Managing Core

The Yanks have already lost Cano.   The Giants seems poised to lose Nicks and possibly Linval Joseph in March.  The Rangers could lose Callahan, Girardi and others after the season.   Because of the NBA's insane cap, teams don't have cores.  They have hired guns who can be traded any time that it makes cap sense, and very few are long term players anywhere.

Over the past several years much was made of the Yankee core four of Andy, Posada, Mo and Jeter.  Now only Jeter is left, but the Yanks won a ton of games, pennants and titles with those four.  Of course it was more than that, it was Bernie, too, the great trade they made for Paul O'Neill, etc.    But a team's core is the group of players it has either drafted or otherwise acquired that it expects to win with over the long haul.   The guys you can build your winner and brand around.   Players who aren't at that level should be traded or allowed to leave.

The problem has always been keeping your core together.   The Yankees free agent advantage over the last 20 years hasn't been so much that they could sign outsiders, but that they could keep Bernie, Posada, Mariano and Derek Jeter for their whole careers.   Andy left for awhile and nobody won.

What we saw at the end end of last year was Robinson Cano, a core member of the Yanks for his whole career signing with the Mariners.  This made no story sense as he seemed determined to be a career Yankee and cruise right into the Hall of Fame.   But now he's gone, and regardless of what else they have done, the Yanks have major instability in their infield.

This was an awful precedent and it should have been avoided.  No, the Yankees should not have given Cano a 10 year deal at 32, but they should have either signed him to big extension two or three years ago, or traded him last year at the deadline.

Core players like Cano are huge assets and the truth is you either have to find a way to keep them, or exact a king's ransom for them in a trade.  You can't let them leave via free agency because you just don't get enough return.  

In the Yankees case they need to be able to identify who those players are by about 28 and give them extensions through their age 36 season if they are position players, and 33 if they are pitchers.  Then keep giving them smaller extensions to by up the rest of the their 30s.   This is essentially what the Yanks are doing with Jeter and what they should do next time they get a young core player.   They don't seem to have any now.

This brings up the Giant cases of Nicks and Linval.   As a rookie, Hakeem Nicks showed himself to be core.  Just a great football player.  And he was phenomenal last time the Giants made the post season and won the Superbowl.   Then injuries and communication issues have lead to the current situation.  He's scheduled to be a free agent,  and the Giants seem like they'll let him go.   Baseball careers are easier to chart than football careers, but as soon as things started to go South, and no extension was reached with Hakeem, he should have been traded.

The Giants weren't making the playoffs anyway, and now they'll just lose him.   On the flip side, Justin Tuck has been a great Giant through two Super Bowls, and it looks like they'll be able to make a friendly deal to keep him.

Linval Joseph is an interesting case.  He's gotten better and better and now appears to be the kind of core guy they should keep and build around.  Problem is, he's going to cost a ton, and they've already drafted his replacement in Johnathan Hankins.   The real core guy on the DL is JPP, even though Linval was a better player this past year.  JPP is harder to replace.

In a perfect world, Linval would have been extended before becoming a FA or traded, though NFL trades are more rare than baseball trades because of the cap.

That brings us to the Rangers. They have a bunch of FA's and RFA's they have to take care of in the coming offseason.  They have already locked up Hank and McDonagh for the foreseeable future and now they have to make tough decisions about Girardi and Callahan.

For years, both Girardi and Callahan have been core, and the Rangers have become a winning team again because of those two, Hank and a few others.   But it's also true that with Vigneault, the core might have to change.  It's already shifting to guys like McDonagh, Stepan, Krieder, and MZA, with other kids like Miller and McIlrath waiting in the wings.

So the Rangers have big decisions to make with Girardi and Callahan.  They can't let them leave as free agents, so they either have to work out extensions, or trade them at the deadline.   They have been core and still are core, but it will make sense to move them if they can't get reasonable extensions done.  And they'll have to get a king's ransom.  Which will be much more than the Yanks got for not having locked up  Cano or the Giants will get for not having locked up  Nicks and Linval.