That almost has to be the case of this is legit. They found Rowland doing something incredibly bad even by the standards of IFAs which is saying something. They’re trying to clean it up immediately to avoid being locked out from IFAs
I bet they caught the guys they fired doing shady shit with prepayments on J2 guys or something and are now going scorched earth to try and avoid huge fines or draft penalties
Yeah but their window is small in that case. This hasn’t gotten any legs yet - matter of time before some investigative journalist does some digging. This is the kind of story that can fester during an exceedingly slow offseason. Time to make a distracting move is now - and they don’t appear to be in a hurry.
We had posts trying to stir up anger over minor-league shortstop signings. Any actual scandal will have bored fans reaching for pitchforks. We might need to sign Framber, Tucker, and Belli to wag this dog
If it was big enough, maybe it'd be enough to get Cashman AND his underlings shitcanned. Maybe it's the only way Hal could be forced to bring in new people with new ideas.
No idea if it’s exactly that but I’d be surprised if this wasn’t the ballpark of what’s happening. Firing multiple guys suddenly right before the signing period opens and cancelling pre agreements is not normal behavior and isn’t “savings”. If they were firing guys due to ineffectiveness, they would have done it awhile ago, not right before the signing period.
Just an unusual amount of inaction. None of baseball’s top free agents have gotten the kind of deals that seemed common the last few years. We have several prime offensive first free agents, still in their 20’s, garnering almost zero interest.
Tbh like I said in another comment, in regard to boras clients, I think ppl are just over boras' bullshit every season. Like I said in that comment, just as a fan, that shit is exhausting every single off-season having him drag it out as far as possible with both sides using their media puppets trying to influence the other. It's tiring as a fan, I can't imagine as a FO just trying to sign a guy
We saw it last year when like what 3 of boras clients didn't get signed until after ST started?
As far as the other stuff it is weird. Maybe has to do with the CBA expiring this year?
Take it from a Braves fan, no prospect class is worth getting hammered for international shenanigans. We were dinged 8 years ago and we are just now starting to climb out of it.
I can't imagine honestly. This kind of thing is normally incomprehensible so there has to be more to the story.
All of the Latin American players that come into baseball (Vlad, Acuna, Tatis, Soto, etc) come via the international free agent market. All of these kids commit to major league teams with verbal agreements years in advance (as early as 11-12 years old) and then sign officially when they become 16 years old. This year's window opens Jan 15.
The Yankees have historically been one of the biggest forces in the IFA market (Mariano, Bernie, Cano, Dominguez, etc) and were supposed to get the #2 prospect on the market this year in Wandy Asigen but it was recently reported that they broke their commitment to him. Asigen is now expected to sign with the Mets. But this report suggests they've broken all of their commitments, not just their biggest one, which would amount to dozens of players and reneged deals. All of those players will now have to scramble at the last minute to find new teams and likely take less to fit into budgets that have already been planned meticulously around other players.
This guy on Twitter, Rational Yankees Fan did a great job explaining what this could mean down the road.
TLDR: This could massively damage the Yankees reputation in the IFA market and have very long-term repercussions. These players and their families are genuinely desperate to get into baseball and can't afford a team backing out on them at the last minute. (A note I'll add is that this won't matter if the new CBA introduces an international draft but we have no idea if that is going to happen or not.)
Anyway, something really bad must have happened behind the scenes because this is an unprecedented and colossal scored-earth type decision by the Yankees and it makes no apparent sense. At most, there's a savings of $5-6M in total cash across the dozens of players they would have signed. The reputational cost here could be irreparable and amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in value lost if they miss out on a single Vlad/Tatis type talent as a result.
I do have to chuckle at Mariano being listed as a key IFA signing. Obvious he turned out to be an all time great but they signed him on a lark for $2,500.
I believe Cabrera and Dominguez are the only Yankee IFAs on the 40-man roster and quite a few of the highly regarded ifa prospects have underperformed. They made changes to their approach to the draft and minor league development. The fan in me wants to believe they decided to implode the program and start from zero.
