There is a starting pitcher on the free-agent market who will not command the exorbitant prices of Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery. He is more proven than a wild card such as Shōta Imanaga, who reached a deal with the Cubs on Tuesday night. He is far more reliable than Carlos Rodon and Nestor Cortes, is accustomed to pitching in the AL East and has stuff that projects well in The Bronx.
As a pitcher, there might not be a better fit available for the Yankees than Marcus Stroman. As a personality, there are considerable doubts, which is a large part of why he is still available.
As the Yankees — who are loosely connected with Snell and Montgomery and involved in the prospect bidding for Dylan Cease and perhaps for a Marlins pitcher such as Jesus Luzardo — hunt for a starter who can fill out their rotation and offer both playoff upside and regular-season dependability, Stroman looms as a perfect and imperfect fit.
Let’s explore the pros and cons of a deal with the 33-year-old, whom the Yankees have to at least consider in an offseason when starting pitching has become the top priority:
Pros:
• There isn’t a more consistent pitcher out there than Stroman, whose season ERA has not exceeded 4.00 in any of his past four seasons. In that span, since 2019, Stroman has taken the ball for 115 starts, the 29th-most in the majors. Going back to 2016, his 1,146 innings represent the 12th-most in baseball. He has been among the best at eating innings despite having sat out the shortened 2020 campaign.
He is coming off a rare, injury-filled second half with the Cubs — he was limited to 24 innings after the All-Star break because of a rib cage cartilage fracture and hip inflammation — but he was an All-Star before the hiccups.
• Since 2019, Stroman’s 53.2 percent groundball rate (courtesy FanGraphs) is the eighth-best in the sport. Keeping the ball on the dirt is key for pitchers in every ballpark, but especially in Yankee Stadium, where flyouts to right field often become home runs.
The Yankees’ infield defense ranked an above-average 12th in Outs Above Average last season, and probably should improve this year with a more experienced Anthony Volpe coming off a Gold Glove season at shortstop and, the club hopes, with better health from four-time Gold Glover Anthony Rizzo at first base. The Post’s Jon Heyman has reported the Yankees were not heavily pursuing Imanaga in part because of his flyball tendency. How about a pitcher who has worked on the opposite end of the spectrum?
• To further that point: The Yankees do not have a Stroman. Their rotation last season pitched to a 38.7 percent groundball rate, the fourth-lowest in the sport. Gerrit Cole kept opposing teams’ fly balls in the park. Rodon and Cortes did not. Stroman is not a fireballer, living in the low-90s, but his heavy sinker keeps batted balls headed south and a six-pitch arsenal keeps hitters guessing. Diversity of pitching types matters, and Stroman would be a different look for opposing lineups.
• The same flair that the Yankees (perhaps mistakenly) saw in Rodon they could see in Stroman, who pitches with emotion. He can energize a crowd with an athletic defensive play or with a pumped fist after a key strikeout. At just 5-foot-7, Stroman leans in to his undersized, underdog status and loves proving himself, which he has done continually.
• The right-hander would not come cheap, but he would be much cheaper than the pitchers at the top of the market. After opting out of the $21 million he would have been owed for 2024, Stroman is likely in the three-year, $60 million neighborhood, which is not even in the same area code as Snell and Montgomery.
• The Medford, Long Island, native is used to big markets. He pitched well for five and a half seasons in Toronto before a trade to the Mets, with whom he thrived on the field (3.21 ERA in a season and a half) before two solid seasons on the North Side of Chicago.
Cons:
• Stroman historically has been reliable, but less so recently: Injuries held him below 140 innings in the previous two seasons, and his injury-filled second half last year included a 8.63 ERA.
• His stuff should translate to The Bronx, but he carries a lifetime 6.06 ERA in 11 starts at Yankee Stadium (though he has not pitched there since 2021).
• The biggest concern involves a long list of controversies that date back through Stroman’s career — and even before he reached the majors:
— A first-round pick in 2012 out of Duke, Stroman was suspended in the minor leagues that year for 50 games after testing positive for Methylhexaneamine. Stroman acknowledged he took the banned stimulant and called it an “honest mistake.”
— By many accounts, Stroman was a polarizing figure with the Blue Jays. There were allegations that Stroman kicked minor leaguers out of a weight room so he could work out (allegations that Stroman denies).
— The loaded term that often is used to describe Stroman is “outspoken.” He was outspoken with Toronto, where he was not afraid to call out the front office (once venting that he had learned teammate Ryan Goins was nontendered through Twitter). After being traded to the Mets at the 2019 trade deadline, he jabbed the Toronto front office for not offering him a contract extension.
— With the Mets, the known controversies largely stemmed from Stroman’s online presence. He battled one reporter who noted how many personal highlights Stroman retweeted after a loss; he “liked” a tweet that called another reporter an Italian slur. (In response, Stroman said he “would never downgrade another race” and later alleged Mets fans launched racist attacks at him. He claimed the Mets’ front office “didn’t care about any of that.”)
— While in the process of leaving the Mets as a free agent after the 2021 season, Stroman liked tweets that alleged the Mets’ front office preferred free-agent starters Kevin Gausman and Robbie Ray because they were white. As a Cub, Stroman celebrated shutting down the Mets in May and yelled toward the visiting dugout, which at least some Mets didn’t appreciate.
