Yankees' latest attempt at outside-the-box signing feels like a new low

When you're a massive brand and historically-dominant franchise like the New York Yankees, making a niche signing every now and then is fine, provided you're making you're presence felt in the most expensive sector of the market.

The fact that the Yankees haven't been big players this offseason is what made their recent, outside-the-box signing of 18-year-old Dutch pitcher Tijn Fredrikze a cringeworthy maneuver. This isn't to loop Fredrikze himself into the negativity, though.

If this were the Los Angeles Dodgers signing Fredrikze, we'd all be able to unabashedly enjoy this narrative for the feel-good story that it is. We'd view Fredrikze as a potential diamond in the rough on whom the Dodgers are taking chance, a luxury they've afforded themselves through the stockpiling of organizational talent and back-to-back championships.

But since it's the Yankees trying to be edgy and progressive here, the effect falls flat because we're only reminded about how the Yankees are no longer what the Dodgers currently are. This isn't a team drowning in top-end talent, such that general manager Brian Cashman can twiddle his thumbs on a Monday and go explore the subterranean pitching market of the Netherlands on a Tuesday as some vanity project.

Far from it. Cashman has real and urgent work to do to field a competitive baseball team playing in an increasingly competitive division. The Yankees haven't made any moves on their big-time free agent targets, and they appear to be falling out of the sweepstakes for some of their trade targets, too. On the sort of bright side, it's only mid-December. Deep breath.

The Yankees just made another signing that does nothing to help them win now

Let's reiterate that Fredrikze is a cool story. He's apparently the first European-born player the Yankees have signed in over a decade. Neat.

This signing as a headline would have made a heck of a B-side to a legitimate move by the Yankees like, say, signing Bo Bichette or trading for Freddy Peralta. "Cashman's got his fastball back! He's making big splashes, and look, he's shopping in the Netherlands on the side! This guy's got eyes everywhere!"

Yes, it's amazing how much grace you're afforded as a GM when you simply meet the level of fan expectation. Look over in Baltimore. No one within driving distance of Camden Yards is whispering that Mike Elias may have just overpaid for Pete Alonso during his age-35 DH season in 2030. What matters is that Elias needed to do something big, and he did.

Yankees fans would be more than happy to support Cashman if he missed on a few big moves, so long as he was swinging with the best of them (like the Yankees used to). If that was happening, these side quests like Fredrikze would be far more palatable.