TAMPA — The Yankees officially assured themselves of the best Triple-A outfield in baseball, solving a lefty-heavy numbers crunch by predictably demoting top prospect Jasson Domínguez to the minors. That’s where the young man known as the Martian for his otherworldly ability and the multitalented Spencer Jones will team up for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders.
The move Friday night to send down the second of the heralded outfield prospect pair was basically solidified in the winter when the Yankees paid big bucks to bring back both Trent Grisham and Cody Bellinger. The calls on the veteran outfielders only made partial sense.
There’s little issue retaining the versatile Bellinger after his brilliant season in The Bronx, although his price tag does seem steep. Bellinger was the Yankees’ stated top priority, and they showed it with that $162.5 million deal that will pay Bellinger $85M over the next two seasons, or $5M more than the great Aaron Judge will make.
What never needed to happen was extending the $22.025M qualifying offer to Grisham. It’s not that Grisham isn’t a useful player. He is. It’s just that he isn’t a $22.025M-a-year player. How do we know this? Well, he made $5.25M as a five-year player, which reflected his previous half-decade performance.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
