NEW YORK -- A better question might be, will the Yankees respond at all?
The news that the Red Sox are signing two potential game-changers, Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez, to five-year contracts totaling a reported $180 million, might be interpreted as a shot across the bow at Yankee Stadium. Or, it might be greeted with a shrug of the shoulders and a "better them than us" reaction from a front office that has entered into more than its share of toxic contracts.
Most likely, the Yankees didn't need to do what Boston did Monday, which was take on two good players with potentially bad contracts. But they need to do something.
They still need a third baseman and a shortstop. And on Monday, the Red Sox snatched the two best options off the market. The Yankees had no interest in either of them, but no one on River Avenue can be happy about both of them winding up not only in the AL East, but in Boston.
Still, a source with knowledge of the team told me that all is "very quiet" around the Yankees as we head into Thanksgiving and that nothing of substance was discussed at last week's owners meetings in Kansas City, since Hal Steinbrenner wasn't even there.
I wouldn't go so far as to claim, as other outlets have, that the Yankees are going to sit out this winter after having committed nearly a half-billion dollars last winter on four players -- Jacoby Ellsbury, Masahiro Tanaka, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran -- and still managed to win just 84 games and miss the playoffs for the second consecutive season. But it does make you wonder exactly what the plan is.
We reported two weeks ago that Chase Headley was the Yankees' prime target to play third base next year, assuming Alex Rodriguez is incapable, at 40, of playing there more than occasionally. But now I'm hearing that the Sandoval deal might prompt Headley to demand five years as well. And as probably the second-best third baseman in an admittedly weak market, he might actually get it somewhere. But his chronic lower-back problems could be enough to scare away the Yankees.
And despite the Yankees' public and private posturing that they will not be in on the Big Three of available starting pitchers -- Max Scherzer, Jon Lester and James Shields -- it would be foolish for anyone to believe that one is etched in stone.
And what happens, dare I ask, if the worst should happen? Let's say Headley signs somewhere else, and the Yankees can't come to terms with Brandon McCarthy, who is said to be their primary target at starting pitcher, and Hiroki Kuroda retires? And to top it off, what if the Red Sox persuade Lester to come back to Boston?
The Yankees will shrug that off too and tell you that moving Martin Prado to third base was the plan all along -- as was trying to fill the positions formerly occupied by Derek Jeter and Robinson Cano with Rob Refsnyder and Jose Pirela.
I can't imagine the Yankees would sit back and allow that to happen. Because their long-term history tells you that's not the way they operate. But their recent history indicates that might very well be the case. If so, next year's Yankees could look very much like last year's Yankees, only without Jeter and Kuroda. And with A-Rod.
And you might look back upon this day, Nov. 24, 2014, as the day the Yankees began to raise the white flag on their 2015 season.