Yanks Offer Arbitration to Nobody

Peter Abraham is reporting that the Yankees did not, and will not offer any of their eligible players arbitration. More info as it comes....

Here's what Abraham said about the Yankees reasoning behind this:

It came down to economics. The Yankees did not want to risk going to arbitration with any of their players given the salaries they made last season.

He also said that Cashman said the Yankees "remain engaged with Pettitte and Abreu."

And here's a quote from Brian Cashman, also from Peter Abraham:

“The determination we made today was to make sure that we control what amount we’d be spending at least in the event that we’re fortunate enough to bring those players back. We did not want to put ourselves in a position of having that determined by a third party without knowing what that figure would be. The arbitration time period falls in early February, so obviously as we attempt to put this team together, in Andy’s case and Bobby’s case, they made $16 million last year. It’s been tough in the past to try and deviate from previous years earnings in an arbitration setting. We wanted to be able to control the cost that we would allocate for every position on the club.

“Even though we wanted draft picks if we lost anybody, by offering arbitration we would lose out ability to determine a final cost. So by doing so, we chose to go a different direction, not offer arbitration and we’ll still stay engaged with the entire free agent market including those two players.”