There are several reasons you could justify not pursuing J.T. Realmuto. Those reasons are Yasmani Grandal, Christian Vazquez, Mitch Garver, Travis d’Arnaud, Roberto Perez, etc.

Put another way, if you’re not at least pursuing Realmuto, you better have a bona fide starting catcher behind the plate. Short of that, the discussion why you’re not pursuing Realmuto faces scrutiny.

Yes, you can reasonably prefer James McCann. That goes double if you’re understandably leery of giving a soon to be 30 year old catcher a big contract. A team could determine they have more pressing holes, and/or they need to allocate their money differently to build a more complete roster.

Still, you have to at least inquire on Realmuto. He’s the best catcher available, and he’s arguably the best player available on the free agent market.

If you don’t have a set starting catcher, you need to talk to Realmuto. That includes the Phillies who gave up an impressive Sixto Sanchez to obtain him.

But no, the Phillies aren’t pursuing him. Instead, they’re going to claim they’re too broke to try to sign him. Other teams are claiming the same. They’ll claim broke and no revenues despite MLB signing a billion dollar TV contract.

That’s in addition to local broadcasting and advertising revenues.

But for some reason, teams want us to believe there’s no money to spend. As a result, they won’t pursue players who can improve their team, and in turn, increase interest and revenues for their team.

That’s fine. Teams like the Phillies who once claimed they’d stupid money to win can cry poor while Steve Cohen judiciously spends to get the players the Mets need to win. Thanks to the Phillies, there’s once less suitor to drive up Realmuto’s price tag.