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Posted at 10:45 AM EST

4:05 PM EST. Jharel Cotton does not have ideal size for a starting pitcher—5’11” and 195 pounds but he throws one of the nastiest changeups in all of baseball, a double-plus high-70s changeup that features almost screwball-like action. He pairs it with an improving two-seam fastball that now touches 96 but works 92-93 mph and he can cut it giving varying looks to a hitter who sees all his pitches come out of the same arm slot and with similar motion. There’s also a slider and curveball in here for good measure, but both are below-average pitches that he does not depend upon and that’s the problem here. Cotton can’t throw all of his pitches for strikes, which makes him a two-pitch pitcher and that in turn makes him much less ineffective. In 60 innings, Cotton has walked 28 batters and struck out 63. The K’s are good but the walks are getting worse. He was walked 12 over his last 22 frames. His 1.46 WHIP and 5.52/5.02 ERA/xERA split is shaky and he’s not trending the right way. Cotton was sent down for a couple of starts before returning but the issues remain the same. This is a pitcher that gives up jacks, walks too many and only has two comfortable pitches to work with. That’s not a winning formula at this level.

The Yankees have been favored in the -120 to -135 range in the first three games of this series and proceeded to lose them all. Throw in a losing streak that has reached five games and now for the first time since they left New York to begin this West Coast swing, we get the Yanks at a reduced price. That interests us.

Luis Cessa went 4-4 with a 4.35 ERA in 70 innings for the Yankees last year. It was a decent debut for the former outfielder, who shows good command with his 95-mph heater and swing-and-miss breaking stuff. His K-rate/swing and miss rate discrepancy suggests he's still learning the art of pitching and certainly hints at some K upside. Cessa was signed and developed by the Mets before they traded him to the Tigers in July 2015. Detroit later traded him to the Yankees in December 2015. Cessa was lit up in Triple-A in 2015 but again, he’s only been pitching since 2010 so he was in need of more seasoning. Last year, Luis Cessa arrived at spring training as an afterthought. Cessa almost made the rotation out of spring training this year but was sent back down to Scranton where he went 3-6 with a 4.15 ERA over 65 frames. Not great but over his last three starts, his ERA was 2.25. Cessa has turned into a four-pitch right-hander who can throw any of his pitches for strikes and now we’ll try to extract some value out of his prized arm before the market inevitably overvalues another Yankees starter. The time to invest in Cessa would be now before that happens.   

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