Josh Smith has become invaluable Rangers piece after trade ended short stint with Yankees
Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.The Yankees churn through prospects like no other team in baseball, often building value as high as possible before sending that value to other clubs for major league-ready talent.
Their self-scouting has been strong recently, not many traded prospects rising elsewhere and making the Yankees regret their decisions. At the 2021 trade deadline, Brian Cashman & Co.landed Joey Gallo, Anthony Rizzo, Andrew Heaney, Clay Holmes and Joely Rodríguez for a smorgasbord of 12 prospects, the vast majority — the Hoy Parks and Glenn Ottos and Alexander Vizcainos of the world — mostly forgotten. But not all of them.
Josh Smith is back in The Bronx this week to face an organization he did not know well before saying goodbye.A strong bat and gifted defender who can play anywhere — including third base — and who won a Silver Slugger as utilityman last season sure would be useful to the Yankees right now. “We’re not where we want to be, but I’d hate to think where we would be without him,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said before Wednesday’s game. Smith was a 23-year-old in ’21 who looked around at his competition and suspected he would not be a Yankee for long.
A second-round pick out of LSU in 2019, Smith played just a short stint with short-season Staten Island in ’19, like nearly all prospects missed all of 2020, then was surrounded by younger prospects upon resuming his career. At High-A Hudson Valley in 2021 was a 20-year-old shortstop named Anthony Volpe.Another promising infield prospect, Oswald Peraza, was 21. Smith had dominated Low-A Tampa competition and continued destroying pitchers he faced at Hudson Valley, where he posted a 1.018 OPS in 28 games, but he saw the younger options and saw the proverbial writing on the wall. “I kind of always figured I would get traded out of there, to be honest w...