Yanks tender contract to Gary
The Gary Sanchez mystery is over. For now at least.
The Yankees will tender a contract to the struggling catcher, according to multiple reports. His status with the Yankees has been shaky for a few years, and getting a Bomber contract was certainly not a sure thing.
In other Yankee moves, infielder Gio Urshela, starting pitcher Domingo German and reliever Lucas Luetge agreed to one-year contracts.
Urshela will earn $6.55 million next season after hitting .267 with 14 homers and 49 RBI. He played third base before taking over shortstop from struggling Gleyber Torres.
German went 4-5 with a 4.58 ERA in 22 appearances (18 starts), coming off a suspension for violating MLB’s domestic violence policy.
Luetge went 4-2 with a 4.58 ERA in 57 relief appearances. He’ll earn $905,000 next season.
Sanchez, 28, made $6.3 million last season and is expected to make about $8 million in 2022, according to reports. He is set to become a free agent after the upcoming season. He’s made the ll-Star team twice (2017 and 2019), but his struggles at the plate and behind it have drawn the ire of Yankee fans.
The free-agent market for catchers is thin, so the Bomber brass apparently decided its best bet was to stick with Sanchez and Kyle Higashioka as the primary backstops.
Sanchez broke out for the Bombers as a rookie in 2016 with 20 homers in 53 games after his call-up. He hit .278 with 33 homers with 90 RBI in 2017. After a poor 2018 season, he rebounded with 34 homers with 77 RBI in 2019. But it’s been a struggle for him since.
He batted just .147 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and there was a possibility that he would not be tendered a contract. He was, but 2021 saw him slash .204/.307/.423 with 23 homers and 54 RBI, to go along with his continuing defensive struggles.
Meanwhile, Clint Frazier, the Yankees much-ballyhooed former prospect who never quite panned out, is headed to Chicago.
Frazier agreed to a one-year deal with the Cubs on Tuesday, according to multiple reports. The news comes after the Yankees designated Frazier for assignment, along with now-former teammates Tyler Wade and Rougned Odor, on Nov. 19.
Frazier’s Yankee career comes to an unceremonious end after just 228 games and 807 plate appearances. The best of those plate appearances came in 2019 and 2020 when, finally blessed with regular playing time, he went .267/.347/.497 at the dish with 20 home runs and 20 doubles across the two seasons.
Everything came crashing down in 2021. Frazier was the Opening Day left fielder, finally taking hold of a starting spot for the team that traded Andrew Miller for him. The red-headed outfielder responded by hitting .156 in March and April and .186 for the season, which ended for him on June 30. That was the last time he played in a big-league game, and on July 2 he was placed on the 10-day injured list with vertigo.
By August, he was ready for a rehab assignment that got shut down as the dizziness and vision problems failed to get better, and the Yankees ruled out vertigo as its cause. Now with a new team, hopefully some clarity emerges about what was actually happening with Frazier last season.
The terms of Frazier’s deal have not been disclosed yet, but it is a major-league deal, according to initial reports.