The Nationals Buy Matt Thornton From Yankees

It’s an August tradition; the Yankees flex their financial muscle to claim some overpriced player on waivers in order to add him for the last few months of the season. Only this time, the tradition has been turned on its head, as the Nationals claimed Matt Thornton, and the Yankees decided to let them have him.

That’s right; the Yankees just let a quality left-handed reliever go for nothing but cash savings because they are working on directing that money somewhere else. It’s interesting to see the Yankees dumping salary here, when they spent the last few weeks taking on money to add the likes of Chase Headley, Brandon McCarthy, Martin Prado, and Stephen Drew. Perhaps more interesting will be what deal that are working on that would consume the money they just saved on Thornton, as it has been publicly reported that the Phillies just placed a bunch of their expensive players on waivers yesterday.

For the Nationals, they get a decent lefty specialist who isn’t atrocious against right-handers for $1 million over the rest of this season and $3.5 million next year, and don’t have to give up any talent in exchange. For a team in their position, this is a nice little addition, and gives their bullpen another solid arm for October.





Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

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David
9 years ago

Washington = The evil-er empire?

Pig.Pen
9 years ago
Reply to  David

Nope, the Nationals have Matt Williams, quickly trying to lay claim to being the worst manager in modern history. It would be like the Yankees or Red Sox with Dusty Baker, at some point you’d just feel sorry for them. Williams will probably forget that Thornton is on the team and won’t use him for weeks at a time [see: Storen, Drew, Detwiler, Ross, Hairston, Jerry et. al] or he’ll replace Jerry Blevins with him and use every day to pitch to right handers in big situations despite the fact that even though he’s okay against righties, his specialty is pitching to lefties.

Media types keep saying the Nats are a team without any holes, but they have a gaping hole in their manager slot in the LOLineup and MW should be worth -4 to -5 WAR over the rest of the season.

Sendy Rleal
9 years ago
Reply to  Pig.Pen

What are you basing this off of exactly?