Cano Said to Leave for Mariners; Beltran Reportedly Heads to Yanks

On Thursday afternoon, shortly before they were scheduled to meet with the Seattle Mariners, representatives for Robinson Cano placed a call to the Yankees, saying they believed their client could get a 10-year deal for more than $230 million. They wanted to know how the Yankees would respond.

As a final offer, Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager, said the team could go to seven years and $175 million but no higher, knowing full well it would not be enough to sway Cano. It was the last time the sides had communicated as of early Friday night.

While the Yankees held firm in their position, the Mariners swooped in and agreed with Cano on a 10-year, $240 million contract, pending a physical, according to two people in baseball who had been informed of the deal.

To offset the loss of Cano, the Yankees wasted little time in adding another bat, agreeing to a three-year, $45 million deal with Carlos Beltran, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal, giving him some of the money they had budgeted for Cano, who leaves with almost everything he wanted. The only things Seattle could not provide Cano were the tradition and mystique of the Yankees and the buzz and excitement of New York that he long thrived upon.

But they could provide riches. The Mariners, in desperate need of a power hitter, gave Cano the third-largest contract in baseball history. It matches Albert Pujols’s deal with the Los Angeles Angels and trails only Alex Rodriguez’s two most recent contracts: the 10-year, $252 million deal he signed in 2000 with the Texas Rangers, which he opted out of, and his 10-year, $275 million deal from 2007, when he re-signed with the Yankees.

The Mariners would not confirm the deal, which was negotiated by Cano’s new agent, Jay Z, and Brodie Van Wagenen of Creative Artists Agency, but a statement on Seattle’s Twitter page hinted an announcement would be forthcoming.

“We aren’t able to confirm any news regarding Robinson Cano at this time,” the statement said. “If & when an agreement is completed & finalized, we will announce.”

For several years Cano has been regarded as the Yankees’ best all-around player, perhaps one of the top five position players in the game. Cano, who hit third in the lineup last season, has displayed superb defensive skills and was as dependable as he was good, playing in almost every inning of every game for the past seven years.

The Yankees were willing to make a significant offer to Cano, one of their few remaining homegrown players. What they would not do for Cano, who came up with the Yankees in 2005, was meet his ultimate demand of extending a deal past seven years. The Yankees feared that such a contract for Cano, 31, would one day become the same kind of burden to the team that Rodriguez’s deal had turned into.

Throughout the negotiations, which began last spring, with Cano’s agents — he was originally represented by Scott Boras — the Yankees made lucrative but restrained offers. They shied away from what they saw as the same trap they had fallen into with Rodriguez, and there was a strong sentiment within the organization that the $25 million a year that they had allotted for Cano could be invested in several players instead of just one.

Even before Cano had left, the Yankees had been working on alternatives, calculating from the tenor of the negotiations that Cano would leave. The seven-year, $153 million deal they reached with Jacoby Ellsbury on Tuesday, with an average annual salary of $21.9 million, is just a tick below Cano’s $24 million average annual figure. The Yankees made the deal with Ellsbury under the strong belief that Cano would not return.

The Yankees’ negotiations with other free agents continued Friday and were described as intensifying by two people with knowledge of the talks. The Yankees have been in close contact with Boras, who represents outfielder Shin-Soo Choo and infielder Stephen Drew, but the addition of Beltran would rule out Choo, the person said. The Yankees have also spoken with the agent for second baseman Omar Infante, who hit .318 for the Detroit Tigers last year, and they recently agreed to a one-year, $3 million deal with the utility player Kelly Johnson, who may be the starting second baseman.