Would taking Nuno over Cabral make any sense?
With only a few more days until Opening Day, there are still a few roster spots that need to be decided on. It was expected that Joe Girardi would announce his final bullpen to start the season sometime on Friday, and one idea might to stack up on as many starters as possible.
Joel Sherman of the New York Post believes lefty Cesar Cabral will not make the team and the final spot will instead go to Vidal Nuno. He bases this on the fact that the Yankees will play 13 straight games without a day off to start the season. Masahiro Tanaka is also not used to pitching every fifth day and Michael Pineda is coming off surgery, so he believes that more starting pitching is the answer.
It's just speculation at the moment, but I personally had Cabral making the team over Nuno because it's kind of bizarre to have a total of three potential starters just sitting around in the bullpen. Stuffing David Phelps, Adam Warren, and Vidal Nuno all in the bullpen seems to display very little confidence in the starting rotation right off the bat. There are certainly questions about theYankees' top five, but having all three kind of shows that they may not trust Tanaka and Pineda just yet. It would have made a lot of sense to send Nuno down and allow him to continue to work as a starter, just in case someone goes down with an injury.
What will they all be doing on a daily basis? Maybe Warren is the longman, Phelps could pitch in middle relief, but what does Nuno do? If he's just another LOOGY then why not use Cabral there? If you need another starter, then you can call Nuno up when you need him. Now it's unlikely that Phelps or Nuno will be kept stretched out enough to start on short notice. We've spent the last few days admiring the Yankees' starting pitching depth, but this move kind of does away with it. It would be nice if everyone could make the team, but in this case, it doesn't make sense for everyone to be here.
While it might theoretically help the Yankees if everyone pans out in the bullpen, it leaves The Triple-A rotation fairly thin. At this point, Shane Greene might be given a spot, but the rest would be taken up by organizational fodder, at least until Manny Banuelos is healthy enough to return to Scranton. What do you think?
UPDATE:
Dellin betances and vidal nuno make the team
— Daniel Barbarisi (@DanBarbarisi) March 28, 2014