Can the Yankees avoid the missteps of the Red Sox and Mariners?

You Gotta Give Till It Hurts

Instead, the Mariners have drawn a financial line in the sand and traded their best pieces for a lot of good players, but no great ones. And now they enter the last year of a window they first peeked out of in 2013.

Gone are all the original young players, although a couple of new faces are emerging.

But their three most talented players are all rapidly aging. Felix can still have a great year in 2018, but there will be no more great years. He is signed through 2019, his age 33 season.

Cano finally gave the Pacific Northwest an MVP-caliber performance in 2016, but merely a very good one in 2017. He, too, can have a renaissance this coming year but, if so, it will probably be the last baseball masterpiece he creates. He is signed through 2023, his age 41 season.

And while Nelson Cruz continued to hold up his end as a premier power hitter, he is signed only through 2018, his age 38 season.

I am sure some of you M’s fans are thinking that the team will be in a great place to get one of the big free agents next season. But this team is more than one player away now, and there is no indication that they would replace the contract of Cruz with an even larger one.

Not when they have built an outfield with no power. No single player can fix that. And not when they would still need to add a frontline starter or two, even assuming Erasmo Ramirez pitches at the same level given 33 starts.

Sadly, the desperation is starting to show in another crucial area, roster construction.