Today is the deadline for salary arbitration and the Yankees have made the first surprising move of the 2010 baseball season in New York by acting like the Mets.
About an hour ago, The Yankees declined arbitration on MVP Hideki Matsui, Johnny Damon and Andy Pettitte.
Here's some information for context: By midnight today, teams may offer salary arbitration to players who have filed for free agency. Teams that decline arbitration to Type A (such as Damon) or B players (such as Carlos Delgado) lose the right to receive compensatory draft picks in June if they were to sign with other teams.
Given that salary minimums in arbitration would be extremely high for certain players, I was not surprised to hear that players like Erik Bedard (SEA) and Carlos Delgado were declined arbitration. Both of those players had serious injury issues last year and would have made intolerable amounts of money in arbitration if they were to accept.
But disrespecting your World Series MVP, the winning pitcher of the final, and most important, win for the Yankees in 2009, and well, Johnny Damon? Really?
I totally expect a complete lack of social grace from my Mets. Really. I relate to the neurotic, psychotic character of the front office that makes it impossible for the Mets to groom and keep a halfway decent player for their career (knocking on wood for David Wright). More on that another day.
I do expect just a teensy bit better from the Yankees. Just a bit. I mean Yankees have all of those career players like Dimaggio and Berra, or more recently Jeter and Mo and Jorge, so you'd think they would know how to treat the truly professional athlete that is Matsui. He brings in all of that Japanese press and tourism to New York!!! He was completely awesome for you in the World Series (Sal can attest I predicted his MVPness long the award was announced)!! He's a friggin' Japanese national treasure! Even if his knees make him more and more of a living statue every year. Bah, knowing Matsui, he'll almost definitely resign with the Yankees or retire, unless he wants to throw everyone for a loop and go to Seattle, I suppose. Well, what about Pettitte, the third winningest pitcher in Yankee history? Ahh wait, look how they treated him at the beginning of this year. And Pettitte will also either resign with the Yankees or retire. And there's, um, Johnny Damon. Damon's a Type A after all. They probably need him anyway and they would have at least gotten draft picks for him! Sheesh.
Sigh. The anger is waning. Especially given that the Dodgers apparently are going to recognized as the boneheaded team of the year by declining arbitration to a parcel of pretty good players, including Randy Wolf and Orlando Hudson. Hm, Hudson would fit well on the Mets, wouldn't he? And he wouldn't cost the Mets yet another draft pick. . . Hmm. . .
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4 comments:
Any chance this is a sign that they are re-signing all 3 players? No need to offer arbitration if you plan on keeping the player.
In my opinion, there's a good chance all three are coming back.
While I think Seung's article is quite good, and I am pleased with his passion for his crosstown rival, I have to respectfully disagree that this move was out of disrespect. This was a business move. All three of these guys stood to make significant raises from their 09 performances, and in baseball there is much more to consider than past performance, especially at their ages.
While they could lose draft picks if Damon and Pettitte sign elsewhere, I think the chance to resign them at a lower rate is quite good. Damon is worth Abreu money, 2 years 19mil sounds perfect and no one is going higher, while Pettitte could go one year 7-8mil. Matsui might be the tricky one, but we'll see if any market develops for him.
Out of the three I would've offered Damon arb anyway because I think he would've refused it looking for a mulitple year deal, and like Seung pointed out, you would've had the draft pick compensation.
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