Friday Morning Food For Thought: Did The Yanks Screw Up?

Joel Sherman wrote an article on Tuesday examining the Yankees' decisions to sign Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran instead of re-signing Curtis Granderson and Robinson Cano, and how those decisions may be backfiring this year based on each player's production.  It's tough to come up with a fair way to compare 3 players to 2, especially when the positions they play don't match up, but just for the sake of Sherman's argument take a look at this:

- Cano & C-Grand: 46 XBH, 74 R, 78 RBI, 3.5 fWAR

- Ellsbury, Beltran, Big Mac: 61 XBH, 84 R, 90 RBI, 1.7 fWAR

Factor in the boost that both Cano and C-Grand's power numbers would get if they were still hitting in YS3, and for this year alone the argument can be made that the Yanks would be in better shape offensively if they had brought back their own.  Not that that means much for the future.  C-Grand could lose his power soon, Cano could start to, Ellsbury could have a hot second half, and McCann has to figure it out sooner or later.  If Beltran doesn't crash over that wall in Tampa and have his elbow issue, who knows how much better his numbers would be.

The points is that there's a lot of baseball left to be played for a lot of years by all of these guys.  Not that Sherman was implying it, but there's no need to be calling last offseason's decisions bad ones or mistakes a few games short of the 2014 midway point.

Reviewing Last Year's Two Biggest Free Agent Passes

(Anybody wish these 2 were around right now?  Courtesy of US Presswire & Getty Images)

Interestingly enough, or frustratingly enough depending on how against the austerity plan you are, the Yankees really kicked this plan into high gear last offseason when they failed to get involved in the international free agent market.  It was one of the best classes in recent memory, highlighted by Yu Darvish and Yoenis Cespedes, 2 players who, ironically enough, play the positions the Yanks most need to fill this offseason.  At the time, the Yankees' reasons for passing on both players were good ones.  The history of Japanese pitchers making the transition to MLB was short on success stories, and the Yankees had been on the losing end of that gamble before, and there were questions about Cespedes' ability to come right in and play at the Major League level.

Not wanting to commit high dollars to 2 risky options that might not have returned comparable rewards, Cash decided to play it safe with his bids on each player and the Yankees lost out on both.  Darvish ended up in Texas and Cespedes in Oakland, and both of them finished in the top 3 of the AL Rookie of the Year vote yesterday, an award that they could have battled it out for had Mike Trout not come and blown everyone's doors off.  Now that their first years as Major Leaguers are over, let's take a look back and play a little "what if?" game with each guy.