Pena Optioned Down

When I made my daily trip around the blogosphere I was surprised to read that the Yankees will be sending down Ramiro Pena and having him learn centerfield. Not surprised to see him being sent down but I didn't expect to see them teaching Pena centerfield. I like both moves by the Yankees though. Versatility can never hurt and might save them a roster spot down the line.

Here's a few reasons I prefer Ransom over Pena right now:

• Ransom clearly has a better bat. Pena's hitting has been epically bad and Ransom hit .302/.400/.651 in the majors last year. Yes in a small sample size but you have to give the guy a ML roster spot if he does that.
• If you keep Ransom on the ML team you can still keep Pena around in the minors. While if you wanted to keep Pena around, you'd have to DFA Ransom and probably lose him. If theirs an injury it'd be nice to have both of them around. If Ransom struggles they can just replace him with Pena but it wouldn't work the other way around.
• Pena is only 24 and is fantastic in the field. If he could ever learn to hit he'd become a valuable player. If he could just have an OPS+ around 100 then he could be a future everyday player. He can work on this in the minors. If he were to get hot in the minors, it would help him build up some trade value.