The best news for Yankees fans this off-season was the Mets signing of Johan Santana. It gets a great lefty out of the league and, more importantly, away from the Red Sox. And the Yanks kept all of their young studs. Of course, I wish the Yankees had signed Santana, but I firmly believe had they made another run at him, the Sox would have jumped back in the fray and won a bidding war. Theo just seems much more willing than Cashman to go to the wall to get what he wants.
Next chapter: With CC Sabathia waving off the Indians' four-year/$72 million offer (or so the reports say) he is sure to be wearing pinstripes at this time next season. The Yankees brass must be slobbering over the fact that they will clear out more than $40 million in pitchers' salaries at the end of 2008, by bidding bye-bye to Pettitte, Mussina, Pavano and Farnsworth. With those contracts out the door, their best-paid starter will be Kei Igawa at $4 million -- if he hasn't been shipped elsewhere. That means a huge opportunity to open the purse strings for Carsten Charles Sabathia -- while setting aside enough dough for Chien-Ming Wang.
Sabathia is coming off a Cy Young season (19-7, 3.21 ERA). He's a year younger than Santana and has fairly similar stats. I really like the fact that his 2007 numbers were an improvement over his lifetime numbers, particularly on the control front. Can you argue with a guy who strikes out 209 and only walks 37 in 241 innings? I think not.
The only argument against Sabathia is his size. At 6-foot-7 and 290 pounds he's agood candidate to break down toward the latter part of a seven-year deal. But I think that's a chance you have to take.
