Yankees losing Gerrit Cole’s personal catcher for Yadier Molina would be huge mistake

Why would the Yankees break up the Gerrit Cole-Kyle Higashioka battery?

The Yankees simply love to have one good thing and then, when given a chance to run it back, sabotage it from the inside out.

After a postseason that left the catching position in flux, the only sure thing we learned was that the Yanks should open 2021 the same way they finished it: with Kyle Higashioka suited up behind the plate for every Gerrit Cole start.

Cole didn’t look fully comfortable in the Bronx for his first month of 2020 (and who can blame him?), and while we know the whole conversation about correlation vs. causation, it all snapped into place when Higashioka took over personal catcher duties. And with the luxury of a 162-ish-game season, the least the Yankees could do would be to maintain the partnership for the season’s first month.

This offseason, the team has shown renewed faith in Gary Sanchez, which we can’t fault them for — after all, he’s a better starter than the in-house options. But Brian Cashman admitted this week that such a declaration has brought about myriad trade offers for Higashioka. And with the team repeatedly being connected to Yadier Molina in free agency as some sort of a Sanchez mentor, it’s hard not to get concerned about the perfect pairing being botched after Year 1.

As Cashman claimed this week, Sanchez is the team’s “heir apparent” (to his own job?) in 2021, and that has led to more than a few teams attempting to pry Higashioka away from current former home.

"“Going into spring training, I would think he would be the heir apparent,” general manager Brian Cashman said on a Zoom call Wednesday.The Yankees made that decision pretty clear when they tendered Sanchez a contract, which guarantees he’ll make about $5 million next year.But Cashman also said Kyle Higashioka has “a chance to compete to be an everyday guy” and that he’s received plenty of calls about the backup backstop but has no plans of moving him."

Cole-Higashioka is a partnership that’s lasted back to the pair’s early days in California as high schoolers. It’s not the kind of thing you sacrifice prior to Year 2 of the ace’s big-money deal — especially as the calls for Trevor Bauer get louder by the minute.

The hurler is saying all the right things this offseason about his readiness to work with Sanchez again, but why remove the safety net simply to begin another experiment?

Molina would’ve been an excellent get for the Yankees in a mentorship role under ideal conditions, but the veteran catcher will only leave the Cardinals if someone else truly shows how much they “value” him.

In other words, it’s going to cost you.

And with so much financial gibberish still unsettled, why risk the rest of the offseason and upset a good thing here?

3 reasons DJ LeMahieu needs to be Yankees’ No. 1 priority

The New York Yankees have a lot to think about this offseason in terms of their roster, but re-signing D.J. LeMahieu is a no-brainer.