In news that should come as no surprise at all, MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch reports that agent Dan Lozano placed a phone call to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman early in the free agency process to gauge his interest in Albert Pujols.
Cashman’s Yankees are locked into first baseman Mark Teixeira through 2016 at a rate of $22.5 million per year and will need the DH spot for Jesus Montero and some of the club’s aging stars, so the conversation with Lozano did not last very long.
Here’s what Cashman told Hoch on Thursday:
“I said no; I gave it a nice, respectful no. We’ve made our commitments, we have guys we’re committed to, and so ... even though you can say he can fit on anybody’s club, realistically our money is spent in those directions. How do you add that with our commitments? You just can’t. It’s not feasible. They just checked in. It was more, I’m sure, on [Lozano’s] list of things -- ‘I have to ask, because I’ve got to do my job. But even Dan Lozano recognized [that with] Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, [Jesus] Montero -- there’s no vacancy here. I think if you were in my chair, you’d be in the same decision-making mode.”
In the end, Lozano didn’t need the Evil Empire to drive Pujols’ market value into the range of insanity.
