ARLINGTON, Texas – With their starting pitching depth paper thin, the Yankees are taking a flier on a veteran.
The club has signed Kenta Maeda to a minor league deal, the Yankees announced Monday, stashing him at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to give them another option should one of their current starters go down.
The 37-year-old Maeda, who has spent parts of nine seasons in the big leagues, started this year with the Tigers as a reliever before he was designated for assignment on May 1.
He then signed a minor league deal with the Cubs and pitched to a 5.97 ERA across 12 starts – though it was a 3.55 ERA over his last nine starts – before opting out of that deal this weekend.
Outside of their current rotation, the Yankees’ starting depth is essentially nonexistent.
To make room for Luis Gil’s return from the injured list, they released Marcus Stroman on Friday instead of sending Cam Schlittler to Triple-A – banking on Schlittler’s high-end stuff and upside over keeping Stroman to maximize their depth.
The Yankees also recently traded Carlos Carrasco – who started the year in the rotation but struggled before being DFA’d – to the Braves.
Currently, their next man up would be Allan Winans, but he has gotten hit around in three games when called up this season.
The Yankees are hoping to get swingman Ryan Yarbrough back from an oblique strain at some point for further insurance, but he is still only throwing bullpen sessions and is still at least a few weeks away.
“Depth’s a little bit of an issue for us,” manager Aaron Boone said on Friday. “I feel really good about our five guys we’re rolling out there. But not a ton of depth now. … Yarbrough is obviously on the comeback and on the mound, so we’ll try to stretch him out a little bit and have him to at least be some kind of length option for us. But depth starter-wise, we don’t have a ton.”
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