to justify losing him. Everything I’ve read about Sanchez says that he and Banuelos seem to be stamped as “Untouchable.” All the other top prospects have perhaps a 5% chance of being traded, maybe a bit lower for Montero and Betances, but I see no way Sanchez gets traded off.

• Move Montero to DH, move Sanchez to catcher: Well that would be biting Jesus in the ass now wouldn’t it? Although it may seem to make sense, it would show Montero absolutely no respect what so ever and probably create a bit of tension with him. Definitely my least favorite option outside trading someone.

• Move Sanchez to one of the aforementioned positions and keep Montero at catcher: Of all the position shifts, this makes the least sense. No matter where you put the two of them, their offense will remain the same. There’s be no reason to have an outfielder who’s a better catcher than your catcher, and that’s the kind of case we’d be looking at.

(in photo: Gary Sanchez)
Those are pretty much the choices the Yankees will have over the next few years. I’m not exactly sure how they’ll work it all out, but I can say with 99% certainty that it will be one of these options. The only other one I can think of is trade them both away which would just be flat out stupid. All I know is that if we can find a way to squeeze them both in there, we’ll have two major Rookie of the Year candidates just a few years apart and, along with Manny Banuelos, there will be some great new faces of the Yankees franchise.

So what are your favorite option? Comment here or on Facebook and let me know what you think.

--Grant Cederquist, BYB Staff Writer




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