Money talks and the New York Yankees are normally the team starting that conversation. With Gerrit Cole on the other end of that phone call, things are looking like they are about to get real serious for the best remaining starting pitcher on the open market.
A trio of industry baseball writers, MLB Network insider Joel Sherman, ESPN’s Jeff Passan, and MLB Network insider Jon Heyman, have all been reporting on the happenings of this situation, and it looks as though the Yankees are moving in to give Cole his first formal contract offer, one that will most likely rise over $300 million.
With this contract offer rivaling few deals ever offered in the league, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman has reportedly received “ownership-level approval” for this type of deal, according to Passan. Cole is far and away the best starter on the market this offseason, even with Stephen Strasburg signing a deal that will pay him right around $35 million per season for seven years to stay with the Washington Nationals.
Cole, who just put a huge season with the Houston Astros together, looks to have had his potential list of suitors trimmed down due to the market setting itself up for many teams to not be able to handle that type of burden on their payroll. Besides the lavish Yankees, the Los Angeles Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers look to be the other competitors bidding for his services.
While the Yankees are an obvious inclusion in this bidding war due to the fact that money is running it, the Angels are a very intriguing entrant into this situation.
The Angels represent the hometown team for Cole, one that could bring Cole back home after having played for both the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Astros in his professional career. A homecoming of sorts would be a great pitch for the Angels to use, and pairing Cole with Shohei Ohtani in the rotation is a great first step to actually making the long-term agreement that Mike Trout just signed actually worth it.
For the Dodgers, they too, just like the Bronx Bombers, have always been included in conversations for the market’s top pitchers. With the payroll to handle big investments, they have been burned in the past due to injuries and poor investments, as Yu Darvish and Carl Crawford, among others, come to mind.
Andrew Freidman looks to be uninterested in reliving those issues, and while there has been no mention of the team being wary of going out to get a big-time starter again for a lot of money, that type of player history has got to be inside the heads of the front office decision makers.
Reports say that Cole is likely to sign a deal before the completion of the Winter Meetings, so some sort of finality should be accomplished soon. With Cole setting the tone for the rest of the market in some way, shape, or form, it will be interesting to see if the Yankees win out because of money, if the Dodgers win out because of their roster, or if the Angels secure a big-time free agent to finally give Trout an outside chance to finally make the playoffs.
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