{"id":67347,"date":"2024-02-27T13:32:45","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T18:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=67347"},"modified":"2024-03-09T17:06:38","modified_gmt":"2024-03-09T22:06:38","slug":"blake-snell-yankees-mlb-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/02\/27\/blake-snell-yankees-mlb-rumors\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Yankees Might Not Get a Deal Done with Top Free Agent Pitcher"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Cody Bellinger<\/a> off the board, Blake Snell<\/a> continues to wait on the free agent front. Speculation surrounding the two-time Cy Young Award winner and New York Yankees continue onward. The Yankees offered Snell a five-year, $150 million deal before shifting<\/a> their attention to Marcus Stroman<\/a> and his two-year deal last month. Snell and the Yankees discussed a potential contract on Monday, according to Jon Heyman of the New York Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Blake Snell, Yankees Continue to Talk<\/h2>\n

Snell would certainly help the Yankees rotation in 2024 and beyond. The two sides don’t currently appear to be making much progress towards getting a contract done. The left-hander won<\/a> the National League Cy Young Award with the San Diego Padres last season after he posted a 2.25 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, and 234:99 K:BB over 180 innings. He has control issues and isn’t much of a workhorse. He also has spectacular velocity and is one of the best strikeout pitchers in baseball. However, his league-worst 13.3 percent walk rate in two seasons of over 130 innings might be why his asking price is hesitant for some teams.<\/p>\n

Whatever is on the table doesn’t appear to be a take-or-leave-it type offer for Snell. Heyman wrote that Scott Boras suggested the possibility of a shorter-term deal with higher annual salaries and multiple opt-outs. It would pivot Snell from earning the amount he wants. A contract like Boras suggested might not fit with the Yankees’ plans.<\/p>\n

What Will a Deal Cost the Yankees?<\/h3>\n

The Yankees are a third-time luxury taxpayer at the top of their penalization. If the club is going to spend money now, they will be taxed at 110%. The luxury tax is based on a contract’s average annual value. Increasing the contract’s average annual value will penalize the Yankees further. To sign Snell, New York would also forfeit their second and fifth-round highest draft selections, including $1 million from next year’s international bonus pool.<\/p>\n

A long-term deal that stretches out an agreed-upon guarantee while lowering the average annual value makes more sense. The Yankees did so with DJ LeMahieu<\/a> in free agency when he signed a six-year deal<\/a>. There has been no discussion of that kind of arrangement. Going longer on a deal with Snell would give the Yankees more worries than less. They already have Gerrit Cole<\/a>, Aaron Judge<\/a>, Carlos Rod\u00f3n<\/a> and Giancarlo Stanton<\/a> under contract through the 2027 season. Cole, Judge and Rod\u00f3n are on the books through 2028, leaving the Yankees with $103 million in guaranteed money.<\/p>\n

Fallback Option If Snell Doesn’t Sign<\/h3>\n

Bob Nightengale of USA Today<\/a> reported that the Yankees could prefer a different pitcher. Nightengale explained that New York would prefer trading a top-of-the-rotation arm by trading for one of the most coveted players on the market.<\/p>\n

“The New York Yankees would prefer to trade<\/a> for Chicago White Sox Dylan Cease<\/a> instead of signing free agent Blake Snell. But they are at a standstill with the White Sox,” Nightengale added. “They refuse to part with top outfield prospect Spencer Jones<\/a> in any package for (Cease) while the White Sox are insisting on him.”<\/p>\n

The update notes Cease will be the club’s top pitching target if negotiations with Snell don’t develop further.<\/p>\n

Main Photo: \u00a9 Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Cody Bellinger off the board, Blake Snell continues to wait on the free agent front. Speculation surrounding the two-time Cy Young Award winner and New York Yankees continue onward. The Yankees offered Snell a five-year, $150 million deal before shifting their attention to Marcus Stroman and his two-year deal last month. Snell and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3686,"featured_media":67348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1071,35],"tags":[501,1122,197,28245,696,1524,611,220,93,2599],"class_list":["post-67347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-yankees","category-mlb","category-news","tag-aaron-judge","tag-blake-snell","tag-carlos-rodon","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-dj-lemahieu","tag-dylan-cease","tag-gerrit-cole","tag-giancarlo-stanton","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-spencer-jones"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3686"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}