Absolutely not and there's a good chance they do plan on doing that but it's going to depend on each individual player case.
That's what they tried with Wandy Asigen. He's the consensus #2-3 prospect in this class and the Yanks had a verbal agreement with him for $4.2m of their $6.2m total budget. They scrapped that deal and tried to renegotiate with him and he essentially told them to kick rocks and went and agreed with the Mets on a cheaper deal for $3.8m.
"Attention Steinbrenner and front office morons! Your triumphs mean nothing. You all stink! You can sit on it, and rotate! This is George Costanza, I fear no reprisal. Extension five one, seven oh."
I'm not usually a 'fire Cashman' guy, but this might have to be the last straw. Having a ludicrous budget and relatively underperforming for so long is one thing, but it seems like he just can't run a competent modern baseball organization.
No way this isn't going to be a massive scandal. This could set the club back years.
Scandals happening under his nose and a potential massive fine and neutering of international scouting activities, just add that to the long list of failure under this buffoon
Cash has already done enough to set us back years. This could be nail for a long time. Japanese players don't want to go anywhere but the dodgers, FAs aren't clamoring like they did in the past to be a Yankee, plus poor development and coaching and add in potential issue with getting IFAs? That's potentially a deathblow
I spoken with multiple IFA prospects in the class. They all came back and told me their agreements are still in good standing, but they probably won’t sign next week but in February.
One of the parents even told me that they saw the tweet and contacted the Yankees immediately who assured them that their deal was still in place.
Probably looked at how much they have spent on 16yr old Dominican short stops over the years with nothing to show for it, every year I hear of some kid they pay 2-3 million and they are never heard of again
I have been screaming for Cashman to be fired since 2019, this genuinely feels like it has to be the last straw for his tenure as GM. I get if they wanted to just reconstruct the whole department before all of this went down, but doing it right before the signing period seems very weird to me
You're not firing a gm over a bunch of 16 yr olds. Also despite what this fanbase thinks, he is a good gm and is very smart. He wouldn't be doing this for no reason. This is a very drastic move and something big might have been discovered
The Braves GM got banned from baseball for stuff with International free agents 10 years ago. There is a lot of legal stuff involved with these signings.
That was and is a different situation from what the person im replying to wants Cash fired for. I remember that event youre bringing up clearly, that was for circumventing the draft pool process to sneak more money to guys.
The person i replied to wants Cashman fired for simply canceling all the agreements.
Completely nuking your international scouting pipeline is never a smart move. Especially since we're a team that usually doesn't have a first-round pick thanks to the luxury tax. This is a truly bizarre move that doesn't really make any sense unless they uncovered a potential scandal and wanted to get in front of it.
If it looks like there is a massive scandal coming down the pipeline that could get you banned from signing people for several years, on top of draft and other penalties like getting blackballed from the entire baseball industry if you dont take decisive action, nuking the the entire international department, then salting the charred ground that remains would absolutely be the right move especially if you dont know how deep the rot goes.
Cant stand this owner. No accountability, any overspending is due to cutting corners previously. No passion and completely disconnected from fan base (which will always be there but may not opt to spend 800 to bring the family to ballgame this summer). Any time Hal or the GM speak to the press is just embarrassing.
Did Rowland fuck up and this is all getting out in front of a punishment à la braves a few years back?
That almost has to be the case of this is legit. They found Rowland doing something incredibly bad even by the standards of IFAs which is saying something. They’re trying to clean it up immediately to avoid being locked out from IFAs
There’s something fishy going on here
I bet they caught the guys they fired doing shady shit with prepayments on J2 guys or something and are now going scorched earth to try and avoid huge fines or draft penalties
Last thing this team needs without having signed any major FA’s or completed any big trades is a scandal. Hoping this isn’t true
Actually, that seems like exactly the type of news cycle you’d like to steam roll through pretty quickly. Maybe a big signing does the trick, Hal?
