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The Yankees offseason has been filled with a lot of debatable signings and contract offers, but there seems to be another that almost happened.
Seeing that Robinson Cano was moving away from signing with them, the Yankees quickly grabbed Jacoby Ellsbury for $153 million over seven years. Once Cano signed with the Mariners, they then offered a contract to Shin-Soo Choo to the tune of $140 million over seven years. Scott Boras, seeing how the Yankees just signed his other client for $13 million more, demanded Choo get the same contract. Hearing this they then pulled the deal and signed Carlos Beltran for $45 million over three years instead. Or so the story goes.
This seems very excessive. I imagine that if Choo said yes they wouldn't have signed Beltran, but it also would have added an extra $5 million per year onto their budget. If the Yankees want to get under the $189 million mark, and all signs seem to indicate that they do, this would have made it even harder for them than it already is. They're practically scraping the roof of their monetary ceiling right now, so that money saved is essentially what got them Matt Thornton and Brian Roberts. If they're only being reactionary, throwing around contracts and then taking them back, it seems obvious that the Yankees don't really have a plan, just as long as they can fill a team at the right price. What if he had accepted?
