Last offseason the Yankees focused on trades more than free agency, and to me, the most surprising trade was the one that sent Manny Banuelos to the Braves for David Carpenter and Chasen Shreve on New Year’s Day. Trading Banuelos seemed unlikely only because his stock was at an all-time low, and the Yankees figured to hang on to him another year to see what happened as he got further away from Tommy John surgery.
Instead, the Yankees cut bait, and acquired an established big league reliever and a little known left-hander — I am a total baseball nerd and even I had never heard of Shreve — to bolster their bullpen.