Yankees need to make payoff pitch to Carlos Rodon
San Francisco Giants' Carlos Rodón pitches against the Colorado Rockies during the first inning of a baseball game in San Francisco, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez) Credit: AP/Godofredo A. Vásquez
For the Yankees, it’s not a question of whether they need Carlos Rodon, the top remaining pitcher on the free-agent market.
The pursuit of Rodon, which could be ramping up in the coming days, is more about Hal Steinbrenner looking into the mirror and deciding what he wants his franchise to be going forward, especially with the guy in Queens already spending nearly $430 million on his Mets (including luxury-tax penalties) for the 2023 season.
Steinbrenner did what he absolutely had to do in making sure Aaron Judge returned to the Bronx. There really was no alternative, Hal understood that, and then went well above his original plan in signing off on a nine-year, $360-million deal the owner sealed with an early-morning phone call from Italy.
But as crucial as Judge is to the post-Derek Jeter identity of these Yankees, retaining him only preserves the status quo, and the money being thrown around on the other side of the RFK Bridge isn’t allowing Steinbrenner to take a victory lap for landing the franchise’s next captain. Not yet, anyway.
Signing Rodon is the flex Steinbrenner needs for that, and the good part? As Steve Cohen is showing him, it’s only money. This hasn’t been a baseball winter for the faint-hearted, which is why Steinbrenner, like Cohen, should be positioned to take advantage of the sticker shock. When this offseason began, Rodon was projected to get a deal somewhere in the five-year, $150 million range, a figure his agent Scott Boras must have found hilarious. With Jacob deGrom getting five years, $185 million, the asking price for Rodon by now is likely in seven-year, $200 million range.
As talented as Boras clients tend to be, they also have an impeccable sense of timing. Over his first six seasons, Rodon had a career 4.14 ERA and 1.379 WHIP, with Tommy John surgery limiting him to a total of 42 1/3 innings from 2019-20. Since then, Rodon has trended straight upward -- albeit with the occasional shoulder fatigue -- in compiling a 2.67 ERA, 0.998 WHIP and 12.2 strikeouts per nine innings.
Rodon also won the bet on himself, engineered by Boras, by opting out of the back end of his two-year, $44 million deal with the Giants after finishing sixth in the NL Cy Young voting. To do so, Rodon threw a career-high 178 innings -- a number he hadn’t come anywhere close to since 2016 -- with a 2.88 ERA in 31 starts.
The two best seasons, by far, of Rodon’s career have come during contract years. But they’ve also been back-to-back, and he just turned 30 this week, which suggests that Rodon could be peaking at the right time to take advantage of the Yankees’ championship window. Not that it should be closing soon -- we’re still talking about a team that has only missed the playoffs four times in the past 28 years. But Gerrit Cole, who Steinbrenner said was supposed to help deliver multiple titles, already is entering the fourth season of his nine-year, $324 million deal -- and he has an opt-out after 2024 (Boras represents Cole, too).
Luis Severino, playing on his $15 million option, will be a free agent after this season, as will Frankie Montas, last year’s trade-deadline flop. The Yankees still have control over Nestor Cortes through 2026, but the rotation does have holes opening up, and locking in Rodon would add some rotation certainty for the future.
Boras reportedly is pushing for seven years on Rodon, a length that feels worrisome given his injury history. But the Mets went to five years for Japanese ace Kodai Senga, who is making the transition from the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks, and the trend this offseason is for teams to go longer on contracts, partly in an effort to bring down the average annual salary (AAV) for luxury tax purposes.
After the Judge signing, the Yankees currently have baseball’s second-highest payroll at $266 million, according to FanGraphs. Unlike the Mets, who have blown through every luxury-tax threshold and already are being penalized at the highest tax rate, the Yankees are more in the middle, having passed the lowest two tiers, which start at $233 million. The next threshold is $273 million, where overages are taxed at 75%, followed by $293 million -- otherwise known as the “Steve Cohen Tax” -- which carries a 90% rate.
The Yankees have paid nearly $350 million in luxury tax alone since the system was introduced in 2003, more than double that of the second-place Dodgers, and only once during that time have they stayed under the lowest threshold, back in 2018. As of now, Steinbrenner already is running a tab, but it’s unclear how much higher he intends to go.
Signing Rodon would likely rocket Hal into the highest tax bracket, barring any salary-trimming trades, and have the Yankees bumping up against a $300 million payroll. For Steinbrenner, who once said he didn’t believe he had to spend $200 million to win a World Series, that’s quite a philosophical shift.
But the cost of playing baseball in New York has risen faster than inflation this winter. And it’s a price Steinbrenner must be realizing he has to pay.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
