Yankees acquire Chase Headley from Padres

A midseason trade was the best possible thing for pending free agent Chase Headley. If he stayed with the Padres, things might not have gone his way in the offseason if San Diego submitted the qualifying offer to its homegrown third baseman, which would attach draft pick compensation to him should he leave. As we just saw with Stephen Drew and Kendrys Morales this past winter, if there are any questions at all about a qualified player’s performance going forward, his market will crater once there’s the potential to lose a draft pick. Thanks to the Yankees and Padres, though, that’s no longer an issue for Headley.

The 30-year-old switch-hitter was scuffling at the plate and never did sign the long-term deal he was looking for over the last few seasons; San Diego and Headley were miles apart in terms of both years and dollars despite what were reportedly reasonable terms from his side. His struggles in 2014 don’t necessarily justify the Padres’ refusal to spend on him, either, as they’re an organization lacking in quality bats and Headley posted a .274/.366/.439 line from 2011 through 2013.

We have many metaphors for anticlimax. Sometimes I wake up early on a Sunday morning and think, “I will be Superdad and take my kids out for pancakes!” I am goofy for pancakes, not nearly as much as I am goofy for my kids, but close. I prepare to rise, but then I run through the local pancake options, realize I have a choice of National Pancake Chain that Doesn’t Actually Do Anything Well, another chain that isn’t much better, and a diner that makes their pancakes out of the same material Wham-O uses for its Frisbees. Reluctantly, I conclude that Superdad will take his kids out for lunch instead and go back to sleep.

As of 2014, if not last season, Headley has been more part of the problem than part of the solution. As Grant Brisbee pointed out here earlier on Tuesday, the Padres were so focused on retaining Headley as a building block to what turned out to be nowhere that they somehow overlooked the possibility that he could also be used to jumpstart a team that, even in 2012, had very little going for it, particularly in the case of a starting rotation that was entirely notional. Padres starters had a 4.44 ERA that year with the park. If you’ll forgive the slightest, tiniest bit of hyperbole, that same rotation in Coors Field would have had an ERA of about 7.00. That’s hard to do and not easily fixed. Two years on, they’re still trying.

How is it the zombie Yankees aren’t dead yet? Usually it’s not good writing form to just let a question hang like that, but I’m guessing that someone somewhere will read this and think, “The indomitable spirit of the captain, Derek Jeter,” and I don’t want to deprive anyone who believes that of their right to a mystical faith in super-heroes. After today’s trade, that same hypothetical reader might also have gained a mystical faith in former Padres’ third baseman Chase Headley. That reader would be equally wrong on both counts.

It’s not that, though. Jeter may very well be having the best season in the history of 40-year-old starting shortstops, but that’s damning him with faint praise and according him a purely mythological status: The only reason he’s a starting shortstop is because the Yankees say he is, or because a farewell tour may be as financially valuable as winning a pennant. As for Headley, he was the right kind of acquisition, a buy-low short-timer on his way to free agency who the Padres actually sent cash to pay for while costing the Yankees merely a utility type in Yangervis Solarte and a 23-year-old High-A pitching prospect in Rafael De Paula, who throws hard but whose future likely lies among the International Relievers Benevolent Marching and Chowder Society. Barring further trades of this nature, the Yankees should stop there.