Yankees All But Said Goodbye to Jazz Chisholm Jr. (Bednar’s the One They Want)

Your mileage may vary on the Yankees learning their lesson when they made their qualifying offer decisions today, but they certainly learned from last year when it came to their Jazz Chisholm and David Bednar choices. The Yankees stuck David Bednar with the qualifying offer and did not offer it to Chisholm. That means that any team that signs Chisholm will not provide the Yankees with a draft pick. It also depresses Bednar's market a little bit. If he opts to pick up the qualifying offer, that means he comes back to the Yankees for $23.15 million. He's probably going to want three years, not one. The Yankees and Bednar are probably going to keep negotiating, but if somebody else wants to sign him, it will now cost them a draft pick. Teams don't like paying relievers. They want to pay relievers and give the Yankees a draft pick? In an ideal world, no. So the Yankees' chances of retaining Bednar just went up, and the Yankees all but said goodbye to Chisholm. He's going to have a big market this year, even coming off a down year. Brandon Lau and Chisholm are the class of the second base free agent market. Yankees won't get anything back if and when he leaves, but this made it clear they were not going to risk a train aggression situation. They were not going to live in a world where they said, well, you know, he had a career year. He'll go somewhere else. He's not going to take that. Chisholm did not have a career year. He likes being Yankee. He might have just taken the one year and try to run it back in another walk year. The walk year didn't go so well this time around. Instead of worrying about that, the Yankees just decided, yeah, we're just going to do what the Bednar, not you. And now Chisholm will move on.