Revisiting Bobby Abreu

We praised the Yankees earlier this off-season for reading the bad free agent market in advance. While the team was willing to dole out top bucks to the players it wanted, the Yanks’ decision not to offer Bobby Abreu looked great in hindsight.

Of course, therein lies the rub. That’s a decision that could look great only in hindsight, and it’s disingenuous of anyone to praise it as being anything more than a gamble. When the Yanks didn’t offer Bobby Abreu arbitration, they didn’t know he would end up signing a one-year, $5-million deal. When they didn’t offer Abreu arbitration, they had no idea he would have accepted had they done so.

Five months later, it’s still impossible to judge that situation as anything other than a good decision in hindsight. Over the weekend, Ken Davidoff caught up with Abreu and spoke to the former Yankee about his self-proclaimed bad off-season:

Abreu said he was “surprised” that the Yankees never so much as made him an offer, as he enjoyed his two years and two months in the Bronx. He shouldn’t have been that surprised. They sent signals for months that, at best, they would offer Abreu salary arbitration.

As it turned out, the Yankees opted against offering Abreu arbitration – a great call, as they would have committed themselves to a one-year deal for about $18 million had Abreu accepted. The Yankees correctly predicted how the economy would impact him.

When Newsday asked Abreu if he would have indeed said yes to the Yankees’ arbitration offer, the 35-year-old said, “It depends. Like I say, if you never make an offer, you don’t want to know the answer.”

“It depends.” How telling.

At the time the Yanks could have offered Abreu arbitration, the market hadn’t yet formed, and Abreu would have had to make a quick, uninformed decision. Maybe he would have accepted, and the Yanks would have been stuck paying him a lot more than any time would or should have. Maybe he would have declined, and the Yanks would have earned themselves some draft picks.

As it turned out, had Abreu declined arbitration, he probably wouldn’t have signed for even $5 million, and the Yanks’ opting to eschew arbitration looked to be a solid move. Whether it was actually a prescient decision by Cashman and Co. or a fortuitous bit of luck, the baseball world will never know.