Why do people flock to the stores the day after Thanksgiving?
Why are their major sales around Presidents’ Day?
Why does every TV product commercial end with, “If you act now, we’ll throw in a bonus one… for FREE”?
It’s because people love good bargains. When there are bargains, people love to shop.
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This winter promises to be the winter of bargains in baseball.
What happened at the Winter Meetings last week? Basically nothing. This is because baseball teams are wary of spending big. Some, of spending at all.
Players can (and will be had) for pennies on the dollar (or in baseball terms for millions on the tens of millions).
The big name players: D.J. LeMahieu and Trevor Bauer to name the two biggest (but you can probably add J.T. Realmuto to the mix as well) will command big dollars. The other guys… probably not so much.
It will be a buyer’s market.
The teams with the financial muscle should swoop in and pay and pay and pay to gather the best bargains. There should be a ton of them this winter.
“Sign one player now, get two free!”
This is the market the Yankees are in right now.
The Yankees have the financial might to be big time players this winter. They should take advantage of this market.
In 2020, Masahiro Tanaka earned a salary of $23,000,000 from the Yankees.
Is there any chance that he’ll earn anything close to that in 2021? I don’t think so. With basically all of baseball claiming huge financial losses, players are seeing that their values have plummeted. It is possible that the team that signs Tanaka will get him for about half of what he earned in 2020.
Last year, the salaries for Tanaka, James Paxton, and J.A. Happ were a combined $52,500,000. All three of those players are free agents now. All three. The Yankees have, just in the salaries saved from those three pitchers, a TON of money to spend compared to last season.
A ton.
This is the time to spend. This is the time to buy. This is the time.
This is when the Yankees, who have the financial strength, should flex their muscles and address all of their needs.
A super team can be had for a discount price this winter.
Will the Yankees take advantage?
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