No, I Don’t Want Matt Holliday

Hell YES I want Andrew McCutchen but no, I don’t want Matt Holliday. I get a lot of tweets and mentions on both Twitter and Facebook as well as emails and real-life interactions (yes those still occur hahaha) and when the people I’m speaking to find out I have a Yankees blog I usually get flooded with questions. Should the Yankees make this trade? Should the Yankees sign this guy? Do you think the Yankees will win the World Series next year? I’m happy to answer them all so today I answer one in blog form as I received an email from an old friend asking me my thoughts on signing Matt Holiday, former St. Louis Cardinals slugger, and I can answer that in one word. No.

Holliday is set to hit free agency if and when the Cardinals decide to decline his $17 million team option for the 2017 season and there are more than a few reasons why St. Louis will be saying good bye to their right fielder this season. Holliday’s power numbers are down across the board and so are the number of games he’s played over the last couple of seasons. Holliday has become injury prone and expensive for the production he is going to give any team, especially a team like the Yankees where the Yankees have their own version of Holliday in Tyler Austin already.

Holliday can play some first base as well as the outfield and designated hitter but Austin can do that as well for half the cost, or much less, while adding some versatility on the base paths as well. Holliday is a station-to-station runner at this point and is no longer a stolen base threat, although his extra-base hit numbers are borderline legendary for his era. The biggest problem though is the fact that Holliday has only played in 183 games during the last two seasons while hitting just 24 home runs. The Yankees are finally getting out of a Mark Teixeira type contract and they don’t need another.

So when people ask me if the Yankees should go after Holliday I just have to say no. Sure he expressed numerous times throughout his career a desire to be a Yankee and I have always emphasized having players who want to be here over simply having hired mercenaries at every position but the deals have to make sense as well and signing Holliday goes against everything the Yankees worked towards this summer. A Holliday signing stunts the youth movement, pushed the team farther over the luxury tax threshold and gives the team another injury prone, aging veteran to clog up the 40-man and 25-man rosters. No thank you. No all over again.