The Latest on YES & News Corp.
The Yankees officially announced an agreement that allows News Corp. to acquire a 49% stake (which could reportedly grow to 80%) in the YES Network from investors like Goldman Sachs, NJ Holdings, and Providence Equity yesterday. The deal is still pending MLB approval and is expected to close by the end of the calendar year. The sale price indicates that the network is worth approximately $3 billion right now, meaning it’s likely more valuable than the team itself. Here’s more on the transaction courtesy of Darren Rovell, Andy Fixmer, and Scott Soshnick…
- The Yankees will sell 9% of their stake in YES, lowering their share to 25% and earning the club a whopping $270M. The team might also receive a $400-500M payment separate from the rights agreement, so think of it like a signing bonus.
- As part of the transaction, the Yankees have extended their agreement with YES to ensure the network will broadcast games through 2042. YES currently pays the team $85M annually for broadcast rights, but escalators will push that to $350M annually (!) by the end of the new agreement.
- Goldman, NJ Holdings, and Providence will retain some stake in YES but will have the option to sell the remainder to the Yankees and News Corp. in four years for a portion of the predetermined market value of $3.8 billion. That’s what everyone expects the network to be worth in 2016.
- Although there has been speculation (including by me) this deal with News Corp. is an indication the Steinbrenner family will look to sell the team down the line, the reporting trio all say this move puts them in better position to hold on to the club long-term.
- Brian Heyman has official statements from Hal Steinbrenner and others, so check that out if you’re interested.
On trading Curtis Granderson
Over the last two seasons, Robinson Cano has been the Yankees’ only position player more productive than Curtis Granderson. The team’s 31-year-old center fielder disappointed to a tune of 43 homers and a 116 wRC+ this year, yet the Yankees still exercised his no-brainer $15M club option after the season. Strikeouts or not, that type of power is next to impossible to find.
Granderson is scheduled to become a free agent after next season and due to a number of factors, including the team’s desire to get under the $189M luxury tax threshold by 2014, it’s unlikely they’ll look to re-sign him to a new contract. It’s always possible, a lot sure can change in a year, but right now it seems unlikely. Since he only has that one year left on his contract, Buster Olney wondered if the Grandyman would be a surprise trade candidate this offseason. Here’s his Insider-only blurb…
Curtis Granderson: The New York Yankees picked up his $15 million option for 2013, but given their other payroll concerns, it figures they would listen to trade offers for him. Granderson clubbed 43 homers last season, though he hit just .232 and struck out 195 times. For an interested team willing to give up a prospect, he could provide a big jolt of power without requiring the massive long-term investment.
A left-handed hitter with big power, Granderson has been an excellent fit for Yankee Stadium. But he hit 17 homers in 81 road games last season, as well, which was among the most in the majors.
Now just to be clear, Olney isn’t saying the Yankees are shopping Granderson or that they’ve received inquires about his availability, he’s just wondering aloud if his favorable contract situation will spark interest. He notes an NL executive framed it as: would you rather have Granderson at one year and $15M or Michael Bourn at $80-100M? What about Josh Hamilton at five years and $125M? The free agent market appears to be in “one extra year” mode early on, meaning every non-Hiroki Kuroda player who signs is getting one more year than originally expected. It’s kinda scary.
Brian Cashman likes to say none of his players are untouchable in trades, but some are more touchable than others. He’d certainly listen if someone asked about Granderson, but at the same time he’s already trying to replace one really productive outfielder this offseason. It would be close to impossible to lose both Nick Swisher and Granderson in one offseason and come out as a better team. Maybe they’d be better in the long run, but they certainly wouldn’t be better in 2013. Since the Yankees figure to take a step back under the 2014 payroll plan, contending in 2013 would be damn well appreciated.
In a mailbag earlier month, I said the Yankees could probably fetch two good prospects for Granderson in a trade, but that’s based on recent trades involving similar players with one year left on their contract. Perhaps the state of the free agent market scares a team into offering a third prospect, who knows. The point I’m trying to make here is that while the Yankees should be open to dealing Granderson if the right offer comes along, I don’t think they should look to move him unless they get blown away. His value to the team in 2013 is big even if he strikes out 200 times and moves to a corner in deference to Brett Gardner. The Yankees are losing enough offense as it is this winter, but moving Granderson on top of that takes away two of their three best hitters over the last few years. That would be very tough to recover from given the rest of the roster.
