This offseason does not have an off switch. Moves have come in two categories — fast and furious. And the Winter Meetings — the normal bazaar of buzz — do not even begin until next week.
Yet, within the frenzy, there had yet to be anything like Friday morning when — before breakfast had even been digested — we learned Robinson Cano was leaving the Yankees for the Mariners, Curtis Granderson was leaving the Yankees for the Mets and Hiroki Kuroda was staying with the Yankees. Then before bedtime, it was revealed Carlos Beltran was coming to the Yankees.
Here are five thoughts on the whirlwind:
1. Would you rather have Granderson for four years at $60 million or Jacoby Ellsbury for seven years at $153 million? The Yankees certainly had that option because we have to assume — all financials being even — Granderson would have stayed. So it will be fascinating the next few years to gauge who made the better decision — the Yankees letting Granderson go or the Mets jumping in to get him.
Ellsbury has the skills to be better all-around than Granderson — but, to date, he has only had one elite season. There is a tease element to him. What he can be, not what he has been.
Thus, it would be no surprise if Granderson were more productive, especially when you factor in a dollar-to-dollar analysis.
Granderson is 2¹/₂ years older than Ellsbury, his base-stealing acumen has dimmed and his strikeout frequency has reached an alarming state, which really soured key decision-making elements of the Yankees front office. But as one NL executive said, “it was as if they built Yankee Stadium just for his swing.” He will lose some homers going to more spacious Citi Field, but he has real power. He has proved he can play in New York — to perhaps lessen the Jason Bay worries, though Bay had played well in Boston and that was supposed to alleviate Northeast fears.
Consider that in Wins Above Replacement (WAR), which attempts to encompass in one statistic offense, defense and baserunning, Ellsbury has just a slight lead (14.8 to 14.0) over Granderson — nothing to justify a contract for three more years and $93 million more. If it is similar for the next four years then it is advantage Mets, disadvantage Yankees. And here is one other note: Gardner at 15.7 was actually better than both and makes you wonder if the Yankees duplicated his skill set with Ellsbury and should have invested elsewhere.
2. Actually, one other WAR number from the past four seasons combined to consider: 29.7. That belongs to Cano. Still, with Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Beltran, the Yankees are working to compensate for the loss — albeit with players far more brittle than the durable Cano.
If the Yankees, say, sign Omar Infante for second and Mark Reynolds to form a third-base platoon with Kelly Johnson, a lineup could look like this: Ellsbury, Derek Jeter, Beltran, McCann, Alfonso Soriano (DH), Mark Teixeira, Johnson/Reynolds, Infante, Gardner. That is a hard lineup 1-to-9 to pitch against, and has two switch-hitters (Beltran, Teixeira) to make matching up tougher.
But I still think it is possible the Yankees will use Gardner and/or Soriano as trade bait for pitching. Both will make about $5 million in 2014 (that is the portion the Yankees owe on Soriano’s contract) and both are due to be free agents next offseason. With outfielders costing as much as Ellsbury and Beltran, the Yankees might be able to get a nice return, though Soriano’s no-trade clause can be a hurdle.
3. There has been speculation that if the Yankees had gone to eight years at $200 million, they could have retained Cano. I don’t believe that. First, Cano was insistent he wanted a 10-year deal. Second, there would still have been a $40 million gap and players tend not to walk away from $40 million. Third, the Mariners went this far, they would have gone to $250 million or $260 million to get this done.
4. Why would the Mariners have done that? For the same reason the Mets went beyond their initial three-year, tolerance level to hand four years at $60 million to Granderson. You are paying for a player. But also for credibility within the industry and to a fan base.
Both the Mariners and the Mets have been bleeding attendance. Seattle lost half its attendance in a decade, from 3.54 million to 1.76 million. The Mets fell from four million the last season at Shea Stadium in 2008 to 2.1 million last year. The Mariners have not had a winning season since 2009; the Mets have not since 2008. The perception was neither could recruit a big-time player.
Both organizations needed to change the subject, the mojo, the momentum. For the Mets, it cost one-quarter the price to do so — at least temporarily. Because remember this: both Granderson (33 in March) and Cano (31) are late in their prime and likely playing in 2014 on teams not ready to win, and will be ebbing toward an inevitable slide just as their clubs might be getting ready to seriously contend.
5. I will leave the last word to an NL official who I think summed up my feelings even better than I would have:
“I think it is a lose-lose-lose deal. The Yankees lose because Cano helps them more than Ellsbury. Cano loses because he’s on a worse team in a remote area of the country. And baseball loses because
keeping Cano in pinstripes would have been good from a legacy standpoint.
“The contract is ridiculous and a desperate move from a desperate front office that seriously borders on moral hazard. Cano is not [Albert] Pujols or [Alex Rodriguez], he hasn’t done what they did, and he doesn’t deserve to be in the same contract range. I realize there is more money in the game and inflation, but it is a bad contract already and will handicap the franchise long term.”