Why Yankees preferred Lance Lynn over Adam Warren

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman explains why he wanted to reshape the bullpen by dealing Adam Warren to the Seattle Mariners and acquiring Lance Lynn from the Minnesota Twins in two trades on Monday, July 30, 2018 (7/30/18).

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NEW YORK — The mystery of how the Yankees (at least initially) want to deal with having six starting pitchers for five spots was gone early into Aaron Boone’s Tuesday pre-game presser.

Fifteen minutes after the 4 p.m. trade deadline came and went, the manager made it known that big righty Lance Lynn, acquired in an early evening trade with the Minnesota Twins during Monday’s off day, will NOT be replacing often-struggling-but-hot righty Sonny Gray in the rotation.

What stopped Yankees from adding bat

Interesting.

For now, the plan is for Lynn, a 2012 All-Star, to go into a long relief/spot starter role that could evolve into something else.

Also interesting.

And so is this:

Minutes before acquiring Lynn, Cashman traded valuable reliever Adam Warren to the contending Seattle Mariners for $1.25 million in international bonus pool money to free up a roster spot for Lynn.

An hour after all of this spilled out prior to the Yankees’ 6-3 win over the Baltimore Orioles, Plan A for Lynn was on hold due to breaking news … bizarre breaking news. Around the time Boone was talking, newly acquired lefty starter J.A. Happ was being sent home with a mild case of coxsackievirus, which is the same hand, foot and throat disease that very recently shut down Mets co-ace Noah Syndergaard.

So when Lynn joins the Yankees for Wednesday’s game against the Orioles, he’ll go into their bullpen not knowing if that’s where he’ll start out pitching for his new club or if he’ll be picked over Triple-A starter Luis Cessa to take Happ’s turn on Saturday in Boston.

As of Tuesday night, Happ was off the DL and a go for Saturday, but as Boone likes to say, this is fluid depending on whether this virus progresses or regresses in the next couple of days.

Regardless, this acquisition for Lynn is an outside-the-box one that on one hand makes sense and on the other comes with risk. Lynn will give the Yankees a starter option while staying semi-stretched out pitching in long relief, but he hasn’t been a reliever since his rookie season in 2011. Thus, he’s a wild card compared to Warren, who generally is reliable no matter what role he’s in pitching with no rest or a lot of rest.

Here’s how Cashman explained his decision to dump Warren to bring in Lynn:

“The way our season has played out, we have an elite bullpen with high-leverage mostly one-inning guys and a starting rotation that doesn’t necessarily give you depth, so the protection mechanism behind that was A.J. Cole and Adam Warren, and Warren being the player that we obviously moved to make room for Lance Lynn.

“We were looking to get some more protection on the starting rotation because unfortunately (rookie right-hander Jonathan) Loaisiga got hurt. We do believe he’s going to come back for us later on in the season, but that is to be determined. (Second-year righty Domingo) German just took his first start down in Triple-A and got hurt. We do believe he’s going to come back from that as well, but both Loaisiga and German now are down.

“So that leaves Cessa, (No. 1 pitching prospect Justus) Sheffield and (pitching prospect Chance) Adams as the starters waiting in the wings to help support that major league staff. But if you’re focusing on the current 13-man staff … A.J. Cole and Adam Warren probably were no more than 40-to-45 pitch count long men. That’s not necessarily giving you the length that you’d prefer, so one of the efforts that we had – myself and my staff – was to determine if we could import someone that could be available in the event we need more starting pitching or could pitch out of the ‘pen with more length and more pitches available.

“Lance Lynn checks those boxes and so that’s what kind of allowed us to do all of those moves and that’s what led us to the decisions where we moved Adam Warren, who has been a remarkable Yankee.”

So there you have it, and assuming Happ soon is healthy after one or no missed turns, Lynn will be a bullpen arm/sixth starter who will just get a start here and there until someone gets hurt or, perhaps, Gray goes through another round of struggles.

“I was very honest to (Lynn) in the role and how we see it,” Cashman said. “(I told him), ‘Stay tuned. We don’t know if there are going to be opportunities coming up in a starting spot. We have a doubleheader on our schedule as we move forward and a lot of games in a row. But right now, if things stay as is, you’re going to be assigned to the bullpen and be a quality choice.'”

Randy Miller may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @RandyJMiller. Find NJ.com on Facebook.