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The New York Yankees were busy at the MLB trade deadline, and while general manager Brian Cashman did just about everything else, he failed to acquire a starting pitcher.
New York entered the season down an ace after Gerrit Cole underwent Tommy John surgery in the spring. Things went from bad to worse recently when Clarke Schmidt went down for the year with the same injury and outcome. It seemed like the Yankees finally got some good news with Luis Gil making his first start of the season Sunday, only to see him give up five runs on five hits and four walks, as Miami swept away the Bronx Bombers.
Enter … Kenta Maeda?
The New York Post’s Jon Heyman reported Monday the Yankees were talking with the veteran right-hander about signing with New York. In fact, the two sides might already have had an agreement in place as of Monday afternoon; Japanese reporter Yuki Yamada reported Maeda opted out of a minor league deal with the Chicago Cubs to sign a minor league contract with the Yankees.
Presumably, if Maeda decided to opt out of a deal with Chicago, which has a better record than the Yankees, he likely believed he’d be in the big leagues with New York eventually.
Maeda, the runner-up to Shane Bieber for the 2020 American League Cy Young Award, has not been very good over the last two seasons. He had an awful 2024 season with Detroit, where he went 3-7 with a 6.08 ERA in 29 games (17 starts) for the Tigers. He was even worse to start this season, appearing in seven games, all relief (and mostly mop-up), allowing eight runs on nine hits with six walks in eight innings of work. The Tigers released him in early May, cutting bait after giving him a two-year $24 million that turned out to be truly abysmal.
A week after Detroit sent him packing, Maeda signed the minor league deal with the Cubs. He didn’t fare much better there. Maeda went back to the rotation and pitched much worse than his mediocre 3-4 record would suggest. He posted a 5.97 ERA, allowing 1.4 walks and hits per inning.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, apparently, and few teams are more desperate than the slumping Yankees, who entered Monday 7-11 in their last 18 games.
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