As Manny Machado lingers, Troy Tulowitzki won't know what awaits him in the Bronx
Troy Tulowitzki apparently is a New York Yankee, or has a chance to be. What lingers from that transaction is the someone who might not be a Yankee, that someone being Manny Machado or Miguel Andújar or, perhaps, Tulowitzki. This is not because Tulowitzki has, today, locked down shortstop or third base or any position for the Yankees, as there’ll be no knowing who or what Tulowitzki can be until there are weeks or months of daily baseball behind him. He could be great again. He could break down again. There’s also a lot of room between those outcomes. Time — and repetitions, and recovery from those repetitions — will tell.
He is a great bargain, which is why more than a dozen teams sent scouts to watch him chase fungoes and swing at 60-mph fastballs a couple weeks back. He was light on his feet, particularly for a 34-year-old. If you didn’t know he hadn’t played in a year-and-a-half, you’d have thought this was just ol’ Tulo cranking it up for spring training. He’s lean and seemed happy and when all the scouts went home he worked out for another 90 minutes, his body is telling him it can do this, and maybe it’ll cooperate for the next five years or so.
Meantime, he’ll be a Yankee, which has seemed to appeal to him. For years he’d worn No. 2 in celebration of Derek Jeter. He visited Yankee Stadium in the middle of the 2014 season, Jeter’s last, only not with the rest of the Colorado Rockies. Tulowitzki was on the disabled list. He went on his own. A year and a day later, he was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays. More injuries came. More down time. More prime years spent watching baseball. He became a free agent for the first time about a month ago, if not in the manner he’d ever envisioned, then sorted through his options, then picked the Yankees, regardless of whether they’ll have a position for him to play. Or perhaps he knows — or suspects — otherwise.
You’d understand the Yankees’ desire to have him. He is, at best, capable of being Tulo, once among the finer ballplayers of his generation, and still with time to be productive again. He is insurance against Didi Gregorius’ recovery from Tommy John surgery, against trading Andújar for pitching, against some other catastrophic injury, against failing to land Machado.
Until Machado makes his choice (the Yankees were believed to be in the running, along with the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago White Sox) or until the Yankees withdraw from the bidding on Machado, Tulowitzki, in a position to choose his perfect scenario, couldn’t know what awaits in the Bronx. He has told those close to him he would be agreeable to coming off shortstop for the right situation, and has also said he is not willing to become a utility player. If he is to assume a comeback, he’ll need at-bats, regular at-bats and a regular position. He may need his own backup, for that matter.
That leaves whatever conversations he or his agent may have had with the Yankees leading to Tulowitzki’s decision, or Tulowitzki’s strong desire to be a Yankee today and his willingness to sort out the specific details of it some other day, or some other information yet to reveal itself. Maybe he just couldn’t wait for the Yankees’ winter to play out. Maybe he has an idea of how it will.
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