During his conference call with reporters yesterday, Brian Cashman said that free agents are “secondary” in their pursuit of another bat according to Sweeny Murti. “Maybe I’ll use our excess pitching to find a bat,” he added. Joel Sherman reports that the team would prefer to trade A.J. Burnett for a DH-type (or salary relief) or deal a young pitcher for a young bat with several years of team control remaining. If that fails, then they’ll turn to the free agent market since no one seems to be in a rush to sign those guys.
I still think that — and the report of them having just $1-2M to spend on a bat — is all posturing and their way of getting Johnny Damon to lower his asking price. I’d love to see them land a young, controllable bat like a Domonic Brown or (preferably) Logan Morrison, but I don’t expect it to happen. As the Jesus Montero trade showed us, good young bats don’t come cheap.
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