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The offseason story has been one of patience, as pretty much all winter we’ve heard one constant — the Yankees would like to bring back Cody Bellinger, but they aren’t going to bid against themselves. Bellinger’s market hasn’t had too many leaks come out, so we don’t
know how close it is to coming to a conclusion, but we know the Yankees have been involved and have been one of the first teams to come with an actual offer on the table. Will it be enough to bring the left fielder back when all is said and done, though?
According to the fan base, there’s still enough faith that a deal will get done. The latest reports have the Yankees’ offer going north of $30 million a year, a surprising milestone for the one-time MVP to have reached after hitting rock bottom with the Dodgers and resurrecting his career with the Cubs before arriving in the Bronx last season, but Bellinger’s camp is still holding out for a seventh year tacked on. To this point, no one has bitten on that, and the Yankees have reason enough to be wary of going that long on a new commitment with Bellinger, especially when Kyle Tucker is still out on the market at a younger age than Bellinger. Still, at the end of the day, 65 percent shows a fair amount of confidence that the Yankees are locked in on landing their guy here instead of pitting the two outfielders’ cases against each other.
The outfield isn’t the only area of concern that the team could address, of course. The pitching staff has been a secondary target for improvement the entire time, and while the market has slowly started to play out there the team hasn’t made any moves outside of re-signing some of their relievers. There was some smoke about a deal for Miami’s Edward Cabrera, only for him to end up going to Chicago days later in a different deal. The Brewers are still taking calls on Freddy Peralta meanwhile, and by a slight margin he was the arm that the fans preferred going after anyways.
The more difficult guess is whether the Yankees can pony up enough to get Peralta, because they were reportedly never close on Cabrera. The package that sent him to the Cubs consisted of three position player prospects led by Owen Caissie, the organization’s top prospect and a top 50 prospect in MLB’s rankings. Cabrera has more years of control to justify a high price tag, but Peralta is the ace of a team that just led the league in wins and went to the NLCS, so they’re going to need at least some MLB-ready talent to go back if they were to deal him. Regardless of if they pull the trigger on Peralta or not, they’ve shown enough interest to make it believable that they’ll get somebody before spring training rolls around, it’s just a matter of when. In a way, that’s been the story of this offseason for the Yankees.
