ORLANDO, Fla. — You would have a better chance of finding Bigfoot than an executive or agent at the general manager’s meetings who thought Robinson Cano was leaving the Yankees.
One AL official went as far as to say Cano told some of his players he is planning on staying.
Such definitive statements will mean nothing if a big bidder emerges — as they so often have in the past — to undo common wisdom. But, as the meetings concluded Thursday, Cano’s return to the Yankees was the expectation.
Still, both sides need leverage and in conversations with multiple executives and agents this is what came up most often:
YANKEES — Call this the Pettitte Plan. If you remember, after the 2008 season, the Yankees offered Andy Pettitte a pay cut from $16 million to $10 million. He balked. The Yankees said if you don’t take it and something else comes along that they spend on, the budget is not going up, your offer is going down.
And the Yankees decided late to sign Mark Teixeira and knocked their base offer for Pettitte down to $5.5 million, which he accepted — angrily.
If the Yankees were willing to do that to Pettitte when they were not operating under $189 million mandates, wouldn’t they be willing to do that to Cano now?
As Hal Steinbrenner told me Thursday about the Yankees’ 2014 budget, “There is only so much money to be spent.”
So for the Yankees to gain leverage, they essentially would have to get a player or two signed — say Stephen Drew and Carlos Beltran. At that point, the Yankees would say to Cano they still have offers out for Brian McCann and a pitcher or two and if any say yes, the offer to Cano will be diminished or go away.
If Cano’s priority is to stay with the Yankees, then he would either have to blink or potentially play chicken. And the Yankees would have to demonstrate the nerve to walk away from Cano, if indeed others agreed to play for the Yankees and the allocated money for their second baseman no longer fits into the $189 million restrictions.
CANO — Call this The Best Player Theory. This entails a market growing for the second-best free agent, generally viewed as Jacoby Ellsbury.
If Scott Boras is, indeed, able to get north of Carl Crawford’s seven years at $142 million, say, seven at $150 million, might that motivate clubs to consider how much more would be necessary to get the best player.
For as one NL executive said, “think how much better Cano is than Ellsbury and it is not close.” Using Wins Above Replacement (a stat designed to try to encompass a players’ hitting, baserunning and defense while acknowledging the value of the position he plays), Ellsbury has had two seasons above 4.0. Cano has had six.
So would teams pause before signing Ellsbury and think, “we can pay seven years at $150 million for Ellsbury or, say, eight years at $210 million for Cano and feel that for $5 million more per year spread over seven or eight years, you get a significantly better, more durable player?”
“When you can get the best player in the market, that often moves you to go beyond what you had imagined,” an AL executive said. “That is why the best player usually gets more than expected.”
If that does occur, would it motivate the Yankees to match or move away from Cano, and would Cano break ties to the Yankees to go to the highest bidder?