TAMPA, Fla. — New York Yankees team president Randy Levine severely criticized Dellin Betances’ agent for taking the team’s setup man to arbitration and asking for money usually reserved for closers.
The Yankees won the hearing and will pay Betances, an All-Star in each of his three seasons, $3 million in 2017. Betances’ agent, Jim Murray, asked for $5 million, a number Levine said had “little sense of reality.”
“What his agent did was make him a victim of an attempt to change a marketplace in baseball that has been well established for 30 or 40 years,” Levine said during a conference call with the team’s reporters. “And I feel bad for Dellin that he was used in that way by his agent, because anyone who knows about this process that the history is very much established that $5 million goes to elite closers.”
Levine had a clear message he wanted to get out. He said he wanted to speak publicly because he loves Betances and sees a lot written about animosity. He said he wanted to make it clear the Yankees — who usually settle before arbitration — did the right thing. On the other hand, Levine felt like Murray did not.
“It is like me saying, ‘I’m not the president of the Yankees, I’m an astronaut,'” Levine said. “I’m not an astronaut and Dellin Betances is not a closer, at least based on statistics, not whether he could be or couldn’t.”
Murray did not immediately return a call for comment.
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