Yankees’ Juan Soto pivot leaves plenty of contract questions as decisions loom

Understand that if Juan Soto was retained, the Yankees baseball department was operating with a belief — according to outside executives and player representatives who had been in contact with Yankees officials — that Hal Steinbrenner would permit about another $12 million-$15 million in total offseason spending, maybe more if they were able to offload Trent Grisham’s $5 million or some of Marcus Stroman’s $18 million.

So that would mean no Max Fried, Cody Bellinger and perhaps not even Paul Goldschmidt — or Grisham. In this scenario, they would have kept Soto, but probably have a worse team for lack of starting pitching and depth.

The flip side is that beyond Fried, the Soto-less Yankees invested in many walk-year players with a lot to perform for this year beyond just helping the team — notably Bellinger and Goldschmidt, but also Devin Williams, Grisham and Stroman, and also Luke Weaver. As a win-now team, the Yankees will worry about the looming free agencies when they arrive. But one-third of the way through this season, implications for the coming market and future Yankees teams have begun to percolate since — among other items — the group includes two players capable of playing center (Bellinger and Grisham) and closing (Weaver and Williams):

1. Bellinger: He opted into the $27.5 million for this season with the Cubs, still had a player option for $25 million next season, and that — combined with unappealing underlying stats such as a low average exit velocity — limited suitors when Chicago was basically trying to give him away. Underappreciated was that Bellinger is just flat-out a good player — athletic, versatile, low strikeouts, able to hit left-on-left pitching. After a slow start, he had been one of the game’s best hitters in May.