The Yankees refuse to punt. They didn’t last year when, in retrospect, they probably would have been better off trading Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson and pretty much anything else of value to re-establish their farm system and get under a $189 million payroll in 2013.
Instead, they kept adding pieces, notably Alfonso Soriano in late July, all the way to Brendan Ryan 10 days into September. It is not in their DNA to surrender.
With that makeup not changing, the Yankees reached a five-year, $85 million deal with an ideal player, Brian McCann.
For in 2014 — and probably 2015 and 2016 — his lefty pull power should provide a huge boost, especially as a catcher. But this is live for today, damn tomorrow. McCann, who still must pass a physical to have the deal finalized, does not have the body type to suggest he will age well. He doesn’t turn 30 until February, but has faded in each of the last three second halves, including drastically last year (.910 first-half OPS/.680 second).
He already has had shoulder surgery, degrading good, but not great catching skills.
And, in the Yankees’ live-for-today world, they are not done. They continue to push for Carlos Beltran, who turns 37 next April, has serious knee problems and — like McCann — likely is heading to the AL because he recognizes the need for DH pit stops.
The Yankees also have moved from gloomy early in the offseason to more upbeat that Hiroki Kuroda will return for another year. But he turns 39 in February and went 0-6 with a 6.56 ERA in his final eight starts.
They have their eyes on others such as Masahiro Tanaka, Stephen Drew and — if Beltran does not come through — Shin-Soo Choo. They will need to have Alex Rodriguez’s contract disappear to complete their shopping extravaganza, and won’t know about that until early January at the soonest.
They want to move a lot quicker than that timetable with Cano and hope to meet with his representatives this week. They plan to re-confirm — in person — they badly want to retain the second baseman and perhaps have some wiggle room upward from the seven years at roughly $165 million already offered. But not much. And, more important, they are going to keep enlisting players to join McCann while not going over the $189 million luxury tax threshold. If Cano really wants to stay, he should take the offer before the money begins to disappear and the bid needs to be lowered or removed completely.
With McCann, the Yankees will have eight players signed next year for $115.21 million, which would fall to $87.71 million if Rodriguez were removed completely for 2014.
If the Yankees could form a middle of the order of Beltran, Cano, Soriano, McCann and Mark Teixeira, they believe their offense will be a force again in 2014.
Yankees catchers hit .213 with a major league-low eight homers last year. McCann has hit at least 18 homers in each of the last eight seasons and has 171 in that time, the most by any catcher. He could become a 25-35-homer guy as a dead pull hitter in Yankee Stadium and with regular DH at-bats.
Also, he is recognized as having superb makeup. A former Braves teammate described McCann as “beloved” in the clubhouse and a quiet leader. An executive from a team that had interest in McCann said, “This is a guy’s guy. He is a tough, competitive baseball rat” from a baseball family. His dad is a former college coach who now runs a hitting academy with McCann’s brother.
As a defender, McCann is known as a good framer of pitches, but none of his other skills stand out. But he is viewed as better than prime-aged Jorge Posada, and the Yankees won tons with Posada’s suspect defense, but elite bat for a catcher. In fact, Posada’s four-year, $52 million deal may be instructive here. The Yankees signed him for the now and won a title in 2009, but saw him decline to a hardly usable catcher in 2010 and strictly a DH in 2011, the last year of the deal.
The $85 million the Yankees gave McCann includes a vesting sixth-year option that could take the deal to $100 million. It is the most ever for a free-agent catcher as they outbid Texas, in particular, but also Boston and a late inquiry from Colorado. Their hope will be that he can remain mainly behind the plate, at least until Teixeira and, perhaps, CC Sabathia’s contracts expire after 2016. But that is down the road.
The Yankees just don’t punt. And the Yankees signed McCann for now.