At the time Trent Grisham accepted the qualifying offer back in November, the $22.025 million seemed like a steep price for the Yankees to pay him.
A few months later, with the market more defined and the offseason nearly complete, Brian Cashman believes they got a deal.
“At this point, that $22 million looks like a bargain the way the free agent market got away from everyone, on a one-year basis,” Cashman said Sunday morning on MLB Network Radio.
Grisham only made $5.25 million in 2025, his final year of arbitration, but did so while enjoying a breakout season in which the center fielder hit 34 home runs with a .811 OPS and became the regular Yankees leadoff hitter.
That led the Yankees to extend a qualifying offer to Grisham, who could have explored the free agent market and potentially landed a multiyear deal worth more overall than the $22.025 million.
Instead, he accepted it, giving the Yankees some insurance as they worked to bring Cody Bellinger back as well — ultimately re-signing him on a five-year, $162.5 million contract.
Besides Bellinger and Kyle Tucker (four-year, $240 million deal with the Dodgers), Grisham was the next best outfielder who would have been available on the free agent market.
“What he did last year to unlock and take it to another level was spectacular and all the information that we buy into leads us to believe clearly that by offering him the qualifying offer that [2025] was real, it is sustainable and that he is an offensive and defensive player for us moving forward,” Cashman said.
“We’re really happy he chose to stay with us at the $22 [million] on a one-year basis and hopefully he can replicate what he did last year for us because it was one of the reasons we had the success we had and made the postseason.”
And so the Yankees are set to bring back the same starting outfield of Bellinger, Grisham and Aaron Judge, with Jasson Domínguez — who was eventually squeezed out of playing time last season because of Grisham’s continued emergence — currently projected to be a fourth outfielder.
While Grisham’s high average annual value is part of the reason why the Yankees’ luxury tax payroll now stands at $335.5 million, according to Cot’s Contracts, his $22.025 million is tied for the seventh-highest AAV of any position player who signed this offseason.
That trails only Tucker ($60 million), Bo Bichette ($42 million), Alex Bregman ($35 million), Bellinger ($32.5 million), Pete Alonso ($31 million) and Kyle Schwarber ($30 million).
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
