What problem would that circumvent?
As I understand it, exercising the option early would have no effect on the AAV. So you wouldn't accomplish anything by doing this.
Man if I did something like that with some of my avid baseball fan friends, a few would be calling me a complete ******* when they found out it was BS.
This is something that's been overlooked a bit - this was a classic contract-motivated season for Ellsbury - he even played hurt some at the end of the year - which was kind of unprecedented.
One of the biggest problems with this idea is that it requires outbidding the richest team in baseball for a player who has more value to them than he does to us.
Let's be realistic here. You don't make a colossal investment like that just to 'KO the Yankees'. They're probably not even the biggest threat the next 3 years. And let's not forget that at the end of the day they do have more money than us.
The best thing for us may be to let the Yankees have Cano and his $25 million a year cost.
There's a report that the Yankees offer to Cano is 7 years, 168 million, which sounds right. It's also reported that the offer has a deadline. There are no rumblings at all about other teams being interested enough to try to outbid the Yankees.