The New York Yankees now have more than $ 8 million in extra money after swapping Adam Ottavino for the Red Sox. Let’s spend for them!
The Yankees have completed their off-season “final” goal of exiling Adam Ottavino’s salary elsewhere this off-season.
All the fans saw this maneuver coming, but no fans connected Earth saw the Red Sox diving and adding more than $ 8 million of the remaining $ 9 million owed to Otto this year.
Boston will absorb most of the $ 11 million total, which extends into the coming year, and the Yankees should consider this a champagne-worthy gift, although they will likely see its totally perfect line divided by Ottavino’s slider throughout the summer (unless it is negotiated with a different competitor).
Saying goodbye to a boy from Brooklyn, Bomber, is depressing, but that was inevitable, and we should not let the scarlet B distract us from what was inevitably a solid Brian Cashman cloak.
So what next? Where does the money go? One point is obvious and we will address it in a second, but as far as we can tell, there are three paths that the Yankees can follow.
One is extremely likely, positively an unreal dream and one falls somewhere in between. The first step – arguably the most difficult part – is finished.
Brett Gardner No. 11 of the New York Yankees (photo by Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
3. Help from Brett Gardner + Bullpen
The Yankees are obviously going to sign Brett Gardner now, but there better be more.
We would label this as the most likely outcome, by a wide margin.
The Brett Gardner element of this mobile budget scale seems almost guaranteed. With $ 10- $ 13 million left to play, and some money needed for adjustments during the season, the Yankees are likely to give Gardner between $ 2.5- $ 3 million and consider his need for a lefty officially satisfied.
So, are they going to use the rest of the surplus to replace Ottavino’s entries and bring Luis Cessa and Jonathan Loaisiga back into the hierarchy? They can? Please?
The Super Bullpens, which was already in vogue after the 2015 Kansas City Royals victory in the World Series, now looks like a thing of the past – everyone, including the Yankees, is pursuing the Rays’ plug-and-play rotation strategy. But four reliable backend relievers still look like a more magical number, and the Yankees could easily add someone like Trevor Rosenthal or Shane Greene to the mix for $ 4-5 million for a single year.
In fact, if they don’t, it will be disappointing and weak. It’s okay to use some of this new fortune to bring back Gardner, who had 131 wRC + against right-handers in 2019 and a 124 mark in the shortened 2020 season. It is still good for something.
But if they don’t supplement that addition with a reliever too, it would be a mistake.