Finally!

I know the Casey Blake and Adam Everett signings were setting your world on fire, but the first big signing of the offseason is official. CC Sabathia has been signed by the New York Yankees for 7 years at $161 million (with an opt out clause after only 3 years) making the 28 year old, the second richest player on his team. Many reports were saying that Sabathia wanted to play for a west coast team but as Ted Dibiase always said, "Everybody's got a price."

Breaking news: Dude is fat.

The Yankees' starting rotation looks a wee bit better with the big guy at the top. A healthy Chein-Ming Wang shifts down to number 2 and the second coming of Roger Clemens, er, I mean Joba Chamberlain will be third. Now MLB.com has some guy named Alfredo Aceves after Joba followed by Phil Hughes. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say New York is going to sign one more starting pitcher but if they don't, that's Sabathia followed by 4 right handed pitchers all of whom are under 30. The fun stat of the day is that CC is 21-8 lifetime against the four other AL East teams.

If the Rays end up dealing Sonnanstine or Jackson, they can still put David Price into a rotation that won 97 games last year. I haven't heard anything out of Tampa Bay, but I would consider using the Jonathan Papelbon model and converting Price into a lights out closer. Either way, that starting five is tremendous. A healthy Josh Beckett is still one of the best in the game, but he needs to show up to camp in shape next year so he can avoid those nagging injuries. But he along with Daisuke, Lester, possibly Masterson and whatever free agent Boston inevitably signs (John Smoltz, really?) comprise a pretty formidable rotation as well.

Of course, Sabathia signing with the Yankees leaves the Dodgers a little high and dry. Lowe is obviously not staying and they don't seem to be on Burnett's radar. So without a top pitching free agent to sign, I think Ned Coletti has do something he wasn't too keen on doing: paying Manny Ramirez a lot of scrilla. Fortunately for LA however, not too many teams seem to be chomping at the bit to sign Manny. On a side note, I love how the GM meetings are at the Bellagio. Awesome.

So will Teixeira be the next one to sign? Are teams seriously considering giving Derek Lowe a 4 year deal? Also, can we expect a few big trades (hey Kenny Williams, I like Jermaine Dye, don't trade him, thanks) before the New Year? Why don't I have Peter Gammons' phone number? We should totally hang out!

UPDATE: The Yankees just offered A.J. Burnett five years for $80 million. Hmmm....

UPDATE #2: Friday - Sabathia, Wang, Burnett, Joba, Phil Hughes. Yikes.

Yankees are F'd in the A and other baseball musings.

Joba Chamberlain is seeing Dr. James Andrews today to get his shoulder evaluated. Yankees fans are collectively pooping all up in their pants. With Chien-Ming Wang probably out the rest of the year and Phil Hughes (who has only started 6 games this year anyway) still rehabbing in Triple-A, the New York Yankees desperately needed Joba to be an ace for the rest of the year. Who would have thought that on August 6th, the only two Yankee pitchers who have started more than 20 games are Pettite and Mussina? Yikes. Darrell Rasner has flaked out, Ian Kennedy is mayor of Bust City and Sidney Ponson is actually on the mound every fifth day. (The other four days, that dude is rockin' the buffett in an ongoing eating competition with Andruw Jones.) In his games as a starter, Chamberlain has a 2.23 ERA and 69 K's in 60.2 IP. He will definitely miss his next start, but anytime an athlete is down in Birmingham visiting the Doc, things probably aren't good. Of course, I haven't even mentioned Posada and Matsui being out for the year. The Yankees are 3-7 in their last ten and are 6.5 games back behind the Rays in the East and 3.5 games back in the Wild Card race. If Chamberlain has to shut it down, the Yankees can start booking vacations for October.

Could the White Sox and the Twins both make the playoffs? After taking the above paragraph into account and with Boston only having an 8-9 record since the All Star break, it's perfectly conceivable that both Central teams could sneak into postseason play. I know you should never count Boston out and they do play Toronto and Baltimore in six more series combined, but Big Papi's health continues to be a concern and Jacoby Ellsbury still hasn't snapped out of his slump. They will need him back permanently in the leadoff spot to get the lineup going. Ortiz's wrist is bothering him again and he's not seeing the same pitches since the Manny trade.

Chicago had a HUGE comeback win last night in the 14th inning against the Tigers. They are still scoring all their runs by hitting the ball out of the park but Carlos Quentin shows no signs of slowing down. (Please, please don't make me regret typing that.) Granted, the pitching still looks pretty haggard but if the starters can right the ship, the bullpen looks to be a bit more solid especially when Linebrink comes back. The Twins finally called up Francisco Liriano and get better by subtraction with Livan Hernandez hitting the bricks. Liriano looked fantastic in his win the other day against the Indians. They've had to deal with some injuries as well but to be playing this well without Johan Santana and Torii Hunter is pretty amazing. Plus they have one of the best closers in baseball.


