The short answer is yes, the Yankees absolutely will be in the loop as the shockingly horrid Phillies field offers for Hamels while also trying to re-sign him. Yet you shouldn’t expect the Yankees to go as hard after Hamels as they did Lee, and that has nothing to do with Hamels and everything to do with the new collective bargaining agreement.The Yankees should definitely stay away fro Greinke, it's painfully obvious from everything I've read that the guy would shrink under the bright lights of the Big Apple.
The CBA, in its first season, discourages all teams generally and the Yankees specifically from making the sort of trade-deadline, headline-grabbing moves that so delighted the late George Steinbrenner.
Generally? As the Post’s Joel Sherman noted yesterday in a column, teams no longer receive compensatory draft picks for players acquired in their walk year. That means any team acquiring Hamels, who beat the Rockies yesterday in Colorado with eight innings of one-run ball, will rent the left-hander for two to three months and then, if he signs elsewhere — the Dodgers are favored to land him — will have nothing else to show for its efforts.
Specifically? The increase of the luxury-tax threshold to $189 million in 2014 has Hal Steinbrenner determined to lower the Yankees’ payroll to that number. In order for that to become a reality while the Yankees also retain their best players — Cashman said yesterday the club will contemplate extending Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson, both of whom can be free agents after next year — they will need to surround them with cheap, productive talent.
That would be the sort of cheap, productive talent that would go to Philadelphia in a Hamels trade. The Yankees might not have a great match with the Phillies, anyway, because their best prospects (outfielders Tyler Austin and Mason Williams, catcher Gary Sanchez) are several seasons away from the major leagues and Philadelphia wants to dive right back into major-league contention next year.
Oh, and as long as we’re on the subject? The Yankees are not interested in Milwaukee’s Zack Greinke, just as they didn’t engage Kansas City in Greinke talks during the 2010-11 offseason. They don’t view his personality as a good fit in New York.
As for Hamels, he'd be a nice addition, but based on the Yankees new penny-pinching ways I doubt very much that they'll make any kind of splash at the deadline. With the best record in baseball I'm not really sure they'd need to anyway. Cashman said as much when asked about any potential trades:
“I’m not very optimistic that we’ll be needing to be active, or should be active, given the price tags associated with the players — what we need to do as we move forward [is] retain these assets that compel us to get this payroll down,” Cashman told the Post. “I’m very skeptical about it. But that doesn’t mean I’m saying we’re going to do nothing."
