Yankee trade news

The Yankees tonight pulled the trigger on a deal with the Los Angeles Angel of Anaheim. Moving to the AL West favourites is Bret Prinz a hard throwing right-hander who had a 5.08 ERA with the big club last year but was out of Minor League options, so the Yanks had to make a trade or risk him being claimed off waivers before he could return to AAA Columbus.

The Yankees get 27 year-old Catcher Wil Nieves, who spent last year at AAA Salt Lake. There he hit .297 and struck out once for every two hits. He has ML experience with the Padres back in 2002 where upon he failed to shine and was promptly shipped out of the club.

The Yankees traded away former #1 prospect Dioneer Navarro in the off season to the Diamondbacks in the Randy Johnson trade. This meant they didn't really have anyone ready in the Minor League system to come in should either Posada or Flaherty get injured.

The Angels are deep in Catching talent with star prospect Jeff Mathis expected to come through in the near future, this meant that Nieves was expendable. The trade is a bit of a nothing one as Prinz wasn't going to make the big club and wouldn't have negotiated his way through waivers back to the Yankees Farm.

So we got someone for him, a decent back-up catcher, better than nothing.