Yeah but their window is small in that case. This hasn’t gotten any legs yet - matter of time before some investigative journalist does some digging. This is the kind of story that can fester during an exceedingly slow offseason. Time to make a distracting move is now - and they don’t appear to be in a hurry.
I’m coping, but I appreciate this dose of reality. Thank you.
I’m sorry, bro. I should take some deep breaths and do the same 😫🤮
We had posts trying to stir up anger over minor-league shortstop signings. Any actual scandal will have bored fans reaching for pitchforks. We might need to sign Framber, Tucker, and Belli to wag this dog
Them signing Framber actually would make me grab my pitchfork.
Are we the Evil Empire, or are we the bunch of guys who try our best and hope things work out in the end?
I want pitchers that help the team. Framber is a notorious headcase, and I believe the team is far better off without him.
People said the same about Jazz.
The latter
If it was big enough, maybe it'd be enough to get Cashman AND his underlings shitcanned. Maybe it's the only way Hal could be forced to bring in new people with new ideas.
No idea if it’s exactly that but I’d be surprised if this wasn’t the ballpark of what’s happening. Firing multiple guys suddenly right before the signing period opens and cancelling pre agreements is not normal behavior and isn’t “savings”. If they were firing guys due to ineffectiveness, they would have done it awhile ago, not right before the signing period.
Exactly what’s happening
Probably the case. Hey, at the very least they didn’t do nothing this offseason
Probably some corruption/kickbacks going on.
Yeah but not fried fishy
Trade with the Marlins?
Either a massive scandal is about to drop or Cashman got into Elon's ketamine stash.
That would be the funniest crashout of all time honestly.
The more this offseason unfolds, the more it seems like there’s some level of collusion and straight out ownership bullshit going on league wide.
I havent paid much attention to baseball stuff due to hockey and football,
Is there a tldr for what's been going on?
Just an unusual amount of inaction. None of baseball’s top free agents have gotten the kind of deals that seemed common the last few years. We have several prime offensive first free agents, still in their 20’s, garnering almost zero interest.
Tbh like I said in another comment, in regard to boras clients, I think ppl are just over boras' bullshit every season. Like I said in that comment, just as a fan, that shit is exhausting every single off-season having him drag it out as far as possible with both sides using their media puppets trying to influence the other. It's tiring as a fan, I can't imagine as a FO just trying to sign a guy
We saw it last year when like what 3 of boras clients didn't get signed until after ST started?
As far as the other stuff it is weird. Maybe has to do with the CBA expiring this year?
Kyle Tucker and Bo Bichette are not Boras clients. Look at the interest the Japanese players got, way below expectations.
This is a weak free agent class, Kyle Tucker is the headliner. They want big deals for lack of other options but teams haven’t budged yet.
Take it from a Braves fan, no prospect class is worth getting hammered for international shenanigans. We were dinged 8 years ago and we are just now starting to climb out of it.
Bro you won a World Series in that span
And yet the Braves have been more successful than the Yankees in that time
Baseball is that funny
You literally won a championship dude. I think you’re fine
Yes. You essentially received the International Signings Death Penalty.
What the fuck?
What does this even mean?
I can't imagine honestly. This kind of thing is normally incomprehensible so there has to be more to the story.
All of the Latin American players that come into baseball (Vlad, Acuna, Tatis, Soto, etc) come via the international free agent market. All of these kids commit to major league teams with verbal agreements years in advance (as early as 11-12 years old) and then sign officially when they become 16 years old. This year's window opens Jan 15.
The Yankees have historically been one of the biggest forces in the IFA market (Mariano, Bernie, Cano, Dominguez, etc) and were supposed to get the #2 prospect on the market this year in Wandy Asigen but it was recently reported that they broke their commitment to him. Asigen is now expected to sign with the Mets. But this report suggests they've broken all of their commitments, not just their biggest one, which would amount to dozens of players and reneged deals. All of those players will now have to scramble at the last minute to find new teams and likely take less to fit into budgets that have already been planned meticulously around other players.