Yankees re-sign Hiroki Kuroda
Last offseason the Yankees didn’t sign Hiroki Kuroda until mid-January. They didn’t wait that long this winter. Kuroda has officially signed a new contract with New York, the team announced. Buster Olney says it’s a one-year deal worth $15M plus incentives that total less than $1M. Pretty sweet deal.
“I am very happy and excited to re-sign with the Yankees,” said Kuroda in a statement. “I am very grateful for all of the interest and all of the offers that I received from the various teams that courted me. It was a tough decision for me to make, but at the end of the day, I wanted to try to win a championship with the teammates that I went to battle with last season.”
Kuroda, 38 in February, pitched to a 3.32 ERA (3.86 FIP) in a career-high 33 starts and 219.2 innings with the Yankees in 2012, his first season in pinstripes. He also tacked on two stellar postseason starts for good measure, bringing his season total to 235.2 innings. That workload is a bit of a concern heading into next year, but at the end of the day, bringing Kuroda back for a year was far too good to pass up.
The one-year contract works well for both sides. The Yankees are trying to get under the $189M luxury tax threshold in 2014 and this deal won’t impact future payroll. It also limits risk stemming from that career-high workload. Kuroda maintains he will finish his playing career back in Japan, so he has the flexibility to go back home after the season. The Yankees made the right-hander a qualifying offer a few weeks ago and would have received draft pick compensation had he signed with a different MLB team.
With Kuroda back in the fold, the next order of business for Brian Cashman & Co. is to re-sign Mariano Rivera and hopefully do the same with Andy Pettitte should he decide to keep playing. Right field and catcher must also be addressed, but shoring up the rotation was a more pressing matter. The Yankees can now move forward with their offseason plan knowing they have a reliable innings guy to slot between CC Sabathia and Phil Hughes in the rotation.
Roster Moves: Rule 5 Draft, Storey, Herndon
In addition to agreeing to re-sign Hiroki Kuroda, the Yankees made a series of roster moves today. Let’s recap…
Six added to 40-man roster
The Yankees added six minor leaguers to the 40-man roster: LHP Manny Banuelos, RHP Brett Marshall, LHP Nik Turley, OF Ramon Flores, RHP Jose Ramirez, and LHP Francisco Rondon. Midnight tonight is the deadline to set the 40-man for next month’s Rule 5 Draft, and all six guys would have been eligible had they not been protected.
Banuelos will miss pretty much all of next season due to Tommy John surgery, so the club is losing a pre-arbitration year of team control. That really bites. The annual lolwut addition is Rondon, a 24-year-old southpaw who had a good but not great year at three levels in 2012 (3.93 ERA and 10.1 K/9 with 5.3 BB/9 in 71 relief innings). The Yankees now have five (!) lefty specialists on the 40-man. Marshall, Turley, and Flores were no-brainer adds and some team could have hid Ramirez’s big arm in long relief next season.
Mickey Storey claimed off waivers from Houston
The Yankees have claimed 26-year-old right-hander Mickey Storey off waivers from the Astros. He had a phenomenal season in Triple-A this year and made his big league debut in the second half: 3.86 ERA (2.80 FIP) with 10.09 K/9 (26.8 K%) and 2.97 BB/9 (7.9 BB%) in 30.1 relief innings. He also missed a few games after taking a line drive off the face.
Despite the gaudy peripherals, Storey isn’t a power pitcher. He’s a four-pitch reliever in the Cory Wade mold, throwing an upper-80s four-seamer, a mid-80s cutter, an upper-70s slider, and a mid-70s curveball. The curve is his bread and butter. I believe he has two minor league options remaining, but don’t hold me to that. That stuff is hard to verify. Here’s some video.
