Sometimes you just can’t wait for the weekend. The Rockies traded longtime third baseman Ryan McMahon to the Yankees on Friday afternoon in exchange for sales prospects Griffin Herring and Josh Grosz. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com first reported the deal, while Jorge Castillo of ESPN first reported Herring’s inclusion and Bob Nightengale USA Today It is the first name called Gross.
McMahon was drafted by Colorado in 2013 and spent a full nine years in the Rockies. In the competition, he ranks ninth in franchise history. He is in the fourth year of six years, with a $70 million extension, and the Yankees will assume the rest of the contract. He owes less than $4.2 million this season, and owes $16 million each year in 2026 and 2027. The Yankees had an 88.8% chance of making the playoffs when trading, but dropped two-thirds of the Blue Jays’ 4 1/2 games earlier this week in Toronto. New York could use the lift and say McMahon has the potential to fill demand stance would be an understatement.
When Jay Jaffe wrote about the Yankees’ third inning situation in his Alternative Class Killer series, he said, “There is no more obvious in the area needed.” Oswald Peraza spent more games on the third Yankees than any other Yankees, and surprisingly, if you just look at his time as a third baseman, his season WRC+ dropped to 10 times. Jazz Chisholm Jr. had a crazy hit above third base in June, but he is now back in his second season. The Yankees released DJ Lemahieu a few weeks ago. Oswaldo Cabrera has a WRC+ of 83 and has an ankle injury in May, which will keep him until at least late September. Jorbit Vivas hit the ball in his first 65 major league games.164.
Putting it all together, the Yankees took the 0.6 War from the third base position, which ranked 23rd in baseball (although that does put them ahead of the playoff contenders, while the Phillies and the Cubs are ahead. If you put Chisholm on the third discount, New York will keep falling to -0.7. It’s a team that desperately needs to upgrade. That said, the Yankees don’t get Eugenio Suárez. Let me hit you with a post from former Fangraphs editor Jon Tayler:
Jon omitted McMahon’s excellent defense, which put him in the 1.4 war, but his views remain clear. McMahon’s shooting percentage is not better than Yankees third basemen this season. Surprisingly, but in eight major league seasons, McMahon never even formed the league average hitting line. He hits hard and walks hard, but he’s been nearly 32% of his time, never exceeding 24 home runs in a season. His best year was in 2022, when he had a WRC+ of 97 and had a 3.1 war. Obviously, the Yankees see more potential, so let’s talk about the reasons for optimism.
We have to start with the exit speed. McMahon has been playing, but he boarded a new plane this season. In average exit speed, he tied for sixth among all qualified bats. The only players ahead of him are Oneil Cruz, Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Kyle Schwarber and Juan Soto. This is rare air (in rare air). McMahon’s 90-level export speed is roughly the same as in the past few years, but even though he doesn’t get a brand new high-end power gear, it’s surprising that all the extra tough touch doesn’t lead to an increase in output. His career top speed was at barrel speed, increasing the speed of the ball in the air and firing angles on the hit. Usually, this is not the secret between the career-high 63-point gap (.403) between the percentage of slip you expected (.466) and your actual percentage of slip (.403).
McMahon also has the best Xwoba (.343) and the best DRC+ (93) of his career. His luck should change at some point. Additionally, a left-handed batsman just increased his air balloon rate from 11.1% to 18.8%, and seemed to be doing well at Yankee Stadium. Leaving Coors Stadium may be hurt, but risking cynical and heading to another organization, a new coaching staff may help. The situation is not exactly similar, but I would recommend you to Chisholm, who runs the 102 WRC+ with Marlins and has so far a 135 contender with the Yankees. To do this, Lemahieu represents another former Rockie who joined the Yankees at the age of 30 and immediately blossomed on the plate.
McMahon has really split in his career. He has a WRC+95+ against the right, while a left-handed is 75. This season, he has been down to 58 against leftists. But if any team can absorb this issue, it’s the Yankees, whose 120 WRC+ vs. lefties is the best baseball. Manager Aaron Boone expressed excitement for McMahon at a pre-match press conference on Friday. “I know there’s real offensive potential there,” he said. “I know he’s also had offensive success in the last calendar year, and there’s some struggle. It seems like last month he really started wielding the bats as he was able to. Because he can influence the ball, he can control the strike zone. He has some swaying people that might hurt him, but he’ll really be like him, something like me. There.'”
