On Friday afternoon, the Seattle Mariners acquired Robinson Cano on a 10-year, $240 million blockbuster deal, according to Jon Heyman of CBS Sports. Now that a gratuitous amount of money has freed up for the New York Yankees, the rumors regarding how to spend it have begun to swirl.
After the Cano deal was done, USA Today columnist Bob Nightengale tweeted that the Yankees are showing interest in several players, including Shin-Soo Choo, Carlos Beltran, Stephen Drew and Omar Infante:
Even before the Cano deal was finalized, rumors regarding Beltran and Choo were already surfacing, according to a tweet from Jon Heyman of CBS Sports:
Given the loss of Cano, Infante and Drew would each make sense as replacement infielders. Beltran and Choo would certainly be able to make their marks in a depleted outfield due to the declining Ichiro Suzuki.
Of the four aforementioned players, it appears as though Drew and Infante may be the least likely to wind up in New York.
ESPN’s Buster Olney tweeted that the Yankees do not have an offer out to Drew at this point:
Jon Morosi of Fox Sports tweeted that Infante has multiple offers and other teams appear to be more serious than the Yankees:
If the Yankees do happen to miss out on Beltran—who appears to be on top of their wish list right now—they could target Nelson Cruz, according to a tweet from Yankees beat writer Mark Feinsand:
It also looks like the Yankees will continue to compete with the Mariners over their desired free agents. Jon Morosi of Fox Sports tweeted that Seattle is still interested in Choo, Beltran and Cruz:
These players have been mentioned by name; however, there could be plenty more names to come now that the Yankees have announced their willingness to spend some cash.
General manager Brian Cashman added to the notion that the Yankees would absolutely be looking around the league to fill needs while he was waiting on the Cano deal, according to an interview with Bryan Hoch of MLB.com. Said Cashman:
We’re not waiting for Robbie. Robbie is not waiting for us. We’re out there trying to sign players. We’ve been trying to sign him as well, but we have a lot of needs. Obviously I know McCann would love to have Robbie as a teammate, and we would love to have Robbie as a Yankee.
Cashman continued:
But at the same time, there’s a lot of guys we’d like to have in here as well and there’s a lot of needs we have to fill. We’re aggressively trying to pursue a number of players and we have offers out for a number of players.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for the Yankees this offseason. However, until the players that Cashman mentioned in his statement are named, we are left playing the waiting game.
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