The hot stove is loud enough this week to drown out the champagne from the World Series parade, and two New York front offices are staring down a fight neither one really wants to lose in public.
The reporting out of the league says both the Yankees and the Mets are chasing the same Japanese Triple Crown winner, and the motivations are different enough to make this interesting. The Yankees are reportedly eyeing him as a possible answer at a position vacated if Jazz Chisholm moves on. The Mets just want the bat, full stop, offensive firepower for a lineup that could use it. Two teams, same target, same city, same subway series bragging rights riding on who gets there first.
That is not even the whole plate for Queens. The Mets are also said to be circling a two-time Cy Young winner, a former Dodger, with the idea of pairing him with Nolan McLean at the top of the rotation. The Padres have reportedly jumped into that same derby, which tells you the price is about to move whether New York likes it or not. Meanwhile the Yankees are fighting to keep an All-Star reliever and may not win that one either, which would force a pivot to the bullpen market. And buried in the same notes, the Mets are reportedly fielding offers on a $75 million pitcher of their own, a sign the rotation rebuild might involve subtraction before addition.
Elsewhere the Braves are publicly waving off Ronald Acuna Jr. trade chatter while reportedly listening anyway, the Blue Jays are stacking star power with another 35-homer infielder on the wish list, and a Red Sox lefty with a 5.12 ERA is apparently still drawing a crowd because the underlying numbers say more than the ERA does. That part never changes, teams buy the stuff on the back of the card.
checked the almanac: this is almost the same play that ran when Yoshinobu Yamamoto hit free agency, a loaded NPB arm with the Yankees, Mets and others circling before the Dodgers closed it out. These bidding wars rarely end where they start.
What I am watching next is simple: who blinks first on the NPB slugger, and whether the Mets' Cy Young chase and their own pitcher on the block are connected moves or two separate stories that just happen to be running at the same time.
