Steinbrenner: Yankees open to further additions

Yankees chairman Hal Steinbrenner spoke to members of the media yesterday, including Chris Kirschner and Brendan Duty of The Athletic, noting that the club is open to making further additions to the roster but also adding that nothing is close and there could be budgetary concerns with any possible transactions.

“Given where we are payroll-wise, any addition to the club is going to be a costly one,” Steinbrenner said. “I’m still willing to consider anything that [general manager Brian Cashman] and his team bring my way. I’ll leave it at that. We are not done trying to improve this team.”

The openness to making another move doesn’t necessarily mean that one will come to pass, as Steinbrenner himself made clear. “I’m not saying anything is going to happen, I’m not saying something’s not going to happen. But I’m still willing to improve this team however we can.” But the mere fact that he’s keeping the window open is notable, especially given the way others have spoken recently.

Decision makers for the Giants, Rangers, Nationals, Mariners, Twins, Blue Jays and Angels have all downplayed the likelihood of further moves for their clubs in the past week or so. Though the so-called “Boras Four” of Blake Snell, Jordan Montgomery, Matt Chapman and Cody Bellinger are all unsigned and many fans are pressing their favorite team to jump in, executives and owners seem to be doing their best to lower expectations.

Whether that’s a genuine expression of the current state of affairs or a posture for bargaining purposes isn’t known, but Steinbrenner’s comments nonetheless stand out as being a bit less outwardly pessimistic. Though as he mentioned, there will be significant financial considerations to any possible deal.

Roster Resource currently pegs the Yankees’ competitive balance tax number at $307M, already about $10M beyond the fourth and final tax tier of $297M. As a third-time payor at that level, the Yankees are looking at a 110% tax rate for any further spending.

The club has been connected to Snell throughout the offseason, reportedly offering him a deal of $150M over six years at one point. That deal would have come with an average annual value of $25M and the Yankees would have had to pay $27.5M in taxes. That means they would be looking at giving up $52.5M to add Snell to the rotation for this year.

That $150M guarantee wasn’t enough to get Snell to put pen to paper, which perhaps suggests the Yanks might have to be willing to go even further to get a deal done. The lefty hasn’t signed anywhere so perhaps the club can hold firm to their position, but it still highlights the significant numbers the club is calculating when considering these kinds of moves.

The end of February is now in sight and spring games are taking place. As the regular season creeps closer and big-name free agents are still available, it seems a staring contest is taking place. Boras obviously doesn’t want to take offers for his clients that he considers below what they are worth while clubs are doing their best to present themselves as content with their current rosters and payrolls. Something will have to eventually give and it seems as though the Yankees could perhaps be at the table.

Their rotation is currently fronted by Gerrit Cole but has question marks beyond that. Each of Carlos Rodón, Nestor Cortes and Marcus Stroman missed significant time due to injuries last year. Clarke Schmidt is fine as a #5 but has an option year remaining and could potentially be pushed to the minors if someone else is signed. The Yanks dealt away four starting pitching options in the Juan Soto trade so there would be logic to pushing Schmidt down the depth chart for when a need inevitably arises as the season goes along. Steinbrenner trotted out the “I don’t think you can have enough pitching” cliché yesterday, per video relayed by Bryan Hoch of MLB.com.

It remains to be seen if they are willing to pay for someone like Snell or Montgomery in order to bolster the staff. The free agent market also features Michael Lorenzen, Mike Clevinger, Zack Greinke and others.