Dustin Fowler's Knee Injury Complicates a Potential Yankees/White Sox Deal For Quintana
In case you were fast asleep Thursday night, which you probably were since the game didn’t start until like 3am due to storms in Chicago, Yankees’ OF prospect Dustin Fowler ruptured his right patella tendon in a collision with the wall on a lazy fly ball to RF in his first career game last night. Here’s the video below:
Just brutal. You knew right away it wasn’t gonna end well for him, and it was a freak injury with a goddam electrical box. Just one of those wrong place, wrong time situations. Sometimes it happens in your first MLB game and other times it happens when you’re fucked up in Vegas and eat shit down some stairs:
I don’t have to say how much this sucks for Fowler, who’s obviously worked his ass off to one day play Major League Baseball only to have that dream cut short an inning and a half into his first career Big League game. We know that and we all feel for the kid, but he’ll survive, and chances are this will have no long term effect on his career. Here is a list of players who have suffered a tear of their patella tendon as well:
Cargo, Morrison and Pearce all recovered fine and went on to perform to their career norms after their respective injuries. Morrison is even putting up a 2.5 WAR season so far this year. So, chances are Fowler will recover just fine just fine as well and this is just an unfortunate bump in the road. He’ll obviously have a long and tedious road to recovery with a ton of PT and all that bullshit, but come 2018 he should be ready to go. It sucks, but dems da breaks.
But you know who else this sucks really, really badly for? The White Sox. I have a sneaky suspicion the reason Andujar and Fowler were randomly called up to play against the White Sox this week so the Sox could get a closer look at those two in a potential deal for Quintana. Makes sense; Quintana also started and performed well against the Yankees on Tuesday.
The Yankees, being in the thick of the playoff hunt with a young core could really, really use a cost controlled SP in the mold of a Quintana. The NY Post had a great article last week on why the Yankees and White Sox are a match made in heaven on the trade front right now. Long story short, the Yankees have so much organizational depth at the moment that they are having trouble squeezing players they deem worthy on their 40 man roster. They lost 5 players to the Rule 5 draft last season and are at risk of losing more unless they perform a major roster overhaul this winter. It would make complete and total sense to deal from their surplus of organizational hitting (specifically OF) depth to acquire a cost controlled SP. Especially now that they figure to be major players for Otani, if and when his Japanese team posts him. Hal Steinbrenner has said over and over again that he wants to be under the luxury tax or at least only slightly over for next year when big contracts are finally off the books, and what better way to do that than acquire a pitcher who has an incredibly below market deal for another 3.5 years?
***DOT CONNECTING ALERT***
It’s a safe assumption that the White Sox like Andujar and Fowler’s games. I mean, what’s not to like? Both have high potential and low floors. It’s also a safe assumption (I think) that the Yankees were showcasing both of them during this series. I mean, why else would Andujar get called up for one game and immediately be optioned back down to SWB? That doesn’t really make sense. I imagine the same would have happened for Fowler had his knee not exploded.
That said, the Fowler injury is obviously concerning. A player with a fucked up knee is nothing to mess with, especially when a player relies on speed for a lot of his production like Fowler.
Does this put a kink in a potential Quintana/Yankees mega trade? Probably a little bit. Would I still love Fowler as a part of that package? Absofuckinglutely. However now that there’s more risk involved with him, I personally would probably want him as a pot sweetener instead of an upper end part of the package. Will my good friend Rick (Hahn) feel the same way? No idea. But if my assumptions are correct and this past series was a showcase for an inevitable deal between the two clubs, knowing Andujar and Fowler are potential pieces in a deal really gets my prospect juices flowing.
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Basically what I’m saying is Frazier/Andujar/Florial/Fowler for Quintana. Lock it up and rub it down. That’s a fair trade for both clubs – Yankees get their cost controlled SP (Archer is not being traded intra division), avoid losing players for absolutely nothing to the Rule 5 draft, and the White Sox strengthen their organizational depth by acquiring a very good prospect return.
We are going to talk about this a lot in the coming weeks leading up to the deadline on Red Line Radio. Don’t be that guy who misses out