Potential Bargains for the Yankees on the Upcoming Free Agent Market

Brett Anderson

The 28-year-old lefty is the classic good-when-hurt pitcher. Anderson shocked all of baseball with a career high 180.1 innings in 2015, after four straight seasons with only double-digit innings totals. Of course, after accepting the Dodgers $15.8 million qualifying offer last offseason, he has only managed a grand total of four innings because of back surgery.

When healthy, Anderson is one of the best groundball pitchers in the business, generating a 66.3% GB rate over a full season in 2015. That seems like a particularly useful skill in home run friendly Yankee Stadium. He’s usually pretty good about keeping the ball in the yard and limits walks, although he doesn’t really strike anyone out.

At the very least the Yankees should leaf through his medicals and assess the risk. There aren’t many frontline-starter talents you can sign on a one year contract. It could be prudent for New York to use their financial might to offer him $10-12 million or so and cross their fingers. That’s the kind of money they can absorb pretty easily.

Even 120 innings of a 3.50 ERA would be a huge help to next year’s rotation and could be enough to put them over the top in the AL East.

Next: Scott Kazmir