Yankees can’t even reel in role players like Eric Chavez, Jeff Keppinger and Marco Scutaro in free agency at winter meetings
Mere role players are saying no thanks at a time when the Yankees have provided the surest path to the postseason for the last 17 years. Of course, there are circumstances, if you will.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, December 6, 2012, 12:58 AM
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Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Marco Scutaro is one of many middle-of-the-road free agents to reject advances from the Yankees.
NASHVILLE — Suddenly it feels like 1992, when nobody wanted to play for the Yankees. Except this time it’s not Barry Bonds, Greg Maddux, and David Cone shunning the pinstripes, but Eric Chavez, Jeff Keppinger, and Marco Scutaro.
What’s going on here, anyway? Twenty years ago, you could understand the game’s biggest stars turning up their noses at the idea of playing in New York, as the Yankees were in a chaotic state, having gone a decade without a playoff appearance.
Things were so bad then that George Costanza was hired as the assistant traveling secretary.
But this?
Mere role players are saying no thanks at a time when the Yankees have provided the surest path to the postseason for the last 17 years.
Of course, there are circumstances, if you will. Alex Rodriguez’s impending hip surgery has sent the Yankees scrambling at a time when third base may be the thinnest position in the majors, creating uncertainty for anyone who signs to fill in.
Then there’s the strange state of the Yankee finances. During a winter meetings when the prices of free-agent signings is sending waves of sticker shock throughout the Opryland Hotel, the Yankees have suddenly closed their checkbook more tightly than the Mets.
Talk about a bizarro world: On a day when the Mets were celebrating the $138 million re-signing of David Wright with a press conference here, the Yankees were the butt of jokes around every corner of this monstrous hotel.
“I just saw Cash,” said ex-Yankee Jim Leyritz, referring to GM Brian Cashman, “and I told him if I got in shape I might be able to help him at third base.”
As it turned out, Leyritz was one of the few people outside the Yankees’ inner circle who saw Cashman on Wednesday, having worked his way into the GM’s suite to ask about getting hired as a hitting instructor.
Otherwise, Cashman was invisible. Obviously he is busy trying to find someone to fill in for A-Rod at third base, and the rejections from the likes of Keppinger, Chavez, and Scutaro meant that he had to continue digging deeper, talking to the agent for Mark Reynolds and even considering a trade for the Rangers’ Michael Young.
But his decision to hole up in his suite all day only added to the curiosity surrounding the Yankees at these meetings. Baseball people here still can’t believe they wouldn’t come up with the $17 million over two years that Russell Martin took to sign with the Pirates, and now national columnists are poking fun at the Yankees, asking where they’re hiding this week.
By now everyone knows about Hal Steinbrenner’s edict to get the payroll under $189 million by 2014 to avoid a severe luxury tax, and yet so many people here are so trained to fear the mighty Yankee dollar that they still find it hard to believe Cashman isn’t secretly plotting a blockbuster signing.
“I wouldn’t put it past them to come out of nowhere and sign Josh Hamilton,’’ one longtime scout said on Wednesday. “They’re still the Yankees, aren’t they?”
An agent made a similar case, saying, “They need stars to sell their high-priced tickets and get ratings on their TV network, and their stars are all old. Hamilton is the one guy who would get their fans really excited again; he might hit 60 home runs playing in that stadium.”
It’s a fair point, but Hamilton’s well-documented history of drug usage makes bringing him to New York the biggest of risks, and that doesn’t even take into account the $20 million or so per year it would take to sign him.
In other words, it’s not happening. Get used to it, people: these Yankees are in salary-cap jail, albeit a self-imposed cap, because their farm system has failed to produce the necessary low-cost complements to the gargantuan contracts of A-Rod, CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, Derek Jeter and Curtis Granderson, not to mention the money they paid just to get rid of A.J. Burnett.
As it was, the Yankees had been fortunate in recent years that so many veterans were willing to accept short-term, low-risk deals to be part of the Jeter Yankees, knowing they’d get a shot at winning in October.
But suddenly that appeal seems to have faded as well. Maybe the likes of Chavez and the others fear that age and injuries are about to plunge the Yankees into a decline that will either force Steinbrenner to forget about the $189 million payroll limit or make him the scorn of Yankee fans everywhere.
We’ll see. Back in 1992 the one guy who finally said yes to the Yankees, Jimmy Key, wound up leading them into a championship era. Somehow, if Kevin Youkilis were to sign on to play third base, I don’t see history repeating itself.
EDB
SD Yankee Report 