The Yankees dealt former top prospect Chance Adams to the Royals, allowing the young swingman a chance to re-establish his career on a wide-open roster.
Adams was designated for assignment, a casualty from the Yankees' inevitable 40-man roster crunch following Gerrit Cole's record-breaking nine-year, 324 million deal. The Yankees received minor league infielder Cristian Perez in return.
Though Adams was a consensus top-100 prospect, he struggled to establish himself in pinstripes. The 25-year-old right-hander has a career 8.18 ERA in a handful of innings across two seasons, allowing 10 home runs across 33 innings. Other Yankee farmhands, including Jonathan Loaisiga and Mike King, leapfrogged Adams in the depth charts.
However, Adams' fastball, curveball and slider all have above-average spin rates, so there may be a chance to extract the most out of him on a Kansas City team in dire need of pitching talent. The Royals' 5.20 ERA was fourth-worst in all of baseball, ahead of only the tanking Orioles and Tigers and Coors Field-handicapped Rockies.
The Royals bullpen was not much better, pitching to a 5.07 ERA in 2019. Though Adams was developed as a starter, his live breaking balls and softer-than-average fastball could find the most success and clearest opportunity to prove himself a big-league worthy arm by going max effort in a short relief role.
Perez, 21, has yet to hit much across four seasons in the minors. His offense, which included a .252/.290/.285 batting line with zero home runs, was 32% worse than the average in the Single-A league he played in, according to Fangraphs. Before the 2019 season, Fangraphs writers Eric Longerhagen and Kiley McDaniel described the Venezuelan shortstop as "an instinctive defender with some feel to hit."
