Rumored Yankees Deal With White Sox Not Happening

After rampant speculation that the Yankees had reignited talks of a trade with the White Sox, many within baseball circles have thrown water on the fire that was.

Tuesday morning started with a jolt of Yankees news, stating that the club had re-engaged the Chicago White Sox about potentially acquiring 27-year-old lefthander Jose Quintana — though this time, Bob Nightengale of USA Today went on record as claiming the Yankees were leveraging for a return to the Bronx of relief pitcher David Robertson.

According to USA Today, the Yankees wanted the White Sox to pay a large portion of Roberston’s remaining $25M over the next two years. This in itself was a bit peculiar since the White Sox have gone on record saying that Robertson, in their eyes, is the premiere closer currently available on the market. So why would general manager Rich Hahn agree to eat any salary then?

The answer is simple, he likely wouldn’t unless the haul he was getting back was equal to or greater than the one his club received from the Boston Red Sox for Chris Sale.

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Only a few hours later, though, the reports of Quintana and Robertson to the Yankees were refuted by all parties.

Earlier last week, there was a bit of an uproar when the rumor began to circulate of a three-team trade that would have seen Quintana head to the Pittsburgh Pirates for a number of prospects, and Andrew McCutchen finding his way to the Yankees for another package of prospects to be split among the White Sox and Pirates.

As much of a fan as I am of Cutch, how does his inclusion to the Yankees’ overpopulated outfield solve any problems? I sometimes wonder who thinks up these rumors. Is it just to send Twitter into a frenzy? Because nine times out of ten it works.

Nothing came to fruition on that front, and nothing is likely to happen with today’s rumor either. I have no doubt that the Yankees would love to add both Quintana and Robertson, but doing so would severely stunt the rebuilding effort — immediately changing the course of the organization once again.

Adding Robertson to the back-end of the Yankees’ bullpen would make it a dynamic one at that — not quite so much as last season, when Andrew Miller pitched the 8th innings, but using Robertson in the 7th, while bumping Tyler Clippard to the 6th inning would shorten games for a starting staff full of question marks.

The issue at hand, though, is that the Yankees aren’t viewing Robertson as a closer or an 8th inning stopper, so why in the world would they trade a very good prospect or two for him? Especially for a guy that has blown 14 saves in the past two seasons.

The fact of the matter is that the White Sox are getting greedy in their pursuit to trade away any and all veteran commodities because of how outlandish the returns from the Nationals and White Sox were.

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I just pray that the Yankees don’t become the next team to go nuts in terms of dealing away prized prospects for a couple of pitchers (as good as they are) that still won’t be enough for this club to make it to the World Series in 2017.