Yankees Rumors: NY Never Made a Formal Offer to Rich Hill

The New York Yankees reportedly never made a formal offer to Rich Hill before he signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers Monday.

The Los Angeles Dodgers officially announced on Monday that the club has re-signed Rich Hill to a three-year $48 million contract. The New York Yankees have been connected to the 36-year-old lefty for weeks now, but according to Jon Heyman of Today’s Knuckleball, they never made him a formal offer.

With Hill off the market, the barren pitching market has lost the only impact starter that was available via free agency. The best available starting pitcher is now Ivan Nova, and there is no way the Yankees even consider meeting his asking price. That contract is a guaranteed disaster waiting to happen.

Over the weekend, Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register was the first over the weekend that the Dodgers and Hill were likely to close to an agreement. Tim Brown of Yahoo had the scoop on the details of the contract.

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While the deal is sure to raise eyebrows for a player of his age and injury history, Hill was simply phenomenal in 2016, pitching to a 2.12 ERA and 2.39 FIP in 110.1 innings of work split between the Athletics and the Dodgers. He did miss a long stretch of the season with a blister issue, but finished the year as a dominant force in LA’s playoff rotation.

With so few starting pitching options available, I’ve been telling anyone who will listen the past two months that the Yankees should be all over Hill. It seems like an especially big loss for the team since the bidding apparently never got out of control. He signed for slightly less than most pundits expected, and while that third year could be a complete wash, Hill is a strong bet to earn the majority of that money in year one as long as he’s healthy.

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At the end of the day, it’s probably not surprising that the Yankees aren’t going to hand out multiple large, multi-year pacts to free agents this winter. If they want to sign Aroldis Chapman as everyone expects, that doesn’t seem to leave room in their tight payroll for Hill.