Aside from the fact that the Royals don’t appear to be interested in dealing their closer Joakim Soria, there may be another major hurdle to overcome. According to Andrew Marchand of ESPN , the Yankees are on Soria’s no-trade list. That means that even if the Yankees and the Royals worked out a deal, the young pitcher would have the right to veto it.
This is another roadblock, but not necessarily the biggest. If Yankees’ general manager Brian Cashman could figure out a way to get the Royals to agree to a trade, the fact that Soria has this NTC to the Yankees doesn’t necessarily kill a deal. It could, and likely, means that he would simply use it as leverage.
Soria is in the second year of a three-year, $8.75 million deal that also has club options worth $6 million in 2012, $8 million in 2013, and $8.75 million in 2014. It could be something as simple as he would force the Yankees to pick up all of these options all at once. Or it could even be that he would force the Yankees to not pick up any of the options and negotiate a more expensive extension instead.
Or maybe Soria just doesn’t like New York or want to play here. Either way this complicates things now and in the future between the two teams and any deal they might want to work out. It doesn’t make a deal impossible, it simply complicates things.
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