Yankees re-sign David Herndon
According to agent Josh Kusnick, the Yankees have re-signed David Herndon to a split contract. He had elected free agency after the team outrighted him off the 40-man roster and I assume it’s a minor league deal. The 27-year-old reliever will received $750k in the big leagues ($50k in incentives) and $180k while in the minors. Herndon is coming off Tommy John surgery and won’t be ready until June. The Yankees claimed him off waivers from the Blue Jays earlier this month.
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After all of today’s moves, the 40-man roster is at 39. The Yankees will be able to make one selection in the Rule 5 Draft unless they remove more players from the 40-man between now and midnight. Catcher Eli Whiteside is the obvious candidate to be removed, but one empty spot is plenty. If Herndon’s contract is a big league deal, the 40-man will be full and the Yankees won’t be able to make any picks in the Rule 5 Draft.
Open Thread: Mo on the mound
The good news is that Mariano Rivera has thrown off a mound recently. The bad news is that it was only for the commercial you see above. Once the two sides hammer out a contract and Spring Training starts in like, three months, Mo will be back on a mound in real live games. Hooray for that. It’s been too long.
Here is your open thread for the evening. Both the Knicks and Nets are playing, but talk about whatever you like here. Have at it.
What Went Wrong: Romine, Stewart & Cervelli
The Yankees came into this season knowing Russell Martin was going to be their full-time catcher, but the backup job was up for grabs. Frankie Cervelli was the incumbent and Austin Romine was the high-ish profile prospect who broke into the show as a September call-up a year ago, so the best man in Spring Training was going to win. As it turned out, neither had what it took.
Austin Romine
Romine, 23, wound up with taking exactly zero plate appearances in Spring Training. He dealt with back inflammation — an injury that caused him to miss time last summer as well — in camp and suffered a setback towards the end of March. Romine didn’t get into minor league rehab games until July and it wasn’t until late-August that the Yankees activated him off the DL and send him down to Triple-A. He wasn’t brought back for a September call-up.
All told, Romine batted just 195 times between the minor league regular season and the Arizona Fall League in 2012. Instead of possibly spending the year cutting his teeth as the big league backup, it was a lost season in which the Yankees were unable to find out anything about Romine at the Major League level. Pretty much the only good news was that they never actually burned a minor league option this year, so he still has all three left. Some consolation prize.
Chris Stewart
The Yankees were concerned about their upper level catching depth in the wake of Romine’s back injury, so at the end of Spring Training they swung a somewhat surprising move, sending right-hander George Kontos to the Giants for the 30-year-old Stewart. Just like that, the team had a new backup catcher and the competition in camp was rendered moot.
Stewart, true to his reputation, didn’t hit a lick this year. He got on everyone’s good side with a handful of timely RBI singles in April, but overall he produced just a .241/.292/.319 (65 wRC+) batting line in 157 plate appearances. I thought his defense was solid but not as good as advertised — he threw out only eight of 35 attempted base-stealers (22.9%), for example — so Stewart struck me as a classic Nichols’ Law catcher. Considering the team’s midseason bullpen woes, Kontos (2.47 ERA and 2.80 FIP in 43.2 innings for the Giants) would have been a nice piece to have around.
Frankie Cervelli
There was no more room left at the inn after acquiring Stewart, so the Yankees demoted Cervelli to Triple-A at the end of Spring Training. As if that wasn’t bad enough — Cervelli hadn’t spent extended time in the minors since 2009 — the Triple-A squad had to play on the road all season due to extensive renovations at PNC Field in Scranton. Frankie went from being the team’s backup catcher to a full season’s worth of bus rides in about five minutes.
Cervelli, 26, was supposed to go down and show the team what a huge mistake they had made, but instead he hit just .246/.341/.316 (89 wRC+) in 417 plate appearances. The Yankees recalled him as the third catcher in September but only got him into three games due to the tight race with the Orioles. To Cervelli’s credit, he worked a hard-fought two-out, six-pitch walk in his first of two big league plate appearances, coming around to score the game-winning run in the 12th inning against the Red Sox in Game 161. Nice moment, but hardly a season worth remembering.