Player transaction news can never fully replace the drama and excitement of actual games; however this past week got as close as possible to making baseball fans forget that currently we’re not able to enjoy watching any on-field action.

The most important thing to remember when following the transaction rumours and news stories is that no move happens in isolation. Each decision is the product of a series of events and has a knock-on effect too.

Over the last offseason it was the newly-cash-rich Los Angeles Dodgers that were the leading protagonist. Everyone knew they were going to be the dominant force and other teams were either trying to get in ahead of them, or waiting to see what options would be available once the Dodgers started making their moves.

This offseason it’s the New York Yankees who have returned to their seemingly rightful position of the market-setter. They wanted to get their payroll below the luxury tax threshold of $189m, but that was before an 85-77 regular season and a watching brief during a postseason that ended with their arch rivals the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series.

The Yankees are a team that wins and, just as importantly in New York, a team that wins with stars. With club legends Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte retiring, Derek Jeter battling injuries and the inevitable ageing process, and Alex Rodriguez being a one-man soap opera, there was precisely no way whatsoever that the Yankees were going to make a few helpful little deals and let their farm system of young players develop.

Robinson Cano was always going to be the intriguing storyline in all this. Cano became a free agent this offseason as arguably the Yankees’ one star still in his prime. In other words, he was exactly the type of player they wanted on their roster for 2014 and beyond and losing him to another team was almost – although not quite – unthinkable.

Yes, the Yankees were making noises through ‘sources’ that they weren’t going to stretch to a ten-year contract or anything near $200m, but ultimately this story was going to end in someone paying an excellent player a lot of money, and that was surely too much of a Yankee thing to do for them to resist.

Even when Cano arrived in Seattle for talks with the Mariners, it was seen not as the first step of him leaving New York, more the next step in pushing the Yankees to up their offer to keep him.

And yet, on Friday it was there on every MLB news site you cared to check just in case the rest had somehow got it wrong: Cano had agreed a 10-year, $240m contract with the Mariners.

Earlier in the week the Yankees had given Jacoby Ellsbury a seven-year, $153m contract to move to New York after winning a World Series with the Red Sox (the Johnny Damon path, as it should be known). It seems that this wasn’t an early admission of defeat in the Cano stakes and that in agreeing the deal they still felt they could keep their second baseman, but it was a decent consolation prize to secure just in case the Mariners’ dollars overwhelmed them (and isn’t that a strange situation to behold).

The Yankees had already agreed a five-year, $85m contract with former Atlanta Brave Brian McCann to make a big upgrade at the catcher position and they’ve now successfully convinced pitcher Hiroki Kuroda to sign on for another year on a $16m contract.

Additionally it looked like free agent Carlos Beltran would be making a return to his first team, the Kansas City Royals but as soon as Cano was a lost cause, the Yankees relented and improved their two-year contract offer to three years to match the Royals. Beltran will now be wearing pinstripes and testing out the theory that the short right-field porch in Yankee Stadium will be tailor-made for him, whilst Royals fans can bemoan the Mariners’ largesse for ruining Beltran’s KC homecoming.

Checking the Yankees’ offseason roster on MLBDepthCharts (an essential offseason resource) tells you that they’re not finished with spending money either. We can expect another good everyday infielder, starting pitcher (possibly Japan’s Masahiro Tanaka depending on whether he’s posted by his team) and reliever or two.

The Yankees are back being the Yankees again, despite losing Cano. There are many other teams looking to improve their rosters too this offseason and they will be the subject of tomorrow’s article.