11:46 am: The Yankees are only covering $ 850,000 of Ottavino’s salary, tweets ESPN Buster Olney.
11:30 am: Feinsand tweets that “it looks like” the Red Sox are taking on Ottavino’s $ 8 million salary and a $ 3 million deferred subscription bonus that is due in 2022. In doing so, they will effectively buy a new prospect and take on a potential bounceback appeaser (who could be a candidate for a deadline deal if the Sox are out of the division hunt). The Yankees, meanwhile, will get rid of Ottavino’s $ 9 million luxury tax.
11:25 am: Right-handed German franc – the Yankees’ choice for the fourth round of the 2018 draft – goes to the Red Sox in that deal, Sherman’s Tweets.
11:16 am: The Yankees negotiated with the right hand Adam Ottavino for Red Sox, reports Lindsey Adler of The Athletic (via Twitter) Joel Sherman of the New York Post add that the Yankees are sending Ottavino and a prospect to Boston. The Red Sox are taking “most” of Ottavino’s $ 8 million salary, by Sherman, which will help Yankees distance themselves from the $ 210 million luxury tax barrier – a limit they were almost reaching before agreeing to this exchange.
After purchasing Jameson Taillon Pirates and agreeing to the terms with DJ LeMahieu and Corey Kluber, the Yankees found themselves with about a million dollars separating them from the tax ceiling, according to Jason Martinez of Roster Resource. Tipping most of Ottavino’s remaining salary will give the Yankees some breathing space as they seek to close their off-season negotiations. The Yankees recently spoke to Brett Gardnerthe camp about a meeting, and the club may still be in search of accessible depth of rotation, even after adding Kluber and Taillon. After all, both are coming out of 2020 seasons ruined by injuries, and the rest of the team’s rotation comes with similar workload problems.
Trade between the two teams is the first in seven years and, like Mark Feinsand of MLB.com, points, only the second trade that the Yankees’ GM, Brian Cashman, made with his organization’s main rival.
Although finances are the determining factor in this trade, it is unlikely that the Yankees would have made the change if Ottavino had not struggled against a dismal display in last year’s shortened season. The 35-year-old appeared in 24 games, but totaled only 18 1/3 innings of work, yielding a dozen runs in 20 hits and nine walks with 25 punches at that time. Ottavino’s 5.89 ERA was the highest since his debut as a rookie with the Cardinals in 2010, although independent field metrics were more optimistic in his work (3.52 FIP, 3.62 SIERA).
Control was never a strong point for Ottavino, but he lowered his walking rate from 13.8% in 2017-19 to 10.6% last year. It is easy to call his ERA the result of a very high average of 0.375 on the ball in play, but Ottavino’s fights seemed to be more than just bad luck. Despite his improved control, the right-handed hitting rate dropped slightly (31.5 percent to 29.4 percent), and Ottavino produced hard contact at a high career rate (average exit speed of 90.6 mph ; 50 percent rate of violent hits).
More to come.