The New York Yankees made their biggest trade of the offseason so far, swapping five players and adding slugger Juan Soto to next season’s lineup.
The Yankees also acquired outfielder Alex Verdugo from Boston in a trade to solidify their outfield for the 2024 season, so all they need to do is get Soto to agree to a contract extension beyond the 2024 season.
Meanwhile, the Yankees mysteriously entered the new year without spending anything in free agency.
MLB Trade Rumors tracks each team’s free agent progress and evaluates each team’s spending to begin the year.
The Yankees are one of four teams, along with the Chicago Cubs, Miami Marlins and Colorado Rockies, that didn’t spend a dollar in free agency.
In this case, the definition of free agent spending is a contract with a player who signs a guaranteed MLB contract and is free to negotiate with the team after the Nov.
6 deadline.
Therefore, the rankings do not take into account the Yankees’ trade for Soto and Verdugo, or players on non-guaranteed or minor league contracts.
As of the new year, the Yankees rank 27th in free agent spending.
This is not the level of spending that Yankees fans are accustomed to.
It’s not that the Yankees aren’t spending money.
The Yankees had to pay the competitive balance tax for the second year in a row.
According to Spotrac, the Yankees have an estimated total salary of $273 million, and that projection includes arbitration numbers and pre-arbitration numbers for players who are not yet eligible.
The Yankees made Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto free agents, but they ended up signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In fact, these contracts made the Dodgers the No.
1 free agent spender, spending more than $1 billion this offseason.
That’s a strange arrangement.
The Yankees spent nothing while the Dodgers spent 10 figures.
But that may change.
More than half of MLB Trade Rumors’ top 50 free agents are still on the market.
But at this point, the Yankees aren’t spending anything.
