Yankees, Aaron Hicks avoid arbitration with one-year, $6 million deal

Today is the deadline for teams to reach agreements with their arbitration-eligible players. We’ve already heard that the Yankees reached a deal with Greg Bird for $1.2 million, and Austin Romine will earn $1.8 million. The Bombers have also reached a one-year deal with Aaron Hicks for $6 million.

Hicks, 29, is coming off of a great season with the Yankees. He was able to stay fairly healthy—he actually made it into 137 games—and put up his best numbers to date slashing .248/.366/.467 with 27 home runs and 127 wRC+. This is his final year before he hits free agency, and the Bombers will need to decide whether they want to extend him sooner or later. They don’t exactly have a replacement center fielder waiting in the wings, unless they were to throw Jacoby Ellsbury out there.

We’re still waiting to hear updates on the rest of the arb-eligible players, including Dellin Betances, Didi Gregorius, Sonny Gray, Luis Severino, Tommy Kahnle, and James Paxton. It will be especially interesting to see what they do about Gregorius given his injury and the time he’s expected to miss. We’ll have further updates as they’re made available this afternoon. The deadline was 1 PM ET so we should know more soon.