MLB: Yankees release rookie first baseman; could sign for japan

The New York Yankees they released the rookie Chris Gittens, according to the MLB.com transaction tracker. The huge first baseman is likely to look for an opportunity with a team from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. The move opens a spot on New York’s 40-man list, which now sits at 39.

This type of move is not uncommon for players on the sidelines of a 40-player roster. Teams in South Korea or Japan are often willing to offer a higher guaranteed salary than what players like Gittens would receive when moving between the majors and Triple-A:

Assuming he is indeed signing with an NPB club, first baseman Gittens is likely in a more financially stable position than he would have been with the Yankees.

Gittens, 28 years old in February and 1.93 meters tall, made his first brief major league appearance last season. He had just 44 MLB plate appearances and didn’t perform particularly well, but he had an otherworldly year with his top affiliate in Scranton / Wilkes-Barre.

In 184 trips to the plate in the highest level of the minors, the right-hander hit a .301 / .440 / .644 clip with 14 home runs. Given that dominant run against high-level pitchers, it’s easy to understand why he caught the attention of evaluators in foreign professional leagues.

It’s not out of the question for Gittens to return to the US for the next few seasons. Eric Thames, Merrill Kelly, Miles Mikolas, and Josh Lindblom are some fairly recent examples of former Major League Baseball players who increased their values ​​with strong displays in the Asian professional leagues.

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All of those players returned to the US with guaranteed major league deals later in their careers. That is not to say that it is a given that every major league player will have that kind of success, but it is not beyond the scope of possibility either. Gittens follows a similar path.

Rafael Martinez

I am fond of the King of Sports, especially the Boston Red Sox in MLB and in general all of Mexican baseball. This profession has given me the opportunity to cover major events such as the Caribbean Series, LMB All Star, LMP (uninterrupted since 2009), signings of important players. I had the chance to attend the 2013 World Classic in Arizona, USA, albeit as a fan. Apart from this beautiful sport, I love basketball, where I have also narrated games and even an NBA friendly 10 years ago, but I carry baseball in my veins. BA in Communication Sciences from the Autonomous University of Sinaloa (UAS) , from which I graduated in 2011. I was born in Mazatlán, Sinaloa and started in the world of sports journalism in 2004 in the newspaper El Sol de Mazatlán, where I was a baseball columnist and a reporter at the same time. In January 2009 I came to El Debate as a journalist reporter and it was almost six years (in the first stage), until in November 2014 I emigrated to the radio providing my services at Línea Directa-Grupo RSN. My cycle there ended in July 2019 and after a few days, El Debate gave me another opportunity to work and opened the doors for me again. That is how I came to Al Bat, where I have been since 2019 as a web journalist.

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