The New York Post's George King has more on Cuban shortstop Adeinis Hechavarria.

• Five teams are interested.
• Hechavarria has a body like Alfonso Soriano.
• The Yankees have scouted Hechavarria more extensively than any other team.

There were a few other things I was looking for in this article. When we first heard of the Yankees interest in Hechavarria, someone passed along a blog post on him from the Cuban Ball Players Blog.

There were a few discrepancies in the information that was supplied by King and by the Cuban blog. King reported Hechavarria as 21-years-old while the blog listed him as 19-years-old. Also the spelling of his name appeared as Adeiny Hechavarria on the blog.

On MLBTR, Mike Axisa also refers to the Cuban shortstop as 19 and spells his name Adeiny. The fact is, we just don't know all there is to know about this kid except for the fact that he can play ball.

Being that this is a George King article, there is some ridiculousness sprinkled in. King speculates that Hechavarria could be the Yankees second baseman, meaning that the Yankees would trade Robinson Cano after the 2010 season.

Hechavarria isn't a player who is going to come right into the majors and take the job of a player like Robinson Cano. The Yankees aren't going to trade Cano away to make room for an unproven 20 or 22-year-old.

The Yankees farm system could use a nice boost, and signing Hechavarria would add a nice up-the-middle talent to the pipeline. He won't be cheap, though. Expect him to sign for over $8 million, whether it's with the Yankees or not.

Hector Noesi was signed by the Yankees out of the Dominican Republic in 2005 and debuted in the Gulf Coast League at 19-years-old in 2006. He promptly missed most the 2007 season after undergoing Tommy John Surgery. Noesi is a guy who, due to his age and injuries, managed to stay away from the prospect radar before the 2009 season. Looking at his 50 or so innings in 2008, it wouldn't have been far-fetched to predict greater success for Noesi in 2009. He was absolutely dominant in 2008, striking out over ten batters per nine innings while walking less than two.

Noesi has had an interesting and slow-moving path thus far through the Yankees system, largely because of his injuries, that is interesting. He was largely a reliever when pitching for the GCL Yankees in 2008. When I see a 21-year-old pitching in relief in the Gulf Coast League, that is usually not a good sign. Then, when the Yankees promoted him to Staten Island at the end of the season, they used him as a starter. He only made five starts, but he excelled. He struck out 11.6 batters per nine innings while posting a BB/9 of just 2.60.

Pitching in Staten Island presented more of a challenge for Noesi, as there are many college graduates in that league who were a similar age to Noesi. Even though it was just five starts, I'd imagine that Noesi opened a few eyes in the Yankees organization with that eye-popping K/9.

Even as Noesi dominated during the 2009 season, there was little buzz surrounding him. Seeing great numbers are nice, but they don't mean too much in the low minors without an accompanying positive scouting report. I wasn't hearing bad things about Noesi suggesting that he was getting by on poise rather than stuff, I just wasn't really hearing much at all about the then 22-year-old righty.

It wasn't until the end of the season that I, and others, started to take note of what Noesi was accomplishing. Right around the time I noticed the absurd numbers Noesi was putting up, others noticed how his stuff had improved. Noesi's biggest fan seems to be Frankie Piliere, former Rangers' scout and current writer for AOL Fanhouse. He had great things to say about Noesi in a brief scouting report:

[Hector] Noesi is the type of prospect that shows up in deals quite frequently. He's a little older than you'd like for a pitcher below Double-A, but has the stuff of a No. 3 big-league starter. Another reason you may not know much about Noesi is because in 2008 he was much shorter in his arsenal than he is today.

When I had the chance to see him then, he was pitcher severely lacking in secondary pitches despite his good velocity and fastball command. This year was a much different story. He displayed downright dominance at times, especially in his stint with at low Single-A Charleston (S.C.). Maybe most impressive of all was his stamina; his stuff would sometimes improve as his pitch count mounted. Although he still likes to mostly to work of his well spotted 90-94 mph fastball, this year there was the curveball as well. With good 12-6 action, the curveball came out whenever Noesi seemed to need it this year. He had a feel for just how much to mix it in and varied the speeds from 72-76 mph. With a second pitch that now shows flashes of being plus, and an occasional changeup mixed in, Noesi showed tremendous growth in 2009 and became a complete pitcher. He could be a guy that continues to emerge in a hurry and may not be far off from the big leagues.

For a player who had never received much scouting hype, that is some very high praise. His statistical trends match up with Piliere's observation that his stuff had drastically improved.

As Sean recently noted, Noesi also possessed one of the best SIERAs in the Yankees' farm system. It was already evident that Noesi's Tampa ERA of 3.92 was a fluke, considering that he had a freakin' K:BB of 10.00(!) but his 2.64 Tamps SIERA further confirms that.

Noesi has gotten into a few televised games during spring training, but I haven't gotten to see much of him. I saw him face a few batters but I wasn't paying full attention so I can barely even give you my own irrelevant personal scouting report.

The few pitches I saw represented such a small sample, but I did not ice a few things. It seemed Noesi possessed full control of his curveball and had no problem working with it in the strike zone for strikes. His fastball was around 91 on the YES gun and he had a high leg kick when he was working from the windup. That's all I was able to gather in the few pitches I saw, so hopefully I'll get to see him pitch again.