If the Arizona Diamondbacks make the playoffs, it will be a mirror image of their great 2001 run. I could legitimately see Webb and Haren start just about every game. Webb won his 16th game last night which accounts for more than a quarter of the teams total wins. They also resigned Haren through 2012 which is monumental. He is making my Cy Young prediction look good so far going 4-0 since the break. Arizona's only tough spots on the rest of their schedule are St. Louis, Florida and the Dodgers. They'll be fed a steady diet of San Fran, San Diego (man I feel sorry for Adrian Gonzalez being stuck on that team) and Colorado with a bit of the Reds and Astros thrown in for flavor. Their offense still blows but I sure as hell woudn't want to face them in the first round or any round for that matter.



How much of an impact will David Price have? Tampa Bay is on the verge of calling him up but some are saying that he'll be in the bullpen. Huh? I know he's only 22 but he's 6-0 with a 2.08 ERA in eight starts in Double-A, with 48 strikeouts and 12 walks in 52 innings. And for a team that didn't make any moves at the trade deadline, Price could be just the thing to put the Rays over the edge and win the AL East. He can bump Edwin Jackson or Andy Sonnanstine out of the rotation and get some big league experience in preparation for next year. Oh you mean when Scott Kazmir, James Shields, Matt Garza and David Price will all be pitching on the same team for the whole season? Holy Crap! The Rays have the fourth best ERA in MLB right now. Oh yeah, he can throw almost 100 mph. Just like to mention that...





And finally, what year is it? Nope, you weren't seeing things if you looked at the box scores from last night. Mike Hampton actually pitched seven innings for the Atlanta Braves and won his first game since 2005. For a guy who only had one really dominant year (1999 22-4 record) he's certainly mad an ass ton of money. Here's his combined salary from 2006 and 2007 when he didn't pitch a single inning of major league ball: $29,950,370. How depressing is that? Almost as depressing as the fact that he'll make $20,000,000 in 2009. He's 35. John Smoltz and Tom Glavine are also still on the Braves. Tim Hudson is having season ending elbow surgery. Folks down in Atlanta better hope Jair Jurrjens and Jorge Campillo stick around for a while.

All divisions except the AL West are still up for grabs and the Wild Card in both leagues are going to come down to the final week of the season. Good times. Makes me wish I had spent the scrilla for the MLB Extra Innings package on cable...

There are two baseball teams in New York?

I’m officially (sort of) expressing my outrage that both New York baseball teams are vacating their stadia, but people only care about the Yankees. Of course people only care about the Yankees! This is how it should be; I root for the Mets because I’m from New York and I’m only kind of an asshole, not because they win more than any other team and have the collective personality of a particularly joyless blitzkrieg. (Also, any team that can cause the not-at-all-obnoxious Red Sox fan base to hate a man named “Mookie” should be forever beloved by all others.)

Granted, the afore-referenced last time the Mets won the Series, I was three years old, and considered Ron Darling the greatest pitcher in the history of baseball. However, it was unexpected and like the Miracles before them, they acted like a plucky underdog. Everything about the club is like that. The Mets have the third highest payroll of any MLB team, but they’re ill-regarded, often flailing, and seem at times even star crossed. They are the proud owners of the biggest second half collapse in modern baseball, and the majority of their “golden age” roster had Pablo Escobar on speed dial. Even right now, the Mets have improbably climbed out of laughing stock status, and are a (shaky) first place team in a pretty competitive division, but the big story is still the numbing mediocrity coming out of the Bronx.

I'm not going to comment on the neighborhood the Mets play in, but suffice to say that Flushing Meadows is a very apt description. Furthermore, Shea Stadium is a stone’s throw from LaGuardia Airport, and the “charm” of a 747 flying about twelve feet above your head during a day at the ball park is not to be missed, but at least they're fixing that. Oh, right, they're building Citi-Ebbets Field* in the current parking lot! And during the entire All Star Game proceedings, there was hardly a whisper about how the Mets were also building a new stadium. While there's no denying the fact that Yankee stadium has more history blah, blah, blah... I just found it odd that NO ONE was saying anything about the Mets. It would actually be pretty interesting to look at the dynamic of how both organizations chose to open new parks in the same year. What went into the decisions/competition for money/etc.

Its funny, here in Boston, fans have a real inferiority complex about sports, even during what is already quite possibly the best sports decade for any city, ever. Our boy Scrob, and his bizarre White Sox fanhood, hates the Cubbies for their “favorite sons” status, but I like being a Mets fan, even with all the heart attacks and hopeless seasons. Let the world, from Cuba to Bristol, Connecticut, mourn the loss of The House that Ruth Built. As long as there's an apple in a top hat waiting for a home run swing, I'll know where I belong.

* Note to self: the cult of the Brooklyn Dodgers thing is probably good for another article. No one's ever written anything about the Brooklyn Dodgers, right?