So I have to say I had a little bit of a mini heart attack
this week when my phone lit up that so and so, this follower and that follower
etc. had retweeted a tweet put out by Andrew Marchand of ESPN.com. When I
swiped and opened the tweet the tweet said, to paraphrase, that Ellsbury had a
no-trade clause and would have to approve any deal to Seattle. Immediately I
began scouring Twitter and the internet to see what I had missed only to notice
that Marchand, like many writers (and no I don’t blame them for it if this is
their profession), was putting some click baits out there to push his newest
article covering how the New York Yankees and Seattle Mariners could pull off a
Jacoby Ellsbury for Robinson Cano swap. The story was not only unoriginal and
already done by myself and others a month ago but it got me thinking, why would
the Yankees even want Cano back at this point?
We all know the back story at this point. Robinson Cano
signed a 10-year deal worth a whopping $240 million with the Seattle Mariners
back in 2013. At the time Cano, a Yankees farm hand and second baseman, was 31 years old and coming off another strong season in the middle of the Yankees
lineup. Since the deal Cano has delivered the Mariners just 36 home runs in two
seasons including a .300 average and .807 OPS. Cano has gone from being the
“lazy” Yankees star that never legged out ground balls and never turned singles
into doubles and doubles into triples to a perennial slow starter and a
struggling player with a crippling contract.
Ellsbury’s contract is no walk in the park with five seasons
left but there is still some upside with it. Ellsbury showed, if healthy, he
can at least be a weapon in the Yankees lineup. Is he overpaid? Sure he is, a
defensive center fielder who is never going to hit you 32 home runs again like
he did in Boston in 2011, but his contract is far from a disaster at this time.
If he has another 2015 type season rather than a generally healthy 2014 season
next year then we can talk but just two seasons in and with a deal that pays
him until he is just 37 years old, not 41 years old like Cano’s deal, is far
better bang for your buck in my opinion.
Also, did you even head the Andy Van Slyke comments? Come on
guys, there is some truth there. The only people that tell the truth and
nothing but the truth are drunk people, children up to a certain age and people
with nothing to lose. Van Slyke may have fit into two of these categories but
still, there’s definitely some troubling truth there.
I don’t care how much money Seattle kicks in or how much
money is offset by another “bad” contract in Ellsbury. Unless Seattle is
willing to kick in a few years or a the fountain of youth I simply don’t want
to see another player well into his 40’s and long past his prime making an uber
amount of money in a Yankees uniform. Those days began with Alex Rodriguez and
they need to die with Alex Rodriguez. No more 10-year contracts to players past
30-years old, no more potentially franchise crippling contracts that will
become a burden sooner rather than later and no more contracts, period, for
historically “lazy” players. No more. Enough! Why would we want Cano back
anyway? We wouldn’t, well we shouldn’t anyway.
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Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)