The Yankees, according to several industry insiders, spent yesterday preparing an offer - perhaps a five-year deal worth about $80 million - for Toronto righty A.J. Burnett. This would come after they offered Milwaukee lefty CC Sabathia a six-year contract worth between $140 million and $145 million.
And the word on the MLB street is the Yankees have the glue for both. Furthermore, baseball decision-makers believe the Yankees will eventually go after Dodger free-agent righty Derek Lowe.
GM Brian Cashman and Darek Brauneker, Burnett's agent, didn't return calls yesterday.
"It wouldn't surprise me if they went to five years with [Burnett]," a baseball executive said of the Yankees. "[Ryan] Dempster is going to sign back with the Cubs for four years and $13 million per, and Burnett is worth more than that."
I'm not a huge fan of this contract.
The money isn't a problem here, Burnett probably is a $16 million dollar a year pitcher at this point. But handing a five-year deal to an injury-prone pitchers doesn't make much sense to me, and coming off the Carl Pavano years I can't see how it makes sense to the Yankees.
Also his season last year might be a bit misleading. If you take out the five starts he made against the Yankees his ERA was a 4.57, which is worst than the ERA that Andy Pettitte had this year.King also said that the Yankees remain interested in Andy Pettitte, but "according to a Yankee source, Pettitte's agent, Randy Hendricks, doesn't want a pay cut for his 36-year-old client."
Kat O'Brien agrees that the Yankees are "gunning" for Burnett, and she also said they have reached out to Scott Boras about Derek Lowe and Mark Teixeira.
16 Comments:
Holy shit! Five years for Burnett, are they crazy?
I like Burnett a lot. You gotta take the risk and just get him in the rotation.
It's apparent that the post 2001 panic is back in the Yankees orginization. They have already overbid for Sabathia and now this? If this becomes the order of business in the Bronx, anticipate them being buried under bad contracts for another 7 years, and all of the fans saying "Wait til' next year."
Anon 2,
The panic post 2001 wasn't as bad as you're making it seem. They signed Giambi, which did prove to be a mistake, but besides that the only major move they made was bringing in Robin Ventura.
Also the 2002 and 2003 Yankees were very good teams. In '02 they got beat by a very good Angels team and in '03 they made it to the World Series.
It was the off-season after '03 that the Yankees started heading in the wrong direction. That was when they started signing big name bat after big name bat, and ignored pitching.
Greg,
The 02',03' and 04' teams were good. Remember the 04' Yanks were three outs from the Series. I just use the 01' season as the mark for when the front office began to go batty. And if you remember, they did not ignore pitching, in fact pitching is where they made most of there mistakes... i.e. Vazquez, Pavano, Brown, Johnson, Wright, and so on. The facts are the Yanks have become a laughing stock because everyone knows money is no barrier. Hence why Posada and Rivera didn't show any faithfulness last offseason. Rather than accept a hometown discount, or sign before they were able to negotiate, they pushed both the price and the years up on the Yanks.
I guess what bothers me most was that they were moving in a positive direction philosophically the past 2-3 years, and now they are reverting back to a buy, buy, buy mentality. To me it only means trouble.
At least their buying pitching instead of hitting. I don't know the exact numbers Burnett had against other teams not named the Yankees but I heard it was 4.57 which is much better then 5.02. 4.57 is still not all that impressive but honestly I think Burnett is more of a 3.70 ERA than a 4.00 ERA guy. You have to remember the pressure that was put on him to pitch well because the Jays offense had many injuries and just sucked last year.
The '04 team wasn't that good. Their starting rotation and bullpen was mediocre at best. They did have a great lineup, which is the only reason they got as far as they did.
All those pitchers you mentioned were acquired after 2003, that's why I think '04 is when the front office started to head in the wrong direction. The problems that came after '04 were related - like you said - to the wrong pitching acquisitions. I guess I shouldn't have said "ignored."
I agree that the build from within philosophy of the past 2-3 years is a good one to take this team in the right direction. But you still have to sign players to make the team better, CC is one of those players.
I don't like this contract offer to Burnett at all, and I'm not a fan of Derek Lowe either.
Yeah you're right, give a guy 80 million in NY and there's no pressure, at least none that amounts to that of Toronto /sarcasm
I agree Greg, you need to build a team with a mix of home-grown, trades and FA acquisitions, but the right FA acquisitions.
I worry that the pressure of opening a new ballpark is steering Hank on a path to spend just because he can. Burnett and Lowe, as you mentioned, are the red flags of this off-season to that end.
Anon 3,
You're right his ERA against non-Yankees is 4.57. I was looking at his runs allowed and not earned runs.
Anyway I corrected the number in the main post.
Yanks need to keep young arms as insurance ie. Hughes, Aceves, whoever else is down there, and I'm fine with the Yanks spending the bucks to get CC and AJ. If they deplete the minor league system that has been built up over the past few years(backtoback AA championships and 1 AAA championship) then the yanks are really in trouble because there's no fallback plan if CC or AJ or Wang or Joba get hurt. We were scrapin' the bottom of the barrel with guys like Donovan Osborne years ago when there was nobody to bring up and we needed a starter to fill in.
I agree, they can't deplete their farm system, and they do need those arms as insurance. I think that is Cashman's plan also, which is another reason I doubt Peavy will end up here.
Ryan Dempster is about to sign a 4-year $52 million deal with the Cubs. He went 17-6 with a 2.96 ERA with the Cubs this season. He's four months older than Burnett. Now I'm not saying the Yankees should have gone after Dempster, but is Burnett really worth an extra year and $28 million more?
The Yankees need to bolster their rotation, if that means overpaying for guys, than that's what they're going to have to do.
The Yankees always overpay that's the problem. Why not give Hughes, and Joba a chance to solidify the rotation?
Here's a question: Do Yankee fans need to know that they are going to win the World Series before the season starts? Isn't some uncertainty fun?
I agree about the panic mindset, which just might be a hallmark of my....uh...."hero" Cashman. Let's see what really happens. We sure do need some arms, no doubt.
Mike
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