Word came down yesterday that the Yankees had not so much as talked to Tatsuya Imai, as the window to sign the latest Japanese pitching sensation begins to close.
Unlike seemingly every other Japanese phenom on the boats on the planes coming to America, Imai openly expressed his desire not to join the Dodgers but to beat them.
Sounds like just the sort of fearless gamer that we could use, no?
No.
It seems that your New York Yankees are not even making their usual, elaborate pretense of finishing second (or third) in the contest for the biggest free agents out there.
The news that Imai was not a person of interest capped a week in which we also learned that our gutsy relief find of 2024, Luke Weaver, joined what has become a veritable parade of pitchers from the Bronx over to Queens the last few years, including the likes of Luis Severino and Devin Williams.
It's not even clear that Stevie Cohen's Mets are in it for anything beyond the casino. But here they are, repeatedly stealing away even the sorts of key role players we would seem to need to put a roster together.
The Metsies also passed on free-agent starter Michael King...who remained in San Diego with the Padres, for a mere three-year deal.
King, a former Yankees stalwart, would seem to have been, in today's baseball marketplace, the sort of low-risk pick-up that even nominally contending teams would rush to ink, a proven commodity who has been ready, willing, and able to pitch in almost any capacity over the years: starter, middle reliever, closer.
No.
The vast weather system that is Yankee disinterest looms over the horizon like an upstate New York snow front.
All but taunting the Yanks, the other day Dani Wexelman, latest in the Cast of Thousands on SNY's Sportsnite—the nightly show itself a vibrant contrast to the cobwebbed YES Network, papered mostly with pink slips and Eurosoccer these days—implored the Bombers to least re-sign Cody Bellinger, saying something to the effect of:
"C'mon, don't you have to take another shot at a World Series before the window closes on Aaron Judge, on Gerrit Cole?"
No.
The "no" team in the City of No doesn't have to do a damned thing. And they won't.
"Word" now has it that Bellinger's legendary agent is now demanding an eight-year contract for $400 million. I don't know who that word is coming from, but I'd bet my bottom dollar it sis someone whose initials are "B.C." Spreading this kind of rumor is the perfect excuse for not signing a big star.
Remember the Mets, and A-Rod's supposed demand for a personal assistant? Or just last year, when Soto had to have a luxury box.
It's called "capitalism," guys. You think someone wants too much? You find a way to make him another offer. IF you want to sign him at all.
Not so long ago—well, all right, it
is long ago, and seems like longer—Cody's Bellinger's weak-hitting dad made a spectacular, over-the-fence catch to save a World Series game we were in the midst of blowing to the Mets.
Someone like Bellinger pere, a guy who could play anywhere, was on the roster because that was the sort of invaluable extra we could afford on a world-class team—the world-class team, probably the greatest team ever—that was the turn-of-the-century Yankees.
The difference between then and now is that now the Yanks have decided that they are a small-market team.
Nearly every one of their moves for the last few years reflects that mentality.
Trading four good young pitchers to acquire a rental superstar like Soto in hopes of stealing a World Series that would keep the fans pouring in for a few more years? A superstar who Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman knew from the beginning was only a one-year rental?
Yeah, that's how the likes of desperately under-capitalized teams such as the Washington Nationals and the Tampa Bay Rays operate.
Passing on the likes of Cody back in 2023, or Pete Alonso last year, both of whom would have been cheap pick-ups who might have pushed the team to a championship? Passing on star after star after star—on the one man (times a dozen examples)—who might have turned the Yanks into the Dodgers East?
Hey, that's Moneyball. That's the Athletics, minus Sacramento.
I kid, I kid, of course. The Yankees aren't a small-market team. A small-market team is usually:
—Run by brilliant, crafty baseball minds who know how to maximize smaller acquisitions and build a great farm system.
—Short of cash.
Not so much the Yanks, who have kept the same incompetent in charge of the front office for a record 28 years and counting, and who have been handed billions of dollars of free stadia by the taxpayers over the last half-century.
Not the New York Yankees who, according to the latest luxury-tax calculations, spend only around 50 percent of their stupendous revenue on payroll and tax, leaving some $350-$400 million of declared revenue (and who knows what in undeclared samoleons) to spend on...what, exactly?
The Yanks are just lucky that their superstar of the age, Aaron Judge, is not as possessed by the same adoration of money as the Steinbrenner heirs, or he would have taken his talents to the Bay Area years ago and exposed just what a rotting hulk the Yanks have become.
It is true, of course, as a great man once said, that there's no predicting baseball. Who knows if Luke Weaver can bounce back? Michael King has an alarming history of injury, and Tatsuay Imai is awfully small, and if Cody Bellinger really wants $50 mil a year through 2033, we're better off sticking with the kids.
But taking risks and spending money is how you win championships. That, or by hiring skilled people to build a great farm system, but that would mean...
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
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