This guy on Twitter, Rational Yankees Fan did a great job explaining what this could mean down the road.
TLDR: This could massively damage the Yankees reputation in the IFA market and have very long-term repercussions. These players and their families are genuinely desperate to get into baseball and can't afford a team backing out on them at the last minute. (A note I'll add is that this won't matter if the new CBA introduces an international draft but we have no idea if that is going to happen or not.)
Anyway, something really bad must have happened behind the scenes because this is an unprecedented and colossal scored-earth type decision by the Yankees and it makes no apparent sense. At most, there's a savings of $5-6M in total cash across the dozens of players they would have signed. The reputational cost here could be irreparable and amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in value lost if they miss out on a single Vlad/Tatis type talent as a result.
Thank you for taking the time to write this.
I do have to chuckle at Mariano being listed as a key IFA signing. Obvious he turned out to be an all time great but they signed him on a lark for $2,500.
Don’t know why you are getting downvoted. He was also 20 years old. That is considered “old” for an IFA.
At this rate, I'm expecting the underwhelming plan to be: scrap the IFA, and sign the IKF.
I believe Cabrera and Dominguez are the only Yankee IFAs on the 40-man roster and quite a few of the highly regarded ifa prospects have underperformed. They made changes to their approach to the draft and minor league development. The fan in me wants to believe they decided to implode the program and start from zero.
Is there something preventing the Yankees from re-engaging with these players if they thought the agreements weren’t on the up and up?
Absolutely not and there's a good chance they do plan on doing that but it's going to depend on each individual player case.
That's what they tried with Wandy Asigen. He's the consensus #2-3 prospect in this class and the Yanks had a verbal agreement with him for $4.2m of their $6.2m total budget. They scrapped that deal and tried to renegotiate with him and he essentially told them to kick rocks and went and agreed with the Mets on a cheaper deal for $3.8m.
I think you mean IAFA not IFA?
Ugh
Is Cashman trying to get fired?
"Attention Steinbrenner and front office morons! Your triumphs mean nothing. You all stink! You can sit on it, and rotate! This is George Costanza, I fear no reprisal. Extension five one, seven oh."
Big savings for Cheap Hal
Not a chance in this case
That’s what I thought.
Edit: I thought wrong.
Can Brian Cashman order Brian Cashman to resign?
Half the people here don’t have any clue what this means, and just think “cancel deal durrrr must be cheap”.
If I had to guess there’s probably some kind of legal concern or embezzlement issue.
They will renegotiate and ink their deals.
Still incredibly embarrassing tho.
Regardless of what the exact details are, it is mismanagement at the highest levels.
Well not Asigen. He gone
How the hell is that better? Lol, lmao even. Oh they’re not only cheap, now breaking laws. Great!
Except they already failed to do that. The best prospect we had went to the Mets in the fallout.
It’s a Cashtastrophe!!!
I'm not usually a 'fire Cashman' guy, but this might have to be the last straw. Having a ludicrous budget and relatively underperforming for so long is one thing, but it seems like he just can't run a competent modern baseball organization.
No way this isn't going to be a massive scandal. This could set the club back years.
Scandals happening under his nose and a potential massive fine and neutering of international scouting activities, just add that to the long list of failure under this buffoon
Cash has already done enough to set us back years. This could be nail for a long time. Japanese players don't want to go anywhere but the dodgers, FAs aren't clamoring like they did in the past to be a Yankee, plus poor development and coaching and add in potential issue with getting IFAs? That's potentially a deathblow
I spoken with multiple IFA prospects in the class. They all came back and told me their agreements are still in good standing, but they probably won’t sign next week but in February.
One of the parents even told me that they saw the tweet and contacted the Yankees immediately who assured them that their deal was still in place.
