Go beyond the box score with the Bombers
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In case you still were worried the Yankees actually somehow would arrive at spring training with the likes of Luis Gil, Cody Poteet, Luke Weaver, Clayton Beeter and Will Warren battling it out for the fifth starter spot, fear not.
A little over a month after the Yankees created a hole in their rotation, they filled it Thursday night by agreeing with Marcus Stroman on a two-year, $37 million contract that has a vesting option for a third year.
At least for the moment, the Yankees’ pitching predicament has been settled. Just how it plays out, and whether there’s one more big addition to come, remains to be seen.
But in the lead-up to the Yankees landing Stroman, one of Brian Cashman’s comments from earlier this offseason kept coming to mind.
Their dream offseason was trading for Juan Soto and signing Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and initially they sounded confident they might be able to do both.
Instead, they nailed the first half and missed on the second.
That happens in free agency — especially if Yamamoto wanted to end up with the Dodgers all along — except him going elsewhere hurt twice as bad for the Yankees. Not only did they miss out on landing a high-end starter, but they also failed to fill the hole they created in their rotation when they gave up Michael King (plus sixth and seventh depth starters Randy Vasquez and Jhony Brito and top pitching prospect Drew Thorpe) in the Soto deal.
Which brought them to Thursday. After exploring the top two arms left on the free-agent market in Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery, who are expected to land contracts worth north of $150 million, and talking to teams about the top arms on the trade market, highlighted by Dylan Cease, who is expected to garner a haul in return, they pivoted to Stroman.
It’s possible the Yankees still could try to add one of those arms before the offseason ends, but at least for now, they have themselves covered in the rotation.
They had to do something at least this big, because when you trade for Soto with just one year left of team control, you have to go all-in to try to win a championship with him.
Whether or not Stroman is the right piece to add to the rotation will take some time to determine.
He may prove to be a better, cheaper option than getting tied up in another big contract for Snell or Montgomery or sacrificing a prospect such as Spencer Jones for Cease.
Or perhaps the market will be right, and there’s a reason why Snell and Montgomery will command the biggest dollars while Stroman could be had for $37 million.
Either way, one small part of Cashman’s hour-long diatribe at the GM meetings in November seemed prescient again this week.
“One of the things we’re victimized [by], in my opinion, is we’re trying to go for it,” Cashman said. “Back [in 2016] when we gutted the team when I felt the team wasn’t good enough, we traded a lot of veterans. We got a lot of prospects. We build back. We created a whole new window.
“And that window is still open. It doesn’t mean it’s open big-time. Obviously, with every year there’s a little attrition and it closes. There’s competition that gets a little better with the way the system is all set up that takes the good teams on the high end and drags them down, it takes the bad teams and drags them up with draft picks and the international signing [pools]. We all know that. So we’ve been fighting to keep that window open and we’re fighting to get into the postseason and take our shots.”
Cashman brought up trading for Frankie Montas in the summer of 2022. It came after they were unable to land the top deadline pitching prize, Luis Castillo, because the Mariners offered a more attractive prospect package. The Yankees pivoted to what Cashman deemed “the second-best pitcher” in a limited market, which was Montas.
The trade wound up being a disaster — even if none of the prospects the Yankees sent to the Athletics have come back to haunt them yet. (In hindsight, the second-best starting pitcher dealt at that year’s deadline was the one the Yankees traded away in Montgomery.)
Then Cashman pointed to the decision to acquire Joey Gallo at the 2021 trade deadline at a time when the Yankees were desperate for a left-handed bat. Of course, that turned out to be another ill-fated decision. (In hindsight, the most impactful left-handed bat traded that summer was Kyle Schwarber, a rental who went from the Nationals to the Red Sox in exchange for minor league right-hander Aldo Ramirez.)
“It was a limited market,” Cashman said in November. “We were trying to win. We needed a left-handed bat. He was the one guy that we could get that actually fit the bill. It is what it is.”
Cashman left out one more big example, likely because the player is still on the roster: After the Yankees missed out on Shohei Ohtani (the first time around), they went out and traded for Giancarlo Stanton, whose contract — $98 million owed to him over four remaining years — currently looks like a headache.
And then here the Yankees were again, in a fairly limited market, trying to win and needing a high-end starting pitcher.
Stroman was their choice. Will Cashman have to be defending his decision-making again down the line, or was this his way of avoiding the mistakes he has made in the recent past?
Of course, the simplest solution for the Yankees would be Carlos Rodon bouncing back and pitching like the No. 2 they signed him for $162 million last offseason to be, Nestor Cortes staying healthy and looking more like his 2021-22 self and Clarke Schmidt taking another step forward after his first full season as a starter.
If all that comes to fruition, and Gerrit Cole remains Gerrit Cole, perhaps whatever the Yankees get from Stroman will be icing on the cake.
But when you trade for one year of Soto without any guarantees of having a second run at a title with him, you have to try to build a roster with as many sure things as you can instead of banking on hope.
The 2024 international signing period begins on Monday. The Yankees are linked to Dominican outfielder Francisco Vilorio and third baseman Richard Matic, per Baseball America.
The Yankees have tended to use a big chunk of their bonus pool on one player, though sometimes it’s the lower-level signings who turn out to be most valuable (Vasquez and Brito, for example, signed for a combined $45,000).
But here’s a look at where their top signings from the past three international signing periods currently stand — with Dominguez, the gem of the 2019-20 class, already having reached The Bronx.
2023: OF Brando Mayea, Cuba, $4.35 million
Before turning 18 in September, Mayea played 38 games for the Yankees’ Dominican Summer League team, batting .276 with a .782 OPS and 22 steals. He figures to come stateside this year to play in the rookie-level Florida Complex League.
2022: SS Roderick Arias, Dominican Republic, $4 million
Before turning 19 in September, Arias spent the summer playing for the Yankees’ FCL team. He hit .267 with a .928 OPS in 27 games, though his season was cut short by a broken finger. Baseball America ranks him as the Yankees’ No. 5 prospect as he enters what should be his first full season of pro ball.
2021: SS Hans Montero, Dominican Republic, $1.6 million
After spending 2021 and 2022 playing in the Dominican Summer League, Montero came stateside in ’23 to play in the FCL. In his age-19 season, he hit .257 with a .823 OPS in 53 games.
The Yankees officially announced this week that pitchers and catchers will report to spring training on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, which is also the first day manager Aaron Boone will speak with reporters, for those keeping track at home.
Position players will report on Feb. 19, and the first full-squad workout in Tampa will be on Feb. 20.
After the lockout-shortened camp in 2022 and the World Baseball Classic going on during spring training in 2023, this year should offer the chance for a relatively normal six weeks (famous last words, we know).