Non-Roster Invitees 2014: New York Yankees

As anyone who pays attention to the dueling statistics of Baseball Reference and FanGraphs knows, a big part of evaluation in baseball is the concept of a replacement level player, the hypothetical average minor leaguer against whom all other players can be measured. At this point in the season, teams generally amass a stockpile of guys, most of whom profile as replacement level players, in the form of non-roster invitees. These are either players signed to minor league deals trying to earn a roster spot with their play in Arizona and Florida or top prospects getting their first action playing with big leaguers.

Teams have been sporadically announcing their list of NRI's and I've been more than sporadically keeping track of these announcements. I specifically noticed that the Yankees announced which 26 players they're inviting to spring training because last year New York brought a whopping 43 players to camp, more than would fit on a single page of a standard Excel spreadsheet. Of course, there are still two weeks until pitchers and catchers report to spring training for them to hand out more invitations to new signees or members of their organization, but for now, here is a much more manageable list of this year's invitees with some accompanying information.

Let's start with the far left-hand column, noting rankings on MLB.com's list of 100 prospects. Note that there's only one: outfielder Mason Williams (not to be confused with the composer responsible for the soft 70's pop tune Classical Gas). He didn't put up great offensive numbers mostly for the class A advanced Tampa Yankees in the Florida State League, but according to MLB's Bernie Pleskoff, his defense is his best tool currently. It's a lock that Williams won't make the big league roster out of spring training at age 22, both because he still needs some minor league seasoning and because New York's outfield is chock full of more experienced and more expensive options.

Moving to the right, a green highlight in the Position column denotes whether the player was a rookie in 2013, while a yellow highlight in the names column represents a player signed during the off-season. Obviously only a handful of players on this list saw big league action last year (as is normally the case), which is why I included minor league stats as well. Of the 2013 major leaguers, the most interesting might be Scott Sizemore (pictured above), not just because he played for the A's, but because of what's going on with New York's third base situation given Alex Rodriguez's suspension. If the former Detroit prospect can stay healthy (his two games in 2013 constituted his only action since 2011), he could pick up a bunch of playing time as new infield additions Kelly Johnson and Brendan Ryan have only 45 games at 3B between them.

Honestly, looking at this list, I'm finding it not that impressive. The highest offensive output came from catcher/infielder Peter O'Brien, and he played in a couple of pretty low levels of the minors. None of these pitchers will likely compete for a rotation spot, as only one of them (Bruce Billings, signed away from the Oakland organization) was a full time starter last year. It's just nice to grab onto anything remotely interesting that's happening in the baseball world in the dark winter months.

In other news, both active players named Chad Tracy signed minor league contracts today. Isn't that something?