WHAT DO YU DO?
Yanks can afford Darvish with S.F. deal
If the Yankees want to make room to sign Darvish, the Giants could be a good trading partner
If the Yankees have any hope of trading Jacoby Ellsbury to help pave the way for signing Yu Darvish, they’ll probably have to include one of their best young players as an enticement. Most likely that means Clint Frazier, for the same reason Brian Cashman was willing to deal him for Gerrit Cole. That is, he has a surplus of outfielders — including blue-chip prospect Estevan Florial, whom the GM wasn’t willing to include in his talks with the Pirates.
Even then there are probably precious few teams that would take Ellsbury and a sizeable portion of the remaining three years and $68 million he’s owed.
The most obvious candidate is the Giants, who still need two outfielders and aren’t afraid to spend in trying to win again immediately after last year’s disastrous season.
So how about this: Frazier and Ellsbury for Joe Panik, if the Giants agree to take on $36-39 million of Ellsbury’s contract?
Under ordinary circumstances, obviously you’d want much more than Panik for Frazier, but Darvish essentially has to be considered part of the trade, since Cashman said on WFAN last week that he’d have to create payroll flexibility to sign the Japanese star, in order to stay under the $197 million luxurytax threshold.
In Panik the Yankees would get a proven second baseman, ensuring that they wouldn’t have to start the season with rookies at both second and third base. And if they decide that Gleyber Torres is more ready than Miguel Andujar, they seem comfortable that Torres could move to third base, at least temporarily.
Panik, meanwhile, at age 27 is a solid player who made a splash as a rookie, helping the Giants win a championship in 2014, and in Yankee Stadium his lefthanded bat likely would be good for more than the 10 home runs he hit in 138 games last season.
More significantly, Panik just agreed with the Giants on a $3.45 million salary for 2018, which means the Yankees would save a net of close to $10 million if San Francisco agreed to take Ellsbury at $12-13 million a year.
The Giants might just do that because they’d fill holes in center and left with the trade, and they could justify the expenditure on Ellsbury because they’d be paying minimum salary for Frazier, a high-ceiling talent.
With little help coming anytime soon from their weak farm system, the Giants are going to have to pay one way or another to replenish their outfield, and someone like free agent Lorenzo Cain alone is going to cost more than Ellsbury and Frazier combined.
Ellsbury, remember, has a no-trade clause in his contract, but you’d have to think he’d waive it to go to the Giants, for the guarantee of regular playing time with the added benefit of being able to stay home in Phoenix, where he lives, for spring training.
The alternatives for the Yankees to create more payroll room would be to trade either Brett Gardner, who will earn $11 million on the final year of his contract, or David Robertson, who will earn $13 million with one year remaining on his deal. However, both of them are considered vital pieces toward trying to win a championship in 2018, so it wouldn’t make sense to trade either player.
The Yankees don’t have to do anything, of course, and they’d be OK, provided they add some veteran insurance at second or third, but Cashman has made it clear he’d love to add Darvish as another No. 1-type starter who would make the rotation all the more formidable.
Sources say the Yankees sense an opportunity to get Darvish on a five-year deal in the $90 million range, believing that all teams are more committed than ever to limiting the length of mega-deals, especially for pitchers, and that the righthander’s awful World Series could affect his total dollars.
We’ll see about that. Baseball people I spoke to on Sunday believe Darvish’s market is strong enough, with teams like the Cubs, Twins, Rangers and others in the mix, to assure he’ll get more than $100 million.
“You might be able to limit the term,” a veteran executive said, “but there are enough teams interested that someone is going to have to give him at least $20 million a year.”
I think the Yankees might go to that level of bidding if they were assured of staying under the tax-threshold.
Technically they are some $20 million under that threshold, according to various reports, but Cashman has said he wants the flexibility to add salary at the July trade deadline, as he did last year.
And you have to think he’ll spend something to add a veteran infielder before spring training.
Thus the need to create payroll room, even if the Yankees lowered their sights a bit for a free-agent starter such as Alex Cobb. Right now, however, Cashman seems determined to explore every possibility in trying to put Darvish in pinstripes.
Can he find a way to trade Ellsbury? Including Clint Frazier in any such deal is probably his best hope.