Do you know anything about what the deal is on the Yankees' end? Like what is going on that's causing this?
huh
What a total clown show
I’ll get mad when a journalist with more than 1000 followers - who follows more than 12 people - makes an audacious claim.
I’m not saying it can’t be true, but check your sources guys.
The other shoe will drop eventually
Yet another reason to fire Cashman
Somebody fucked up BIIIIIIIG!
One of these players will become a stud and you'll hear about this story on Sunday night Baseball when they're popping home runs or K-ing the side
They are so focused on Bellinger that other free agents are signing elsewhere, especially from Japan because their international team is non existent
It's very likely to be misconduct by Yankees staffers that they just uncovered
We need Pablo Torre on this shit
He's too busy grifting nowadays. A real shame because he had a good run going.
Wait really? What did he do? I lowkey kinda stopped watching cause the topics seemed less interesting after the Clippers stuff
He's gotten all political and less sports driven
Leave it to this fucking dumbass to have zero awareness of his front office because his head is stuck in the sand. Moron
Probably looked at how much they have spent on 16yr old Dominican short stops over the years with nothing to show for it, every year I hear of some kid they pay 2-3 million and they are never heard of again
I have no idea what this means, but it doesn't sound good.
Incompetent organization
lol New York sports are fucked and have been for long it’s sad to see
This better be something good
Not gonna lie this hasn’t been my favorite offseason ever
Oy
This sounds like they discovered evidence of serious crimes
If pre-nups are available, Cash should really institute post-nups instead of being blinded by love
Cutting costs for the walkout. There will be no additions to the team until the labor agreement is settled. But why add Grisham?
The Yankees are broke lol can’t afford it
I have been screaming for Cashman to be fired since 2019, this genuinely feels like it has to be the last straw for his tenure as GM. I get if they wanted to just reconstruct the whole department before all of this went down, but doing it right before the signing period seems very weird to me
You're not firing a gm over a bunch of 16 yr olds. Also despite what this fanbase thinks, he is a good gm and is very smart. He wouldn't be doing this for no reason. This is a very drastic move and something big might have been discovered
The Braves GM got banned from baseball for stuff with International free agents 10 years ago. There is a lot of legal stuff involved with these signings.
That was and is a different situation from what the person im replying to wants Cash fired for. I remember that event youre bringing up clearly, that was for circumventing the draft pool process to sneak more money to guys.
The person i replied to wants Cashman fired for simply canceling all the agreements.
Those are two different things.
Completely nuking your international scouting pipeline is never a smart move. Especially since we're a team that usually doesn't have a first-round pick thanks to the luxury tax. This is a truly bizarre move that doesn't really make any sense unless they uncovered a potential scandal and wanted to get in front of it.
If it looks like there is a massive scandal coming down the pipeline that could get you banned from signing people for several years, on top of draft and other penalties like getting blackballed from the entire baseball industry if you dont take decisive action, nuking the the entire international department, then salting the charred ground that remains would absolutely be the right move especially if you dont know how deep the rot goes.
Such a poorly run organization. Sell the team.
We are doing the opposite of making moves lol
Cant stand this owner. No accountability, any overspending is due to cutting corners previously. No passion and completely disconnected from fan base (which will always be there but may not opt to spend 800 to bring the family to ballgame this summer). Any time Hal or the GM speak to the press is just embarrassing.
I think Hal is selling and I get downvoted for it but he’s not adding anything REALLY significant and hasn’t been.
so adding fried and bellinger and devin williams last year wasnt significant? lol
He’s not taking on huge contracts duh.
signing fried to the largest contract for a left handed pitcher in league history is not taking on large contracts?
Bald asshole
It’s gonna be real funny the day you end up bald
I think they are getting ready to sell in the next couple years.
I love this for us(idk what this means and it’s probably awful)
I wonder if this has to do with Venezuela and Venezuelan academies being pretty strongly affiliated with organized crime there.