It's not that the Yankees can't afford the money; in fact, they've been the team that spends and earns the most in MLB in recent years.
But the issue is, who exactly is Gerrit Cole? He's one of the key contributors to the team's last four championships, and last season he won the American League Cy Young Award, widely recognized as the best pitcher except for Lin Guanglai.
If the Yankees gave Yamamoto Yuusen a contract bigger than Cole's at this time, although publicly there might be no complaints, privately players would surely have issues, potentially becoming a trigger for locker room discord in the future.
For the Yankees, who are eager to capitalize on their core players' peak years for as many championships as possible, they ultimately chose the well-established Cole over Yamamoto and painfully withdrew from the competition.
