ESPN: The Yankees Buzz Heats Up as Marcus Stroman Unfollows team on Instagram.

When it comes to player acquisitions, are the New York Yankees, who have long been the financial engine of Major League Baseball, suddenly playing “third fiddle”? Speaking on Thursday, one of baseball’s most informed “insider” writers expressed the opinion that the idea itself is peculiar.

According to Dylan Backer of Empire Sports Media, the Yankees are reportedly in a “holding pattern” when it comes to acquiring new players until they can release themselves from their $18 million commitment to one unsatisfactory pitcher in 2025, which makes it appear as though they are paying more attention than ever to the profit-loss ledger.

Marcus Stroman, the pitcher, may be hinting that he is leaving the Yankees, since he unfollowed the team’s Instagram account on January 28. This just serves to confirm the suspicions that he is leaving the Bronx in one form or another.

Yankees are still trying to shed despite being fourth in payroll.
However, the Yankees aren’t exactly frugal this season. Fangraphs has calculated that the Yankees will have a payroll of $303 million going into the 2025 season, which begins on March 27. They are now ranked fourth in MLB.

They could be a long way from their days of using money to dominate the competition. From 1999 to 2012, the Yankees led all MLB teams in payroll as of Opening Day for 14 consecutive seasons. The Yankees went to five World Series during that time and won three of them. Three more times throughout those years, the Bronx Bombers advanced all the way to the American League Championship Series.

The Yankees have only led the payroll chart twice since that time, in 2013 and 2020. In 2024, they made their sole appearance in a World Series. It was their first Fall Classic appearance since 2009. They had the second-highest payroll in MLB going into the season, only surpassed by their crosstown rivals, the New York Mets, after they lost the Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers previous year.

ESPN baseball expert Jeff Passan is not believing the Yankees’ alleged attempt to cut Stroman’s pay in order to keep the team below the third Competitive Balance Tax (often known as the “luxury tax”) barrier. He attacked the Yankees during his appearance on the Michael Kay Show on Wednesday.

The Yankees’ “Third Fiddle” role What Passan Says
These are, after all, the New York freaking Yankees. Passan informed Kay that if a luxury tax level is preventing them from doing so, it reveals more about their location than the luxury tax itself. In baseball, when have the Yankees ever taken a backseat role? In terms of spending, that is where they are at the moment.

However, it appears that the Yankees are there. Can Stroman be traded? No team has yet to accept all or even a portion of his $18 million salary. The Yankees reportedly offered to pay a sizable amount of Stroman’s contract earlier this month, but they have yet to respond.

As Yanks Go Yard blogger Thomas Carannante put it, the outcome is that “here we are.posting on social media about a trivial unfollow that might hint at a transaction. Hold on, are we certain that Stroman ever followed the Yankees?

The Yanks Center account on X (previously Twitter), which was the source of the initial information of Stroman’s Instagram unfollow, claims that the right-hander, 33, was in fact following the Yankees as recently as Tuesday.