Right to save bucks
ready to win again, likely beginning in 2018.
Maybe they have to go to five years and $90 million to get it done, which sounds rather obscene for a reliever who will pitch 70 innings a year. But more than ever you need bullpen dominance to win championships, as we see nearly every postseason now, especially this most recent one.
So why not spend on the best guy out there, put him behind Dellin Betances once again and lock up the late innings?
For 2017 a deep bullpen will be vital just to be competitive, as ordinary as the starting rotation is looking. Beyond next season Betances and Chapman could be keys to winning it all.
We’ll see if the Yankees outbid the Dodgers and perhaps the Nationals for Chapman.
In the meantime, it was equally important to avoid a four or fiveyear mega-deal with Encarnacion entering his age-34 season. He’s a big-time slugger, yes, but he’s basically a DH and the Yankees just went through this type of thing, living with the inevitable age-related injuries with Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez.
For one year and $13 million, Holliday figures to give them at least somewhat similar production out of the DH spot, but if it doesn’t work, due to injuries or whatever, they can move on without him. No harm, no foul, and a year from now the Yankees will have a much better idea about how their young talent is progressing.
Same goes for Hill. To get a 36-year-old, injury-prone starter, it would have cost the Yankees more than the three years and $48 million for which he re-signed on Monday with the Dodgers, and that just wouldn’t have made sense. hey need starting pitching, no doubt about that, but again, a year from now they’ll have a better idea about Severino, as well as Justus Sheffield and James Kaprielian, and even some of their more unheralded young starters.
They’ll also be practically assured of getting under the luxury tax threshold, which will free them up to spend big again. As long as they stick to the plan.
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