Though their primary concern at the moment is waiting on a decision from free agent Kevin Youkilis, the Yankees still have a hole to fill in right field, and with that in mind they are still engaged in talks with their own Ichiro Suzuki, tweets Jon Heyman. Ichiro was a pleasant surprise during his time with the Yankees in 2012, including a very strong postseason performance, and would seem to be a natural fit for a team obsessed with avoiding anything more than one year contracts this winter. On the other hand, many have speculated that the Yankees don’t want to have an all left-handed hitting outfield, especially one that includes both Ichiro and fellow light-hitter Brett Gardner.

All the same, both sides seem to prefer a reunion, and I wonder if a lot of the feather fluffing from both sides isn’t designed as a ruse to push the other closer to an agreement.

This is just a very, very strange report from Bob Nightengale:

The #Yankees, but not GM Brian Cashman, quietly running background check on Josh Hamilton, rival GM says

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 7, 2012

I say it’s strange because, well, why is someone other than the GM doing this? After all, yesterday the story was that Cashman lacked the authority to make any offers at the Winter Meetings because ownership was already clamping down on their payroll spending, and now today someone other than Cashman (so presumably someone above Cashman’s head) is running a background check on the top position player on the free agent market? Talk about night and day.

Of course, checking up on someone isn’t the same thing as being all that interested in signing him, and I would still put the odds that Hamilton lands with the Yankees at somewhere between slim and none. Then again, there is a distinctly similar feel to the way the Mark Teixeira signing went down: a middle of the order bat the Yankees could certainly use just sitting in limbo on the free agent market, with no one seemingly making a particularly strong push to sign him. That gave the Yankees the chance to come in and swoop up Tex, and I suppose the Yankees could do the same thing here with Hamilton. Conversely, if no one is enthusiastic about giving Hamilton the 4-5 year deal he wants right now, maybe the Yankees ar just seeing if he can be had on a shorter term contract.

Either way, the picture we’re getting of the team’s front office right now is really the most interesting thing going in Yankeedom. Unless it’s all a Hot Stove smoke screen, it would appear from here that Cashman has less authority now than he has in recent years.

I guess this goes into the “semi-mundane things we kind of already knew” file, but ESPN New York’s Andrew Marchand reported earlier that the Yankees were “listening” to offers on Curtis Granderson, Phil Hughes, and Ivan Nova. I say “listening” because the semantics of these things can matter quite a bit. Taken literally, “listening to offers” merely means that the Yankees are willing to entertain pitches for their players, and differs quite a bit from “shopping” someone. I would basically expect that the only players the Yankees wouldn’t so much as listen to realistic offers on are Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, and C.C. Sabathia. In any case, listening doesn’t cost you anything, and people can’t say “yes” if you don’t give them the chance.

That doesn’t mean that absolutely nothing will come of this, of course. I still have trouble seeing where the Yankees are going to get good value for one year of Curtis Granderson, but Hughes and Nova I could at least imagine fetching a decent return if one team or another had a high opinion of them. But be that as it may, just because a team is willing to let someone make them an offer doesn’t mean they’re actively trying to trade anyone.

Yesterday’s theme was potential Yankee targets signing with other teams, including a couple of potential interim third basemen in Eric Chavez and Jeff Keppinger. That’s left the board pretty thin as the Yankees look for someone to fill in for Alex Rodriguez, and apparently they don’t want a repeat of that, to say the least. According to Bryan Hoch, the Yankees have made Kevin Youkilis an offer of $12 million for one year, which jives with the “premium salary” he was supposedly looking for in exchange for a one year deal. That’s pretty strange, I guess, but the Yankees desperately need someone to plug the hole at third base, and if they’re going to insist on signing nothing but one year deals, they’re going to have to lay out more dollars for anyone but true scrap heap projects. I’m not terribly wild about Youkilis at this point in his career, but the alternatives are slim, and not overpaying anyone in 2013 likely means having too many holes to win the remarkably deep American League East.