TAMPA — Playing professional baseball for a New York team comes with certain particulars. Many of them can be overblown in terms of their actual on-field effects — no one trumpets the impact of the New York baseball media quite like the New York baseball media — but some nonetheless force awkwardness where it might not otherwise exist.

As outfielders, Jay Bruce and Brett Gardner don’t have much in common. Bruce is a poor defender with big power who doesn’t get on base much. Gardner’s a good defender without much power but a knack for reaching first base. Bruce joined the Mets in a trade-deadline deal in 2016 and has played in only 50 games with his current club. Gardner joined the Yankees’ organization in the 2005 draft and now stands as the team’s longest-tenured player.

But Bruce and Gardner share this: Both men appeared expendable this offseason, and both spent their winters trying to ignore the persistent trade rumors filling up the newspapers and bouncing around the internet and echoing through the airwaves in New York. Neither got traded. Both arrived at their teams’ spring complexes in recent days and took questions about their clubs’ apparent desire and failure to move them elsewhere. Both handled it admirably.

“To be honest, I’m not constantly checking on my phone,” Gardner said Sunday at Yankees camp when asked about the rumors. “I don’t have Twitter or a Google Alert on myself or anything like that, so I try to unplug myself as much as possible from all that in the offseason. But I definitely hear from my wife, mom and friends that stuff was being mentioned. I was aware of it all, but I’m happy to be back here, obviously.

“I’m here until I’m not,” Bruce said in Port St. Lucie, Fla., last week upon his arrival to Mets camp. “My job is to play baseball, not to worry about or concern myself with trade rumors or anything like that. It’s part of the game. No one really knows how long they’ll be here.”

Jay Bruce (USA TODAY Sports Images)

Both Bruce and Gardner will earn eight-figure salaries to play baseball in 2017, and the prospect of being traded — not to mention all the preceding trade rumors — represent one of the trade-offs pro athletes make for the right to get paid big money in a sport. But guys become Major Leaguers by being exceptionally good at baseball and working outrageously hard to remain that way. And it’s hard to imagine there’s no existential component to the thought of getting traded: The same front office that acquired you to improve its team may now think the club is better off, either for the present or for the future or for both, with you playing elsewhere.

There are logistical headaches, too: Bruce said he spent time in six different hotel rooms across the two months he spent with the Mets, and that, as “a routine-oriented guy,” he found it difficult to be apart from his wife and infant son. Gardner has spent his entire pro career with the Yankees organization — every spring since 2006 here in Tampa, every summer since 2008 in New York.

“I try not to put too much thought into it, man,” Gardner said. “If it’s something that comes together and happens, then I’ll deal with it when it does. Everybody knows I want to be here, but I understand that more than anything this is a business, it’s not about making people happy.”

Despite a brutal beginning to his Mets career, Bruce performed quite a bit better across the 2016 campaign than he had in the prior two seasons. At 29, Bruce hit 33 homers with an .815 OPS in his best offensive year since 2013. His defensive limitations meant he was only barely above replacement-level, by WAR, but baseball traditionally rewards big power. And with Yoenis Cespedes’ future with the Mets uncertain, picking up the $13 million option on Bruce’s contract seemed a no-brainer when the club exercised it in the fall.

But for the second straight offseason, Cespedes signed a free-agent deal to return to the Mets, leaving Bruce appearing the odd man out in a crowded corner-outfield picture that, to this day, also includes beloved veteran Curtis Granderson and sweet-swinging 23-year-old Michael Conforto. The Mets, by practically every account, made Bruce available in trades, hoping to score a prospect and some salary relief by moving the veteran. But with a glut of power-hitting corner bats like Edwin Encarnacion, Mark Trumbo, Jose Bautista and Mike Napoli all available in free agency, the Mets apparently found clubs uninterested in dealing away anything for Bruce when a similar contributor could be found for money alone.

“I keep a pretty level head about whatever happens,” Bruce said. “If I was here, I was obviously going to be really excited. If I wasn’t, I was going to be excited for the next step. I don’t dictate that stuff. It’s not my job. I’m an employee of the Mets until I’m not.
Having too many (outfielders) is way better than having not enough. I think that’s probably the approach the front office is taking right now.”

Brett Gardner (AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Gardner saw his power numbers dip a little in 2016, but otherwise played well. He got on base at a .351 clip and won a Gold Glove for his play in left field. With two years and $26 million remaining on his contract — plus a $12.5 million team option for the 2019 season — Gardner hardly appeared the type of veteran payroll albatross the Yanks are long accustomed to carrying. Gardner has been a good to very good player every season he has been healthy, and he has mostly been healthy.

Except the Yanks still owe some $90 million to Jacoby Ellsbury over the next four seasons. Like Gardner, Ellsbury is a 33-year-old lefty-hitting table-setter who plays good defense. Gardner has been the superior offensive player over the past two seasons, but the reasonable terms of his contract mean he’d presumably bring back much more in a trade. And with the Yanks in the midst of a youth movement that includes promising young outfielders like Aaron Judge and Clint Frazier, among others, Gardner appeared the most likely candidate to get dealt. Only nothing came to fruition. Judge looks like he has an inside track on the Yanks’ starting job in right field, but Gardner’s return will likely relegate hopefuls like Frazier, Tyler Austin and Mason Williams to the minors.

“On one hand, obviously I don’t want to get traded,” Gardner said. “But on the other hand, the fact that some teams maybe have some interest in me, I take that as a compliment. I don’t want to play anywhere else. I want to be here.”

“It’s just noise,” said Bruce. “It’s all noise. Until it happens, it doesn’t happen.”