Could one brain-melting deal beget another?
Or to put it another way: Many baseball folks began November thinking Robinson Cano would remain a Yankee and Jacoby Ellsbury would wind up a Mariner. Did some wires cross somewhere over the mainland?
For with Ellsbury set to arrive in New York on Wednesday for his physical, after essentially agreeing to bolt the Red Sox for a stunning, seven-year, $153-million contract with the Yankees, Cano departing The Bronx for the Pacific Northwest seems like more of a possibility than it did 24 hours ago.
After all, if there’s one subject on which we’re most certain the Yankees aren’t bluffing, it’s that they intend to get their 2014 payroll under $189 million. And with Ellsbury set to draw such a huge paycheck and the Yankees still in need of two starting pitchers, their threat to stick at seven years and $170-ish million for Cano seems more legitimate.
So if the Mariners, profoundly desperate for offensive production, offered, say, eight years and $214 million for Cano? Another $44 million guaranteed, when Jay Z is trying to establish himself as a force in athlete representation?
It wouldn’t be anywhere as good as getting that sort of figure from the Yankees. But it might be better than getting well under $200 million from the Yankees.
For everyone besides the agreeable Felix Hernandez, the Mariners have served as baseball’s most prominent anti-destination in recent years. If we were to name all of the high-profile players who turned down a recent chance to play in Seattle, we’d run out of space in this column.
Would Cano really give up a lifetime in The Bronx, in Yankees pinstripes, to join a franchise that hasn’t qualified for the postseason since 2001 — the season Cano signed with the Yankees as an amateur free agent out of the Dominican Republic — and whose general manager, Jack Zduriencik, is widely viewed as being in deep trouble?
There of course exists the possibility another team could pounce, especially if the Yankees are sticking to that $170-ish million figure. The Rangers stand as the most intriguing, as they could trade one of their middle infielders, Elvis Andrus or Jurickson Profar, for a starting pitcher (David Price), and Cano would then be joining a perennial contender. As of now, however, the Rangers haven’t had a single conversation with Team Cano.
Other teams we tapped early as possibilities seem to have fizzled. The Tigers say they are content to install the recently acquired Ian Kinsler at second base, while the Nationals just don’t appear likely to swim into the deep end of the pool, not with Jayson Werth and Ryan Zimmerman signed long-term and a desire to tie up Ian Desmond, Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann to multi-year pacts.
The Mets? As Wayne Gretzky said in that old Nike commercial when Bo Jackson takes to the ice, “No.”
The Mariners are the most probable contender for Cano’s services, and in a vacuum, eight years for $214 million wouldn’t represent a significant overpay. Cano is easily one of the top 10 players in baseball. If the Mariners could add a second hitter to join Cano — Nelson Cruz? Carlos Beltran? — and their young pitching developed sufficiently, they could make a run at .500 and maybe even beyond in 2014.
It’s just that it would be awfully difficult to expand the Cano brand — the whole concept that Jay Z has been pushing — in the Mariners’ beautiful yet remote home city.
There was frustration from Cano’s side prior to Tuesday’s events, so there has to be even more now. The Yankees have committed a huge sum of money over seven years to a very good player in Ellsbury who nevertheless has proven himself injury-prone and power-deficient — when the Yankees appeared to have a similar, far cheaper player in Brett Gardner, though Gardner is just one year away from free agency. They want to give the same number of years and only about $20 million more to their own guy who is durable, powerful and comfortable in New York.
Cano joining the Mariners is a crazy notion. Not dramatically crazier, though, than what we have just experienced. This is suddenly the wackiest Hot Stove season in recent memory.