With less than a week before MLB Opening Day, all 30 teams across the league are preparing their respective rosters for the first game and beyond. The New York Yankees have begun their option/reassignment process. Spencer Jones, Jasson Dominguez, and Carlos LaGrange are the biggest names who have been reassigned and will start the season in the minors.
On Saturday, the Yankees made two more notable roster decisions: Randal Grichuk will start the season with the big-league club, and Oswaldo Cabrera has been optioned to Triple-A. Among other moves, Paul DeJong and Seth Brown were reassigned to minor league camp, and Max Schuemann was also optioned to Triple-A.
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Randal Grichuk Makes Opening Day Roster
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Yankees manager Aaron Boone announced Saturday that the team will be selecting the contract of Randal Grichuk, which means he will be on the team’s Opening Day roster.
The Yankees roster is now full, so expect a corresponding move before New York opens up the MLB season on Wednesday against the San Francisco Giants.
The further reports indicate that Grichuk will earn a base salary of $3.25 million for making the big-league club.
Grichuk will likely be a backup/platoon option for Boone, but nonetheless, he’s a good veteran option to have.
As for Oswalso Cabrera being optioned, it’s another sort of surprising move by the Yankees, but it wouldn’t be surprising if he gets called up again shortly after the season begins. Cabrera still have options in his contract, so he’s slated to start the year in the minors to make room for a player like Grichuk, for now.
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Randal Grichuk Will be a Platoon Option
MLBTradeRumors.com was quick to the roster move for the Yankees, and shared this insight on what Randal Grichuk’s role on the team might be:
“The right-handed hitting Grichuk figures to get most or all of his playing time when a southpaw is on the mound. Grichukâs numbers against right-handers have tailed off over the years but he remained very dangerous against lefties, apart from a lackluster .227/.273/.430 slash line in 183 PA against left-handers last season when Grichuk was playing with the Diamondbacks and Royals.”
Grichuk will pretty much be the only new addition to the Yankees’ position-player mix. New York took the approach of attempting to retain all of their free agents/QO players, which worked out well.
The Yankees are slated to begin the MLB season with a Netflix exclusive game on Wednesday. It will be interesting to see how early and often Aaron Boone decides to use Grichuk, and how quickly Oswaldo Cabrera gets called back up.
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