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TAMPA — The short Story has come to an end.
What was hinted at in the early chapters of this offseason — that the Yankees would not be investing huge dollars in the greatest free-agent shortstop class ever — transpired. Trevor Story reached agreement Saturday night on a six-year, $140 million pact with the Red Sox.
With that, the five elite free-agent shortstops have new homes. In total, Story, Javier Baez, Carlos Correa, Corey Seager and Marcus Semien are guaranteed $885.3 million — all by American League teams. Not a penny of it from the Yankees.
So, when the Yankees’ spring training home opener began Sunday, Baez was playing for the Tigers. The Yankees had Isiah Kiner-Falefa as their shortstop or stop gap or gap year until next year’s free-agent shortstop class, which likely will include Correa again, plus Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts and Dansby Swanson.
In explaining his financial caution, Hal Steinbrenner told reporters last week, “We’ve got a lot of partners and banks and bond holders.” But do they have a shortstop?
Should Steinbrenner have spent more to assure that answer? Should his payroll be $40 million-ish south of the Dodgers and Mets? Should part of the mandate for this franchise be to keeping layering stars on the roster, considering its access to revenue?
Conversely, the AL East has been won the last two years by the Rays with a bottom-five MLB payroll — money is not a direct correlation to success. And really, if you can’t win the AL East with a $250 million payroll, there are more problems than not going to $270 million or $290 million. Even without signing one of the shortstops, the Yankees are forecasted to be a 90-plus win playoff team by pretty much every analytic system and gambling oddsmaker.
So we can debate whether Steinbrenner should spend more. But if this is his limit, then the Yankees handled shortstop fine this offseason.
I thought their big move should actually have been on Freddie Freeman. But once Freeman got over the shock of the Braves moving on from him, his heart seemed to be on returning home to Southern California. The Yanks probably would have had to beat the Dodgers’ six-year, $162 million pact by so much as to make doing it less feasible (especially under Steinbrenner’s budget restrictions).
The other move that made sense was if the Yankees could have landed Correa for what he accepted with the Twins — a three-year, $105.3 million pact. Correa has opt-outs after each of the first two seasons and will definitely go back into the market after the 2022 campaign unless he suffers a devastating injury or horrible season. One season of a shortstop star would have worked ideally for the Yankees, giving prospects Oswald Peraza and Anthony Volpe another year of seasoning and proving they really are ready.
But the Yankees had done nothing to address multiple needs as camps opened. A week-plus ago, the Correa camp was not yet offering this kind of deal. Should the Yanks have been clairvoyant and held off on the trade that added Josh Donaldson to their roster and payroll, and Kiner-Falefa to play short? A week ago would anyone in the sport have believed that Correa would end up with the lowest guarantee of any of the star shortstops in this class?
It all looks a little worse for the Yankees because without Donaldson on their books, the Twins pivoted to land Correa. It was why Freeman would have been so appealing. His lefty bat would have made going defense/inexpensive/and waiting for the kids at short easier.
Now that is the job of Donaldson, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton to do by staying as healthy and productive as last year. And Aaron Hicks and DJ LeMahieu to get healthy and perform. And Joey Gallo and Gleyber Torres to honor their talent. And Anthony Rizzo to be an effective version of Freeman lite. This is where a lot of the $250 million Steinbrenner has approved is being spent. It is their job to make it easy for Kiner-Falefa to hit eighth or ninth, field the position, steal some bases and any offense he brings is a fringe benefit. Kiner-Falefa does have contact skills and worked during the offseason to try to drive the ball in the air with better authority. Hitting coach Dillon Lawson thinks there are 15 homers there.
Now, Peraza and Volpe are firmly on the clock. The Yanks have done a poor job for more than two decades getting meaningful positional production from their system. Will Peraza and Volpe begin to change that dynamic? If you are going to hold the lid on spending — as Steinbrenner wants — then getting Kiner-Falefa and betting on Peraza and Volpe make sense.
Whether it works or not is now part of a much longer story.
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