“Kudos to Cash for pulling that off,” a rival executive said on Friday. “That probably allows them to do more than they were planning on, but I have to give the player credit too. He didn’t let his ego get in the way of making a deal to stay in a place where he wanted to be.

“These guys are finding the money’s not there for them, compared to other years. Still, I’m sure he could have gotten more from Toronto, but he was willing to take less per year, which a lot of guys won’t do. Maybe he was just smart enough to understand that ballpark is perfect for him, with his opposite-field approach.”

It’s true, LeMahieu is more a slugger in Yankee Stadium, where his line drives to right field often go into the short porch, than he’d be elsewhere, as indicated by his 36 home runs in 195 games the last two seasons, and perhaps that did factor into his wanting to return to the Bronx.

Beyond the Yankee Stadium factor, however, LeMahieu is clearly one of the best hitters in baseball these days, a high-contact guy who uses the whole field to such an extent that he hit .336 over the last two seasons.

That alone made him invaluable in a lineup filled with swing-and-miss sluggers, but LeMahieu was also arguably the best clutch hitter in the majors during his two years with the Yankees. He hit .364 and .389 with runners in scoring position the last two years, respectively, and even more remarkably, he hit .421 with RISP/2 outs last season, and .388 in those situations in 2019.

“To put up those kinds of numbers two years in a row is almost impossible,” a major-league scout said. “But it’s because he never changes his approach and it seems like he hits the ball hard every time he swings.”

In fact, LeMahieu does hit the ball hard about as often as anyone in baseball. MLB Network unveiled a statistic on Friday showing the hitters with the highest rate of hard-hit balls (as deemed by Statcast) per at-bat last season. The top five is quite a list:

1) Fernando Tatis - 22.1 percent.

2) Corey Seager - 22 percent.

3) LeMahieu - 21.9 percent.

4) Juan Soto - 21.8 percent.

5 )Mike Trout – 21.6 percent.

Obviously there’s nothing particularly fluky about LeMahieu’s success, all of which figured to make him in the highest of demand as a free agent.

But apparently the Blue Jays were the only team making a serious run at LeMahieu, and even their offer ($78 million over four years, according to MLB Network’s Jon Heyman) was considerably lower than the four-year, $92 million deal Josh Donaldson signed with the Twins a year ago.

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