Sunday, December 14, 2008

While We're On The Subject of New York


There's no reason for the Yankees to spend $82.5 million on whatever's left of A.J. Burnett's arm. In the absolute best case scenario, Burnett turns out to be Jason Schmidt, who had five-and-a-half fairly healthy years of high-quality pitching after several injury-plagued years. In that case he probably more than earns his money. But the median scenario is much, much worse; Burnett will probably only pitch effectively for three of those years, his contract will make him impossible to unload if he flounders, and five years is just an awfully long time for a pitcher with anything but a stellar health record. The fact that the Yankees are able to outbid every other team in baseball by a factor of 1.5, coupled with their willingness to accept lower profit margins due to higher labor costs, is causing sever market distortions.

Now the Braves are going to be left praying that Kenshin Kawakami makes the transition effectively. And that's their best hope.

1 comment:

Andrew said...

well said- and I was glad to hear that the braves never guaranteed a fifth year. As much as I was a fan of signing burnett, it was not for 5 years and not at that price. The yankees accomplished what they always accomplish- overpaying for a player for a long time and driving up the cost of all other Free Agents they don't decide to sign.