Yankees fans would like to forget Brian Cashman’s most notable trade at GM Meetings

The MLB General Manager Meetings are upon us this week, and this year they hold much more importance than they have in years' past. Typically, teams like the New York Yankees use this time to outline offseason plans, create free-agent shortlists, and begin trade negotiations, with December's Winter Meetings serving as the point where things really begin to pop off.

But this year's Winter Meetings are unlikely to happen with the Dec. 1 lockout looming. That means Brian Cashman and company need to get down to business in Las Vegas during this conference of GMs. With that, we're reminded of one of the few times Cashman struck this early in the offseason.

During the 2015 edition of General Manager Meetings, New York swung the trade that brought Aaron Hicks to the Bronx. It was a deal that most Yankees fans do not remember fondly.

The Aaron Hicks trade wasn't actually that bad, but the Yankees' actions down the road were the major mistake

At the time of the trade, there was some curiosity as to why the Yankees had chosen Hicks and questions as to whether or not they overpaid. The team needed an athletic and defensively competent center fielder, and as a former top prospect Hicks fit the bill. However, Hicks struggled to stay on the field and contribute at the plate when he was healthy.

The player going back to Minnesota was John Ryan Murphy, a well-regarded prospect in his own right who was coming off a year in which he hit .277/.327/.406 over 67 games as a 24-year-old. The club was willing to give up Murphy because Gary Sanchez was waiting in the wings and was figured to be the kind of game-changing offensive talent behind the plate that drastically boosted a lineup's production.

To that end, trading Murphy for Hicks, who still hit a below-average .256/.323/.398 over 97 games in 2015, was a reasonable risk to take. It didn't pay off initially, as the switch-hitting center fielder batted just .217/.281/.336 in his first season in pinstripes.

However, he broke out in 2017, showing the kind of plate discipline the Yankees have always coveted, and just enough in other aspects of his game to become a valuable jack-of-all-trades type of player. Injuries still played a role, but his .266/.372/.475 line was encouraging. When he built on it in 2018, hitting a career-high 27 homers while slashing .248/.366/.467, it looked as if Brian Cashman had pulled off a real fleecing of the Twins.

On top of Hicks' breakthrough, Murphy's big league career would end following the 2020 season. He'd hit just .182/.230/.325 since leaving New York.

All things considered, the trade was actually a win. The reason that Hicks is remembered as a bust here is what came next. He parlayed that 2018 campaign into a seven-year, $70 million extension, and it became one of several big-money deals that would weigh down the books for years to come.

One of Cashman's most annoying habits, which was most prevalent around this time, was his proclivity to hand out contracts with lengths far beyond their usefulness in an attempt to keep the AAV low and manipulate the luxury tax. It was a bad strategy to begin with, but it was especially egregious when it was done with a player as injury-prone (and largely unproven) as Hicks.

Hicks didn't hit all that bad in 2019 and 2020, but injuries cut his 2019 campaign short and the COVID-19 pandemic greatly reduced the number of games played in 2020. More injury woes would strike Hicks in 2021, and by this point his body had broken down to the point where his producing was out of the question.

New York mercifully pulled the ripcord and DFA'd Hicks in May of 2023, eating more than $20 million in the process. It wasn't until last offseason that his deal was finally removed from the ledger.

The lesson here is that the trade and the process behind it weren't as bad as we remember them, but the Yankees missing the warning signs and committing substantial money for seven years to Hicks is the reason why he's not remembered fondly in the Bronx. As Cashman navigates the market this winter, he'd be wise to remember that everything has an expiration date.

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