The Yankees can go ahead and cross one name off their potential free agent shopping list.
Pitcher Marcus Stroman, who is an unrestricted free agent after his contract with the Mets expired at the end of the 2021 season, has no interest in suiting up for the city’s American League team.
On Tuesday afternoon, a Twitter user posted a photo of Stroman photoshopped into a Yankee uniform, tagging the pitcher in the post. Stroman responded with a GIF of rapper 50 Cent laughing and driving away.
In today’s digital age, that seems about as official of a “no” as we’ll get publicly. It’s unclear whether the Yankees have made any sort of real push for Stroman anyway, but it’s evident that they should shift their focus to other pitchers on the market. With such an emphatic dismissal of the Yankees, it’s also possible that Stroman already knows he has a deal in place with another team, or at least feels comfortable knowing that a large sum of money is headed to his doorstep in the coming days. It’s much easier to poke fun from a position of power, after all.
Perhaps more noteworthy than the GIF was a follow-up tweet from Stroman explaining his position a little further. When Mets’ pitcher Taijuan Walker jumped into the thread with a few cry-laughing emojis, Stroman responded to him with a shot at the Yankees’ outdated personal grooming policies, tweeting, “Durags, dreads, and tattoos ain’t going anywhere cuz.”
The Yankees do not have a policy against tattoos (Aroldis Chapman, Gary Sanchez and Gleyber Torres are among the players with visible tattoos), but do make their players, coaches and male executives keep things clean cut. Along with outlawing beards, their hair policy states that “scalp hair may not be grown below the collar,” something that affected long-haired players like Johnny Damon and Gerrit Cole when they arrived in the Bronx.
Andrew McCutchen, who played 25 games for the Yankees in 2018, specifically called out the policy that forced him into shaving his beard. In 2020, McCutchen said that the team should “realize that we have a way of expressing ourselves in different ways.” McCutchen wore dreadlocks for a large chunk of his career in Pittsburgh but cut them years before coming to the Yankees.
Stroman added a few more thoughts before finally logging out, highlighted by a response to instigating accounts called @Ghost_Fendiii and @isaacaggy saying, “You mad because that crazy payroll continues to let you down year after year?” punctuated by the clown emoji. Stroman also pointed out that the Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2009 even though they “routinely spend more than any other team and acquire the biggest names at every trade deadline.”
An astute commenter did remind Stroman that the Mets had the league’s third-highest payroll and did not reach the postseason. None of that seems to matter to Stroman anymore, which makes sense given the very real possibility that his next contract comes with a few extra commas.
