Joel Sherman tweeted earlier that he is expecting the New York Yankees to make one or two moves before the trade deadline. He wrote in his blog that he thinks the Yankees will use their financial advantage to do it.
The Yankees philosophy right now is this: They have some money to spend. Almost every other team in the majors doesn’t. So they are telling organizations hungry to move high-priced players to call and make their best offer. Translation: We can take some of your money headaches, but if we do we are not going to give up much in prospects.
By no later than 4 p.m. tomorrow, the Yankees will see what most appeals to them from his overpriced buffet and pick an item or two.
This is why they dropped out of the Adam Dunn sweepstakes: Because the Nationals were not willing to take marginal prospects just to get rid of the money. The same might go for Toronto and Scott Downs.
So for now the Yanks are seeing if they could use their financial might to act as vultures. So while they claim they are feeling no pressure to address the rotation, the Yanks are at least looking at Ted Lilly to see if the Cubs would essentially give him away in exchange for the Yanks taking the $4 million or so left on his contract. That, though, is not as much of a frontburner item as Berkman.
When it comes to position players, the Yanks actually would prefer either a supplemental type who either plays the corner infield (to rest Alex Rodriguez on occasion) or bats righty and plays the corner outfield (to put Curtis Granderson on the bench against most lefties).
This is what the Yankees can do that no one else can — simply offer to bail out under-achieving teams by taking high-priced veteran players off their hands.