Yankees Mailbag: Debating a Sevy reunion and future top salaries
Yesterday at 02:30 PM
The offseason brings in some fun hypotheticals and options in this week's mailbag.
Good afternoon everyone, it's time to dive back into the mailbag and answer some of your questions. Remember to send in your questions for our biweekly offseason call by e-mail to pinstripealleyblog [at] gmail [dot] com.
DanYankees asks:Early to project but what's a preferred starting rotation. Cole, Rodónand Gil would seem likely. Cortes and Stroman would seem less desirable. Who are the FA targets? Any for real prospects get a shot? Do the Yanks consider going after Severino on an affordable 2-3 year deal? A healthy Severino way better than Cortes or Stroman.
I'm combining two questions here because they cover extremely similar topics. As of right now, I'd say that the Yankee rotation has Cole, Rodón, Gil, Schmidt, and Cortes or Stroman in the fold. Both of their fifth starting options have their reasons to doubt whether they'll be around for Opening Day — Stroman never even pitched in the postseason, and Cortes was shopped at the deadline this past season on top of dealing with an injury late in the year. Their pitching prospects are thin among the ranks ready for the majors right now, as most of them would need to truly shine in Spring Training in order to get enough support for a promotion.
Now, does that mean that they can shop around in free agency, and does Severino in particular make sense? They'll certainly check in with most of the top names, as they've already been connected to a couple of them, and I do think there's a world where Severino could've made sense in a reunion. However, Severino just declined a $21 million qualifying offer, meaning he's got to be at least reasonably confident he can get more than that on the open market, and I just don't see the Yankees offering him that even on a two- or three-year deal just a year removed from parting with him. Dabbling in the pitching market will be totally dependent on whether the Yankees retain Juan Soto or not, but that particular route seems unlikely at best.
The idiot that said, "Harper is coming" asks:When Judge signed his record setting nine year, $360 million contract, did you think he would actually have a chance to have a season that was overall statistically BETTER than his 2022 campaign?
No, quite honestly. I expected Judge's numbers to remain great for at least the first half of his contract, but there's no doubt that a historical campaign like he just had wasn't something you could confidently place your bets on. That he could do it by becoming an even better well-rounded hitter as opposed to just going on an absurd power streak to best his AL record 62 bombs would've been near impossible to predict, but Judge reached another level this year — and he did that after enduring one of the worst months of his career to start off. I'd say there's no way he can top it yet again, but when it comes to Judge's performance in the regular season I'm willing to turn off all expectations and simply appreciate greatness at this point. Hopefully, the postseason success will follow him at some point.
Hal'itosis asks:By the time Soto's contract is finished ... will the highest AAV in the sport have topped $75m?
Let's assume that Soto will sign a deal somewhere in the 12-14 year range, giving us a target of 2037-39 to reach $75 million per year. The current leader was just signed last year with Shohei Ohtani's $700 million deal which, due to how much of it is deferred, translates to a $46 million AAV deal by MLB's tracking. We'd need to jump back to 2013 at the earliest to see how much the top salary has ballooned in that time, and then we could check in on 2001 to see if there's any pattern to MLB's inflation.
Back in 2013, Alex Rodriguez's 2007 extension was still the king of baseball deals earning him an AAV of $27.5 million, but if we wanted to see what new money was coming into the game big sluggers Albert Pujols, Ryan Howard, and Prince Fielder had all inked deals in an AAV range of $24-25 million a year ago and Felix Hernandez had gotten a new deal that offseason for $25 million a year. That's about $20 million more than Ohtani's got today, but what about 2001? Ironically, A-Rod had just set the table there as well with his Texas Rangers deal giving him $22 million a year, but the rest of baseball's elite talent seemed capped around $13-15 million per.
This is obviously far from a perfect analysis, but the trend of the raw dollar amount skyrocketing doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime, so there's a realm of possibility that baseball's biggest contract could challenge the $75 million mark. Is it likely? That's harder to say — Ohtani's contract is obviously an enigma with no other two-way player around, but Soto appears destined to eclipse his mark anyway and get into the $50 million yearly range. It takes a perfect storm of unique talent and youth lining up for someone to push the barrier this far, but even as rare as it is generational talent always comes through eventually. The bigger question may end up being what the CBA looks like in the next decade and whether that allows athletes to keep pushing their earning ceiling at this rate.
Warren L. asks:Given Aaron Judge's age and size wouldn't the Yankees' best idea for first base be moving Aaron there? Would save a lot of wear and tear on his body.
I think that the problem with this idea is that Judge was genuinely an elite outfielder when he was in right field, so the Yankees may prefer getting a true center fielder and moving Judge back into a position of comfort in the corner (whether that's left or right depends on Soto returning and his flexibility there) versus throwing him into another new position. It would likely save some wear and tear long-term if he took to it immediately, but just because first base is considered the 'easiest' position on the field doesn't mean that there's not a lot of nuance to it. Not to mention, but its been quite noticeable when the Yankees have had a great defensive first baseman versus when they haven't over the last few decades. So gambling on Judge immediately taking to it starts to feel like a losing bet when they could get a short-term solution there while giving Judge the opportunity to gradually start practicing.
