Jon Heyman of MLB.com reports the New York Yankees have signed free agent SP Gerrit Cole to a nine-year, $324 million contract.
According to Jeff Passan of ESPN, there is an opt-out in the contract after the fifth year.
With this contract, Cole has surpassed Stephen Strasburg for the biggest contract ever given to a starting pitcher. At the moment, Cole only trails Mike Trout and Bryce Harper for the title of highest paid player. On that point, the $36 million average annual value of Cole’s contract surpasses Trout’s and Harper’s.
With the Yankees issuing this contract, they finally landed their man. The team drafted him in the first round of the 2008 draft, and despite their aggressive efforts, Cole eschewed them for UCLA. A decade later, they’d push to obtain him from the Pittsburg Pirates, but the Houston Astros would present a better offer.
This past year, Cole was one, if not the, of best pitchers in all of baseball leading the league with a 2.50 ERA, 326 strikeouts, 185 ERA+, 2.64 FIP, 13.8 K/9, and some other categories. For those efforts, he’d finish second to his teammate Justin Verlander in Cy Young voting.
With Cole in the rotation, the Yankees now have an ace atop their staff. With Cole leaving the Astros, the Yankees are much closer to or possibly better than an Astros team who defeated the Yankees in the ALCS in two of the last three years. This may very well help the Yankees make it to the World Series for the first time in over a decade.
It will be interesting to see what impact this signing has on the free agent pitching market. There’s also the possibility the Yankees may look to move J.A. Happ so as to clear some payroll and/or move a pitcher no longer in their rotation. Having Happ available will certainly affect the free agent pitching market for the rest of this offseason.