During the offseason, the Yankees opted to add Noesi to the 40-man roster even though he has yet to pitch above A-ball. This shows that the Yankees like what they've seen from him and couldn't risk losing the control specialist. I was relieved to see him protected from the Rule 5, because I think there's some legitimate upside with Noesi.

Noesi will start 2010 on the 40-man roster making his first stop at Double-A Trenton. I don't think it will be too much of a challenge for him, and given that he'll be 23-years-old for the entire season, a quick promotion to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre would not surprise me at all. The combination of Noesi's improved stuff and impressive performance make him one of the better pitching prospects in the Yankees' system. Keep an eye out for him, as we may see Noesi pitching in the Bronx this September..

Photo Credit: Ashley Stephenson

While running a major league team, there are only so many ways you can gain a real advantage. Having more capital then your opponent is the easiest way, but teams continually look for other ways to better themselves at an inexpensive price.

This is termed a market inefficiency. Basically, the best thing a team can do is find something of value that isn't being valued properly on the open market. While many people ignorantly think Michael Lewis's Moneyball is about sabermetrics, this is what it was really about: finding market inefficiencies and using them to your advantage. The biggest example that was used in this case was on-base percentage, which was significantly undervalued at the time.

At this point, something as simple as OBP is valued correctly. In recent years we've seen teams like the Mariners shift to optimizing defense at a well below-market rate. It seemed that this was the new market inefficiency, but this seemed to right itself quickly. This offseason, we saw Boston look to improve their defense through free agency by acquiring defensive specialists Adrian Beltre and Mike Cameron while moving Jacoby Ellsbury to left field.

While Boston may seem to be a continuation of getting defense on the cheap, they actually didn't pay too much below market value with these two signings. This suggests that teams are much more aware of the impact defense can have and it can no longer be seen as a market inefficiency.

These things work in cycles. It's very hard to find a way to game the market consistently without other teams catching up to you. In a recent post on FanGraphs, Dave Cameron talked about efficiency wages. In his piece, he briefly mentions nutrition without getting into it too much.

See, MLB just raised the minor league per diem five dollars all the way to $25 per day. Now, if you're eating for one and cooking your own meals, that's fine. I cook many of my own meals and spend less than $25 a day. The issue here is that these are not people who live on a regular schedule. They're not working nine to five jobs; they're traveling all around whatever region they're in and end up eating out for many of their meals. Now you can see why that's a struggle. If you want three meals on $25... you're going to be getting food that is neither nutritious nor particularly good.

Dave suggests a widespread increase of quality of life for minor leaguers. He proposes that you not only raise the per diem, but you get better buses as well. For the Yankees, these two things should be a no-brainer. Having updated, comfortable buses for each minor league affiliate would cost relative pennies for the Yankees. We can't be sure how much this would benefit the team in the long run but improving the day-to-day life of the team's prospects can't hurt.

This also got me to thinking about the recent film Sugar, which follows a young pitching prospect out of the Dominican Republic. Now, I don't want to spoil the film for you if you haven't seen it yet(and I recommend you do), but the character Sugar could have benefited from these things and many more.

My Recommendation for the Yanks

With the Yankees' financial advantage, they should take this whole idea a step further. Considering that they are so active in the international free agent market, they'd benefit the most from it anyway. Instead of just increasing the per diem, encourage players to eat healthy. Maybe if there is a restaurant in an area a team is visiting that specializes in healthy food, offer incentives to eat there.

When the team is home, serve healthy foods. Substitute regular pasta, white rice, and white bread out. Replace them with whole wheat pasta, brown rice, and whole grain bread. Obviously, I'd take it a bit further, but you get the point. Simple changes like that would not even cost very much, but would increase the health of the players.

I haven't spent enough time around the low minor leagues to know what goes on in Low-A ball, but teams should go out of their way to make sure that the prospects are comfortable and happy. In Sugar, we saw that might not always be the case.

This would not only benefit the players currently in the system. It's possible that young ballplayers would be even more attracted to signing with the Yankees because they offer a better quality life.

As the first commenter on Dave's post points out, this would probably end up causing other teams to follow suit, which would just raise prices all around. If that happens, then so be it. That just means that the corporate suits end up with a little less money while these 18-year-old kids in A-ball get an increase in their quality of life. I know I don't have a problem with that. And if other teams didn't follow, then the Yankees could have found themselves another efficient way to spend their money as they streamline talent to the major league team.

With spring training under way I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at those who have a shot (even if it's just an outside shot) at seeing time with the Yankees in 2010. Later we'll look at the potential 4th and 5th outfielders, but first, the infield. The job is really Ramiro Pena's at this minute-but are there better options right now? Here are CHONE's projections for the utility candidates in 2010:

Hall of Famer Goose Gossage continues to campaign for Joba Chamberlain to move to the bullpen, "Personally, I think Joba is a relief pitcher ... I think that he is more valuable in the bullpen." Gossage also chimes in that, "I think Phil Hughes is a starter for sure."

I don't get it. Joba Chamberlain has had more success than Hughes starting and they've had pretty much equal success as relievers. To each his own, I suppose.