Yanks pick up Britton’s option, locking in key pen piece
The Yankees made the first of their important offseason moves Thursday, picking up the option on Zack Britton’s contract. It guarantees he will be an anchor in their bullpen for the next two seasons. The Yankees exercised a unique option for the 2022 season; if they had not, the left-handed reliever would have become a free agent.
Friday was the deadline for the option.
It’s a move that would have been a given in the days before the coronavirus pandemic. Britton has been reliable and is ideal insurance for Aroldis Chapman, who has been responsible for the game-winning runs that have ended the Yankees’ playoff runs the last two seasons. But after a 60-game season without fans where there were record economic losses, even a $13 million dollar price tag for 2021 and $14 million for ’22 took some consideration.
The contract now expands from $39 million guaranteed to $53 million total.
Britton, 32, has posted a 2.14 ERA in 105.1 innings as a Yankee. It makes sense that the Yankees would pick up the option. He pitched to a 1.89 ERA in 19 innings over 20 appearances in this abbreviated season. While Chapman sat out with C OVI D-19, Britton went 8-for-8 in save opportunities.
He also has played a very big role in the Yankees clubhouse.
As the team’s union rep, Britton was the point person for the players while the Yankees and MLB tried to negotiate the 60-game season during the pandemic.
In fact, Yankees GM Brian Cashman made a point to praise Britton’s leadership after the season.
“I want to really give a major shout out to Zack Britton, who obviously had the higher level of responsibilities as our player rep and the go-between with our ownership and front office on behalf of his union and his teammates, and in a time that obviously was really a difficult position to be in,” Cashman said.
The Yankees still have important decisions ahead this winter. The next will be whether they will make the qualifying offer to DJ LeMahieu, Masahiro Tanaka or James Paxton. They have five days from the end of the World Series to make those offers, which are worth $18.9 million for 2021.
GARY’S BIG WINTER
There is a lot more for the Yankees to figure out than how to pay DJ LeMahieu this winter.
One of the most important questions they faced after another disappointingly early exit from the postseason was why Gary Sanchez underperformed and can he rebound in 2021.
With his future with the Yankees in question, Sanchez is among three Yankees who will play in the Dominican winter league with Toros Del Este this year along with Miguel Andujar and Domingo German. All three head into 2021 unsure if and where they fit with the Yankees, but for Sanchez it was a dizzying dropoff.
Sanchez went from being the everyday, starting catcher to being benched in September to try and find his swing and then starting just two of seven playoff games.
Sanchez hit .147/.253/.365 with 10 home runs and 24 RBI in 49 games. He struck out 64 times in 156 at-bats this season, almost a 10% jump in strikeout percentage.
“He didn’t look like he was recognizing the ball,” one scout for a rival American League team this year said. “He was swinging at pitches that were not in his zone at all.”
Sanchez was in the bottom two
percentile of strikeout percentage and bottom 11 percentile of whiff percentage this season, according to Baseball Savant. Even though he was among the players hitting the ball the hardest this season and did have 10 home runs, he also struggled with the highest percentage of line drives of his career — not the best option for slow-footed catchers.
This winter, the Yanks emphasized making Sanchez a better receiver, going so far as to bring in catching coach Tanner Swanson. Sanchez’s pitch framing numbers improved, but not enough to allow him to continue to catch ace Gerrit Cole.
The Yankees have limited options with Sanchez. Kyle Higashioka took his playing time at the end of 2020. He is among the top 70 percentile in the league in pitch framing and hit .250/.250/.521 this season — but in just 48 at-bats.
The easy solution would be to go out and get a new starting catcher. J.T. Realmuto is a free agent, but he is going to cost a lot of money even in an offseason after teams are claiming to have lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Yankees have been signaling for the past year they want to get under that $210 million luxury tax point with their payroll and shelling out for Realmuto, who reportedly is not that interested in playing in New York anyway, would definitely push them over. There are other starting catching options available in James McCann, 38-year-old future Hall of Famer Yadier Molina, 30-year-old Mike Zunino and even former Sanchez back-up Austin Romine.
But there is also some caution heading into this winter about not having had a really good chance to evaluate players in this season.
This offseason not only holds the economic uncertainty of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic season, when the Yankees lost more money than any other team according to managing partner Hal Steinbrenner, but also the questions about how to weigh a short season that had spring training interrupted.