Yankees to reportedly tender Gary Sanchez contract for 2021 season

Former Yankees ace CC Sabathia knows Gary Sanchez isn’t done in New York ahead of the non-tender deadline.

Though Yankees fans have grown frustrated with Gary Sanchez’s lack of development and lack of production in recent years, the fact remains that he has a track record to back up his pedigree.

After all, you’ll never find a catcher anywhere else who’s even theoretically capable of Sanchez’s 2016 and 2017 seasons, not to mention his first half in 2019. We cringe when he strikes out again with runners on or fails to hustle in a key spot not because he’s untalented, but because we know he’s better than that. We know he’s a lightning rod for the worst sect of the fanbase, and don’t want their criticisms to be justified.

Wednesday’s a big day for Sanchez, against all odds. Entering the day, there was at least a minute chance he could be non-tendered by the evening (on his birthday!), cut loose into a free agency process no one expected or prepared for.

Luckily, that isn’t the case, and he’ll reportedly be given one more year after a nightmarishly tiny 2020 to find his bearings.

Exhale.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a Sanchez backer following a moribund 2020, up-and-down 2019, and brutal 2018, you have to admit that tendering him a contract (which should be between $5 and $7 million) was the bare minimum here. Perhaps he’ll still be traded, but at the very least he won’t be scooped up off the scrap heap directly into a comeback season elsewhere.

Based on his recent comments, we can also count former ace CC Sabathia among the believers.

As Sabathia told the New York Post’s George A. King, when asked if Sanchez could bounce back from the depths of 2020:

“For sure. There are tough times in your career and you have to make an adjustment. He wants to be a good catcher in the big leagues and we obviously know he has the talent to do it. Now it is time for him to get back to work and to the level of the player that we know he can be.”

“Get back to work” is the key piece of that quote — and Sanchez, for what it’s worth, ate his pride and went down to the Dominican Winter League this offseason to attempt to get back to what he does best.

If Sanchez can channel that ferocity moving forward, it would be a huge boon to a Yankees team that’s so rudderless at the catcher position that they’re entertaining handing the keys off to a 38-year-old Yadier Molina.

Yeah, elite Sanchez would be better. Hopefully, CC’s right.

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