Yankees appear to back out of Tomoyuki Sugano chase and we don’t know why

The Yankees appear to be out of the Tomoyuki Sugano bidding.

Earlier in the offseason when it was reported that the Yomiuri Giants would be posting star pitcher Tomoyuki Sugano, the New York Yankees were among the teams mentioned to be in the running. Seemed perfect, right? A small-ish posting fee and a two-year, $24 million contract seems to be the price to pay. Not bad!

But now we have a pertinent update during the week in which Sugano has to make his decision before his posting window expires. According to the latest reports, the right-hander has a four-year offer with three opt-out clauses from his incumbent team. Those opt outs would allow him to sign with an MLB team over the next three seasons.

On the other hand? Sugano seemingly wants to come to the States now, but the Yankees are nowhere to be found. What happened to their pursuit? Is Masahiro Tanaka coming back? Is Brian Cashman exploring trades for starting pitchers?

The Yankees have endlessly talked about lost money in 2020, yet they’re abruptly out on one of the most cost-effective arms free agency has to offer. This is the same team that just got done paying JA Happ $17 million per season. Now, all of a sudden, spending a dime is forbidden.

Instead the division-rival Blue Jays and San Fran Giants remain in the mix for Sugano, while the crosstown Mets appear to have edged their way out of the proceedings on Monday. It’s just odd there was no update in between suggesting the Yankees were falling out of favor here. It just … happened today.

What’s more embarrassing? The Yankees’ refusal to even dream about spending money until the DJ LeMahieu situation is resolved, or the fact that the Mets continue to bargain shop in free agency after telling us that they were going to by the whole league with Steve Cohen now running the show, dropping out of even bargain pursuits?

The silver lining? We guess the Red Sox are out, too. They were initially believed to be a thorn in the Yankees’ side throughout this process, but they’ve apparently taken their hat out of the ring. Guess they can’t spend either after dumping all of their payroll last offseason!

It’s January. We don’t really know what the Yankees are doing and they just crossed off another financially-friendly option off their list, it seems.

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