Kyle Tucker's contract with Dodgers is a new height Yankees will never reach

Kyle Tucker is a Los Angeles Dodger, and the way he landed in LA is the New York Yankees worst nightmare. The Dodgers' interest in Tucker was always in the short-term, high-AAV range, and they've gone out and done just that, landing the superstar outfielder with a four-year, $240 million deal.

A $60 million AAV is wild, and it sets a dangerous precedent. The trend around the league has been these shorter-term deals as clubs have grown wary of paying premium prices for non-premium performance as these star free agents age and reach their decline phases.

This phenomenon goes against the Yankees' established trend of extending out contracts in order to lower the AAV and the luxury tax hit in the process. They'd have never reached these heights with Tucker or any other free agent, and now a blockbuster like this threatens their entire way of doing business.

Dodgers land Kyle Tucker with the type of short-term, high-AAV contract that Yankees will never match

The Yankees specialize in the exact opposite of what we saw the Dodgers just do. Just last winter, New York gave Max Fried an eight-year, $218 million contract that will run him through his age-38 season, precisely because they wanted to keep his AAV low. Though the $27.25 million per season is nothing to sneeze at, the Yankees will be hit with that amount against the tax when the southpaw will clearly not be worth that price tag once he gets deep into his 30s.

A safer bet would have been paying Fried through his age-35 or age-36 season, ensuring that the club paid for his prime and could move on once he was ready to decline, but that would have meant the AAV exceeding the $30 million threshold.

DJ LeMahieu and Aaron Hicks are two other poster children for this strategy. LeMahieu got six years, $90 million in 2021, and it has been a couple of years since he was a productive player. The Yankees finally, mercifully cut bait last summer, but they still have his $15 million clogging the books despite his withering away, unsigned, forgotten by the market. Hicks was even worse, with the Yankees cutting ties in early 2023, yet having his $10 million salary count against the cap through last season. As a parting gift, they'll be dinged for $1 million due to the buyout of his option.

As we've seen, the Yankees' strategy has ultimately been ineffective at managing the luxury tax due to the hits they take once these players are no longer viable (or even on the team), but it has been their modus operandi nevertheless. New York has been opposed to utilizing deferred money to manage tax hits as other, forward-thinking organizations have in order to avoid this very problem.

So while one could argue that a change in philosophy is needed, what the Dodgers have done as the trend has swelled around the league has made the short-term deal more attractive to free agents.

Tucker, in an ideal world, was looking for a 10-year, $400 million contract. Instead, he'll re-enter the market again, going into his age-33 season if he plays out the life of the deal, and can cash in once more, making his total earnings over the next decade even higher. That's how things played out for Alex Bregman, who rejected six years and $171.5 million last year from the Tigers and now will have finagled $215 million in the same time period due to his one-year stint with the Red Sox and new deal with the Cubs.

A similar thing played out for Pete Alonso, who rejected a seven-year, $158 million extension offered during the 2023 season, and instead, decided to play out his final year of arbitration, landed a pillow contract last offseason, and now has a fresh five-year, $155 million deal. So, in the same seven years, instead of making $158 million, Alonso will wind up with $205.7 million.

The Yankees, to their credit, have been trying out this new strategy with Cody Bellinger, but they haven't embraced it fully to the point where it is actually beneficial for Bellinger to give up his long-term dream. Meanwhile, the league is threatening to leave the Yankees' way of doing business behind, and the Dodgers just hyper-charged the movement.