Yankees' Jon Berti non-tender is looking more ridiculous by the day

One team that did not win the Alex Bregman bidding will have versatile infielder/solid bench piece Jon Berti firmly in the mix to replace his production. One team that didn't get involved in the Alex Bregman bidding whatsoever will have ... three complete wild cards at third base, with the losers of the open competition filling out another weak and intentionality-free bench.

But, in defense of the Yankees, at least they got to save ~$3.8 million (maximum) in the process. So they've got that going for them.

The Yankees non-tendered Berti after they attempted to add his 40+ stolen base speed/solid glove/passable bat last March as an Opening Day bench option/infield reliever. Remember when the Yankees' bench used to include former stars like Cecil Fielder, Darryl Strawberry and Tim Raines on their last legs? These days, it typically includes whatever random roster chum didn't have the ability to crack the lineup. "Who's left? Yeah, it's those guys." That will likely be the case again entering 2025, where Trent Grisham is one Giancarlo Stanton injury away from starting, and names like Oswald Peraza and DJ LeMahieu firmly in the mix to get key pinch-hitting opportunities simply because they're there.

Berti's projected arbitration salary was the aforementioned $3.8 million. At the time, the Yankees determined that was too much to pay for someone who missed a large portion of 2024 with an injury. Surely, they planned to upgrade at thi -- oh. Well, if they didn't find what they wanted, they could maybe bring back Bert -- oh. He went to the Cubs on a $2 million base salary that can reach $3.3 million with escalators.

That's a discount the Yankees could afford right now, and probably should've, given that they're about to scrape the bottom of the infield barrel (or ignore the barrel scraping entirely).

Yankees should've circled back to Jon Berti after silly non-tender

This is far more frustrating than it has to be because the Yankees did good work otherwise after losing Juan Soto. They reallocated their funds nicely. They kept long-term flexibility. They just forgot to finish the job, and third base remains vacuous. If Berti's $3.3 million was the difference between signing Max Fried and letting him walk, then I'd be interested in following a different team moving forward, thanks.

Berti would've been a more premium fill-in than any of the names currently in the competition, or an excellent bench piece at a reasonable cost. Instead, he's a Cub. Saving $4 million like it's $25 million, just to keep the $4 million and leave a hole, is bizarre (but not unexpected) business around these parts.