Yankees making moves, but is it enough?

The New York Yankees were fairly active during the offseason. Resigning arguably their best player in the last two seasons, DJ LeMahieu, and locking down him down for the next six years was an excellent move.

Signing two-time Cy Young award winner Corey Kluber to a one-year, 11 million dollar deal and acquiring Jameson Taillon in a trade with the Pittsburg Pirates replaces two of their former sub-par pitchers J.A Happ and James Paxton.

The acquisitions of Kluber and Taillon can prove to be extremely beneficial to the Yankees' pitching rotation, IF the newly acquired duo can stay healthy. Both Kluber and Taillon have a history of injuries, and both combined to pitch only one inning in all of 2020.

In a rotation that is led by the Yankees' ace Gerrit Cole, there are a lot of question marks surrounding their pitching staff. Can Kluber and Taillon stay healthy for the entire 2021 season? How will Taillon pitch after coming off his second Tommy John surgery? The way I see it, the Yankees have only ONE guarantee pitcher on their staff and that's Cole. Everyone else after him is a question mark. Jordan Montgomery is a candidate for their rotation as a potential #4 or #5 starter and he barely returned last season, coming off his own TJ surgery. Then there's Domingo German, who has been suspended from baseball for an entire season due to violating the league's personal conduct policy. The Yankees won't get back Luis Severino until mid-summer as he is recovering from his TJ surgery.

A lot of questions marks surround the pitching rotation and it doesn't help that the Yankees will be without their Japanese star, Masahiro Tanaka, who will be returning to Japan to pitch for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles (but that's a story for another time).

Aside from these moves, the Yankees are pretty much, well the same. There's really nothing new or different about their lineup. Outfield you got Giancarlo Stanton, Clint Frazier and Aaron Judge and Aaron Hicks. Infield you got DJ LeMahieu (2B), Gleyber Torres (SS), Luke Voit (1B) and Gio Urshela (3B) and Gary Sanchez (C). This is not to knock on their lineup as they stacked all around from top to bottom, but the fact of the matter is this: they have fallen short in the last few years and unless something changes, the Yankees will continue to return to the playoffs, only to be eliminated in depressing fashion. The last four seasons (2017-2020) has shown just that. Hopefully the 2021 season will result in a different outcome.