Boone’s estimate of McMahon over the past month isn’t very accurate, although the third baseman has been swinging for the past two weeks. Since July 11, he has 197 WRC+ in 36 cricket matches in nine games. From June 25 to July 9, the first two weeks, McMahon won -27 WRC+ in 14 games and 51 cricket games.
McMahon has a pretty low standard to clear to represent improvements throughout the rest of the season. If all he does is keep playing the way he is on both sides of the ball, he will be better than the Yankees would otherwise have to get. If his luck changed, those balls that suffered heavy damage found grass (or short porch), and suddenly, he made a massive upgrade to New York on the league average of the plate. If the Yankees can help him make the most of his pulling power, he might be a different person. McMahon has launched 10.7 wars since 2021, making him a reliable and healthy, reliable slightly above average third baseman, and he has signed a contract by 2027.
As for part of the Rockies, McMahon has two and a half years left for a favorite contract like McMahon. As Darragh McDonald pointed out in the Major League Baseball trade rumors, the Rockies like to expand local players with less productivity and also let players like Trevor Story and Jon Gray in free agency rather than trade them before the deadline. This may be an acknowledgement of how deep the team itself has dug.
This is the first time we have written about herring or Grosz on Fangraphs, so after this paragraph, everything you read is written by Eric Longenhagen. The Yankees picked left-handed herring from LSU in the sixth round of 2024, while Eric has a current future value of 40. The 22-year-old has been dominant in his first professional season, and according to the Major League Baseball (MLB Pipeline), he is the team’s fifth-place prospect. Josh Grosz, also 22, jumped to the roster of players most likely to be confused with Josh Sborz. The Yankees picked the right Gross from East Carolina in Round 11 in 2023, and despite his score as far as the professionals, he ran 3.38 FIP in High-A, hitting nearly 10 batsmen in every nine innings. Eric’s future value is over 35 years old. In this way, this is Eric’s collapse:
Griffin Herring
Herring spent two years at LSU’s most stable long-term mitigation bureau (working up to five innings) and was a qualified sophomore in 2024. The Yankees made several changes to his delivery and marketing usage, which helped him take the low and won promotions after just eight starts. At the time of trading, he had 1.71 ERA on both levels, although his K% dropped a lot after being moved to the Hudson Valley. Herring’s fastball is only about 90 mph, but lives in deception and riding life. His arm slots have been lifted since Turning Pro, but his strides have taken larger and longer hills, and when traded, he extends well above seven feet.
His loose whipping arm movements prevented the batsmen until the baseball was released, and despite the lack of anything close to the average fastball speed of the MLB, the Herring’s heaters have produced above-average chases and lapses so far this year. With the Yankees, Herring also highlighted the use of his sliders, which has become his most popular course. Before the trade, his final Yankee outing ranged from 80-85 mph, late but lacked huge depth. In pro ball, it performs like average. Herring didn’t really change in college, but he joined the pro and threw it about 14% of the time. Considering he’s just started using it, he feels pretty good, but it usually cuts him or is too high. Herring is a smooth boat operator, and although his mechanical grace is not particularly physical, part of his is also part of the starter. It’s impressive that he maintains a great college strike even as his childbirth changes and he will be predicted as a high-rise back-end starter.
Josh Grosz
Grosz has started most of the ECU for most of the past two years, and despite his support after the draft spring strike, he still makes his way into the pro ball with his repertoire depth and deceptive rhythm. It was a pitcher with a bad fast ball shape, but Grosz’s laboring heavy pace and short movements made it difficult for him to hit the batsman. He has added about half of Velo to the fastball since Turning Pro, although this seems to be the result of strength training rather than a mechanical overhaul. Grosz ranked 92-95 with the same speed and running speed, effectively giving him something heavy from three quarters of his arm slot. His sliders are hard, averaged 83-86 mph, and live on half of the gloves on the plate half rather than the annoying bat spreader. Grosz’s biggest change in Pro Ball is his changing makeup and purpose. It seems Grosz uses fragmented grip and now has a more consistent sink than he did when he was in college, although that’s still an end. Although this is his first year of regular use of it, it triggers the most stable chase of Gross’s three tones. Without the plus sign, he looks like a consistent low-change depth starter.
Associate Editor Matt Martell contributed the report to this article.