— Stroman has had a feud with the Yankees stemming back to the 2019 trade deadline, when he ended up with the Mets (a destination he did not appear to initially desire). GM Brian Cashman was quoted as saying the Yankees didn’t feel Stroman would be a “difference-maker” and Stroman would have ended up in their bullpen in the postseason. Stroman took the slight personally and has tweeted plenty about the remarks since.
“Besides Cole, there’s no current Yankee pitcher who will be anywhere in my league over the next 5-7 years,” Stroman wrote in 2021. “Their pitching always folds in the end. That lineup and payroll should be winning World Series’ left and right…yet they’re in a drought. Lol.”
If you’re looking for that tweet, you will not be able to find it. Stroman has cleansed his social media of Yankees criticism.
Nearly five years after Cashman publicly dismissed Stroman, do the Yankees see a tough-minded competitor who will fight anyone in his path?
Or do the Yankees, who are not bringing back Josh Donaldson or Domingo German, see an uncertain personality who could upset the clubhouse?
With pitching at a premium, those are questions the Yankees should be asking themselves.
Aaron Rodgers on Monday, after the Jets’ season ended: “The bulls–t that has nothing to do with winning needs to get out of the building. That will be the focus moving forward.”
Aaron Rodgers on Tuesday refused to apologize for insinuating Jimmy Kimmel was a pedophile before launching into a lengthy monologue about COVID-19 and Dr. Anthony Fauci that included a plug for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book on the pandemic.
On the subject of Kimmel, Rodgers denied suggesting the late-night host was a pedophile, saying he simply meant he thought Kimmel would be upset with the publication of a “list” of associates of notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
On the subject of COVID, Rodgers said he is well-read and again voiced his dissatisfaction with the country’s response to the pandemic, referring to Fauci as “one of the biggest spreaders of misinformation during the COVID times.”
On the subject of the growing discord between ESPN and “The Pat McAfee Show,” Rodgers added another chapter by ripping a statement by ESPN exec Mike Foss, who had called Rodgers’ comments about Kimmel “dumb and factually incorrect.”
“Mike, you’re not helping,” Rodgers said before stating that the media is trying to “cancel” him.
Such is the business ESPN and the Jets are seemingly unable to escape, hoping the tirades eventually translate to ratings and wins, respectively.
We suspect Rodgers hopes for wins, too. Monday Rodgers ripped the type of dreaded distractions that Tuesday Rodgers invited.
“Anything that doesn’t have anything to do with winning needs to be assessed,” Monday Rodgers said. “Anything in this building that we’re doing individually or collectively that has nothing to do with real winning needs to be assessed. Everything that we do has to have a purpose. When you step in the building, there’s intentionality with everything you do. It’s not a half-the-time thing. It’s not a sometimes thing. It’s not a most-of-the-time thing. It’s an every-time thing.”
The Titans fired a nearly universally regarded good coach and declined to even pursue attempting to trade him.
The most stunning NFL canning of the season will be Mike Vrabel, who led the Titans to the No. 1 seed in the AFC as recently as the 2021 season.
Vrabel was fired Tuesday after back-to-back losing seasons, this one quarterbacked by Ryan Tannehill and Will Levis. Vrabel consistently fielded competitive teams (and occasionally better than competitive) while rarely boasting upper-tier talent and went 54-45 over six years.
Already there has been some speculation about the former star Patriots linebacker succeeding Bill Belichick, should the Patriots move on from the legend.
Perhaps Robert Kraft & Co. (or another team’s front office) would have sent a draft pick package to Tennessee, which still had Vrabel under contract.
The possibility was considered, controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk told the team’s website, but not explored. They could have tried, but would have 1) needed Vrabel’s permission and 2) needed to move fast. So they did not try.
“A coach’s contract, you can’t trade them unless they are a willing partner to that trade,” Adams Strunk said. “So, yes, we thought about it, but at the end of the day with league rules the way they are, it would have maybe put us back three weeks and, you know, to get the right head coach, I was just not willing to go to the back of the line and take a chance of missing out on someone we really wanted.”
Vrabel will be a coaching commodity, and likely will land in a more secure place — and probably with a better job — than the one he just left.
???? There’s a ton of great, exclusive details in this piece by The Post’s Paul Schwartz on the Giants’ split with defensive coordinator Wink Martindale. The climax? Upon hearing two of his defensive lieutenants would be fired, Martindale “cursed out [Brian] Daboll … got up, slammed the door and walked out of the building.”
???? The Knicks made light work of the Trail Blazers in a 112-84 win at the Garden, led by OG Anunoby’s 23 points. That’s the Knicks’ fifth straight win since adding Anunoby to the lineup. Enjoy it, encourages The Post’s Mike Vaccaro.
⚾ The austerity we’ve seen from the Mets in building the 2024 roster? Max Scherzer warned us it was coming.
⚾ Rachel Balkovec, after two ground-breaking years managing in the Yankees’ minor league system, departed for a front office job with the Marlins.
???? The Islanders were outclassed by the Canucks, 5-2, and now have just four wins in their past 12 games.
???? The Rangers’ Brennan Othmann experiment is over already.
???? Heat coach Erik Spoelstra agreed to a record-setting eight-year, $120 million contract extension. Worth every penny.
???? Today’s reminder that the Liberty still haven’t actually re-signed Breanna Stewart or Jonquel Jones.