Cashman may not have received a mandate from the Steinbrenners to win this year, but he sure is acting like he has to win now.
After handing out the largest contract ever to a starting pitcher, he is supposedly deep into talks with A.J. Burnett and it looks like the Yanks are in prime position to steal him from the grasp of the Braves. The rumored deal is for five years and somewhere between $80 and $90 million. Now obviously this money is pretty absurd for a guy who has only been sporadically healthy through his career and only shows up against certain teams or when he his playing for his next contract. But the one thing I like about Burnett is that he shows up against both the Yanks and the Sox. If all he does is kill the Sox the $16+ million a year would have some value if only to see how mad Red Sox Nation gets when Burnett is 14-11 with a 4.50 ERA and still schooling them when he can't beat the Royals.
The other deal that Cashman has just about completed is the one to send Melky Cabrera to the Brewers for Mike Cameron. Much like getting Nick Swisher for Wilson Betemit, this a steal of a deal. Melky has potential but I get the feeling he won't reach it or it will be a very long time before he does. Plus the Brewers may eat some of Cameron's contract. Cameron may not be long for the Yanks, he is likely to be just a place holder until they feel that Austin Jackson is ready, so he doesn't cost the Yanks a lot but he upgrades the lineup and the defense in the outfield.
So far the Yanks have spent a lot of money, even by their standards. But on paper they are a much better team and that's all Cashman can do is put the best team on paper and then hope they perform on the field. What I like about all these deals is that he hasn't given up any of the Yankees future. He has held all of the major young pieces that he wants to keep and traded away others that were expendable.
I can't argue with what Cashman has done. I probably would have made all the same moves too. Ironically the Yanks payroll will probably still fall this off-season and next year it will drop a little further.That's a feat in itself.
5 comments:
The problem with the yankees spending all this money is that they are still asking for about $350 million in tax-exempt bonds from the city for the new stadium. This is happening while Bloomberg is cutting their annual budget 5% in 2009 and 10% in 2010 to close the gap. If you what to spend money on players fine, then ponying up the money for your own stadium too. Those $20 beers sure better taste good next year.
I'm not saying that it's ok for the Yanks to be asking for all this extra money from the city, but people forget that the Yanks are still putting up a majority of the money for the Stadium. These are approximations, but the project is costing about $1.5 billion and the Yanks are still putting up about $1.1 of that. So it's not like their dumping the whole bill on the city. They're still doing a whole lot more than almost any other team would.
Oh and by the way. The Mets absolute theives for what they did to the Mariners and the Indians. The Mets got 1 spectacular player and 2 solid regulars from the Mariners and they gave up one decent reliever, a back up and assorted crap. If the Mets were worried about their bullpen; no more. That is a ridiculous 1-2 punch at the end of the game.
So the mets threw 1465 innings last year. If Santana gives you 200 and each of their two guys give them 70 (that's generous) who is going to throw the remaining 1125?
just asking?
Well they have a lot of work to do on the rotation. They have John Maine and Mike Pelfrey right now and it looks like Oliver Perez will come crawling back to them. Yea its not awful but its definitely not great. All I'm saying is that if that lineup beats the crap out of you, you wont be able to come back on the weak ass bullpen they had last year.
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