Austin Romine has been a staple on the New York Yankees roster over the past few seasons as the team’s backup catcher. He’s stayed healthy over the years, and has done a great job on both offense and defense.
But, he’s a free agent now, and it’s probably best that the team parts ways with him. It has nothing to do with performance, as he hit .281 with eight home runs in 228 at-bats in 2019.
The team has another catcher that they could use in Kyle Higashioka, and he’s shown some promise. He only bat .214 last year, but spent a lot of time going up and down from the majors to AAA, and had some nice numbers in the minors.
Higashioka has improved a lot since 2018 and will be even better in 2019. His arm has gotten better every year, and does a pretty good job calling games.
Since they have Higashioka, they should move on from Romine to save some money. He will probably want seven or eight million dollars, when they could instead go with Higashioka and only pay him around a million dollars. They could use some of the money saved to pursue Stephen Strasburg, Gerrit Cole, or Anthony Rendon.
Moving on from Romine could also give him an opportunity to get a starting role elsewhere. There are several rebuilding teams that could use a solid veteran catcher to lead their team on and off the field.
Austin Romine has done a great job for the Yankees over the years, but it’s time to move on from him and go with Kyle Higashioka as the backup catcher.