Gio Gonzalez Just Forced The Yankees To Make A Decision

We’ve been watching this for a couple of weeks now. We knew decision day was coming, and this time Gio Gonzalez took control and is forcing the Yankees to make a decision. Gio opted out of his contract on Saturday, which gave the Yankees 48 hours to either release him or add him to the 25-man roster. Time is ticking, and by the end of today we will see what the final decision is.

We knew this was coming and shouldn’t be too surprised to see him opt out. The Yankees added him as insurance for CC Sabathia‘s health concerns and Luis Severino too. If Domingo German hadn’t been as reliable as he has been maybe this would be a different story. The Yankees like what they have seen from German and are comfortable enough with Jonathan Loaisiga as depth. Even so, the old saying goes you can never have too much pitching depth. Maybe if Gio wasn’t expensive pitching depth on an already expensive payroll they would keep him. I just don’t see the Yankees keeping him at this point. Adding him to the 25-man roster adds a $3 million base salary and an additional $300,000 per start.  Who knows though, maybe I’m wrong.

I can’t blame Gio for opting out. The Yankee starting rotation has thankfully been healthy thus far, even with the very full listed of injured players. The Yankees seem set with their starters, which makes Gio expendable for now. If he has no clear path to the majors here, all he needs is one other team to give him a chance.

And that’s not unrealistic at this point. There are teams out there that are struggling with pitching. The Angels need help, the Red Sox will be without Nathan Eovaldi for awhile and surgery could be on the table. The Mets also have their own tricky situation with their ace Jacob deGrom and other ineffective starters.

So Gio may be in demand and in a new job pretty quickly. According to MLBTradeRumors HERE, the Mets are watching the situation with Gio closely. Degrom has a “barking” elbow and he has been placed on the injured list, but may strangely choose to forgo an MRI, read more HERE. Strange approach but, whatever. Add the ineffectiveness of Jason Vargas to the current state of the Mets pitching staff and they may be in immediate need of rotation help.

Something tells me we may still see Gio in New York, and we shouldn’t be surprised. If Gio was a position player he’d definitely have a spot right now on this team. Weird how baseball works. If this is the end of Gio as a Yankee, I still wish him all the best.

–Jeana Bellezza-Ochoa
BYB Managing Editor
Twitter: @Nyprincessj