Angels offered Sabathia $100MM over 5

The offer is clearly not insulting.

perhaps they should include a clothing stipend- way to go Latrell

Just not enough back then. The sports landscape is going to change a bit this year, and I would get pretty serious if I was Lackey now to try and get a deal done especially with arm problems in back to back years.

It’s mostly a problem of age. If Lackey were three years younger then giving him that contract might make sense. As things stand, it’s less justifiable.

I’m just as glad though. I’m really hesitant at giving that much money to a guy who doesn’t play every day.

A batter controls the outcome of a game say 650 times a year (PAs). A pitcher who pitches 200 innings (200 innings x 1.2 whip lets say x 3 outs per inning)= 720 outcomes. Obviously defense has to be taken into account, but are there really going to be 70 plays over the course of a season that one player can make over another (obviously were not talking about sizemore v Bengie Molina in CF, but people that play the same position). The big time starters are worth the money, but virtually no reliever ever is worth anywhere near that kind of money.

CC is 28 this season.

yep, hard to argue with that kind of ca$hi$h.

that only works out to an extra $3mil/year. Not that bad of an offer. It is the exact same thing the Brewers offered him too, IIRC.

but I did get a pretty cheap RAM card from my laptop on their site!

Then it is pure Arte. Just as with Hunter, the idea is to step in, make an offer the team considers fair and not to be haggled with, then provide a deadline. History has shown Arte can’t stand having his offers used to leverage other offers from other teams. The Teixeira negotiations—a necessary evil in this case—must have damn near killed him, and his frustrated, angry response late in the process was perfectly in character.

I don’t see a free agent in the next Winter crop who will warrant this same sort of attention from the Angels. Holliday is both a Boras client and yet another OF, and as such doesn’t seem to have a place to play in Anaheim. One will assume that Brandon Webb and Josh Beckett will see their 2010 options picked up, so they’re not going to be available. Lackey and (if he’s healthy) Rich Harden could wind up being the marquee players as starters, and that gives some idea of how thin the crop will be. Many teams may well prefer to sign middle-road and medium-risk pitchers like Penny or Jason Marquis for much less money and load up on arms, instead of spending it all on every 5th start.

Of course, there is always the outside chance we could land Washburn…

I’m going to laugh my ass off
when the Yankees don’t win the world series again this year.

Cuz mark my words: it ain’t happening.

Even more significant are the continuing stories about how the Yankees aren’t selling the more expensive seats in the new Stadium. The franchise won’t go broke, but in this contracting sports economy, even the Yankees will have to exercise some sense of financial restraint. All those ideas that the Yankees will spend with abandon on free agents (like Lackey) in 2010 I think are nonsense, unless things change very dramatically with the economy and the fan reaction to the game today.

When the team fails to make the Wild Card at the end of this season and the mooks in the Bronx take after Girardi with torches and pitchforks, we’ll sit back and think about how great it is to have a team where the owner, GM and manager have a plan, work the plan, and find success from the plan.

I’d rather wait until he regresses to his norm, rather than pay top dollar for a #2 or #3 starter.

unless we know lackey is a goner, i cant see us doing it. Adenhart & Walden look like the future and im sure the jays would expect both in a halladay trade.

and with abreu, figgins and maybe even vlad gone in 2010…we cant afford to just throw in Wood can we?

To be honest, i dont think we have the chips to make any marquee trades. We need big years from a lot of our prospects in the lower levels to up our value