It’s hard to look at the New York Yankees’ re-signing of Anthony Rizzo and think that it was anything other than their Plan C.
That’s no disrespect to Rizzo, who is a perfectly fine player, but from the moment the lockout ended the Yankees were connected to both Freddie Freeman and Matt Olson.
They got neither.
The Atlanta Braves traded for Olson, while Freeman in turn signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers. There rarely was a lot of optimism that Freeman would end up in pinstripes, but between Olson and a handful of Oakland starters, it seemed like there was some smoke with the Yankees and A’s.
But The Athletic’s MLB insider Ken Rosenthal said on the "R2C2 with CC Sabathia and Ryan Ruocco” podcast this week that he didn’t think the Yankees came close to landing either first baseman.
"Freddie Freeman, yes, he would’ve been great too," Rosenthal said. "But I don’t know that Freddie Freeman wanted to come to New York. I never got that impression. And just one from afar, I never spoke to him about that, but he’s from Southern California and it seemed to me he would prefer to be there.
"They were in there (on Olson) from what I understand, but I don’t know that anyone was going to match the Braves’ desperation, and that often drives these things," Rosenthal later said. "And desperate is not a word Alex Anthopoulos would want to use, but if they were going to lose Freddie they had to come up with a good alternative. And Rizzo would have been a good alternative, but he’s not Matt Olson in terms of age and potential and being from Atlanta, the whole thing. It seemed to me the Yankees were fighting an uphill battle on both those fronts, Olson and Freeman."
Knowing this, it’s hard to fault the Yankees for not ending up with either. If Freeman didn’t want to go north, he wasn’t going north unless the Yankees gave him a ridiculous offer. And the Braves gave the A’s such a massive haul for Olson that unless the Yankees wanted to part with multiple high-level prospects they weren’t going to get him. Even if it turned into a bidding war between New York and Atlanta, one would think the Yankees would’ve bowed out before the Braves.
Now, they’ll roll into the season with Rizzo as their first baseman – even if that isn’t their ideal.
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