It's tempting to call this the most predictable move of the young baseball offseason, and there's certainly a lot of truth to that. But this baseball analyst thinks (hopes?) that there's still a lot that can be learned from this. Namely, that Hank Steinbrenner will follow in the wayward footsteps of his father.
See, the decline of the Yankees dynasty was marked by a practice of finding the best-performing free agent from the past season and making him an offer he couldn't refuse. It's a strategy that will net you some good players, to be sure, but there are two problems with it. For one, it's awfully inelegant; if you're a baseball GM, you're supposed to be able to predict who will perform above their market value next year, not look at a list of free agents from last year and go, "Look! He had the lowest ERA!" But more importantly than that, you end up dishing out long-term contracts to players who may just have had their peak year.
This Sabathia offer, in my opinion, is in keeping with that errant Steinbrenner tradition. Obviously, going after C.C. isn't an inherently bad idea--he's still a tremendous pitcher. But six years is a long time, $140 million is a lot of money, and there's also this:
C.C. SABATHIA'S 2008 ERA, BY LEAGUE
NL: 1.65
AL: 3.83
Something tells me that if you bring C.C. back to the land of designated hitters, you're not going to get that gaudy 1-something ERA you think you're paying top dollar for. But hey--he had the lowest ERA! Let's see if we can break the $200 million mark!
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