Yankees Today

Might we have to change the name of this blog to “Yankees Today” ?

It’s something of a conundrum: on the one hand, we as fans (read: fanatics) want our team to do well. And obtaining fantastic players are obviously quite helpful toward a team’s success. On the other hand, when your team acquires those players solely by throwing money at them … the charm of the team loses its luster — at least, for me it does. If I wanted to watch a team assembled of all-stars via the almighty dollar, I’d be a Yankee fan.

The Mets are on their way toward becoming the Yankees of Queens by meeting with Alex Rodriguez and his agent Scott Boras this Thursday, according to Adam Rubin:

” … the Mets have an appointment with Scott Boras before the meetings conclude Thursday to discuss what it would take to make A-Rod a Met, according to a source close to the team.”

That’s not all. Supposedly, the Mets are also preparing to make a “monster offer” to Jorge Posada. If we’re to believe Ken Rosenthal, it will be in the $70M range.

Ugh. I’d like to see Posada come our way, but not on a five-year, $70M deal. Let’s hope that’s Rosenthal spouting off nonsensical conjecture and not actual fact.

As for the A-Rod “talk”, my dream is that Omar is simply helping out Boras by publicly entering the auction, thereby driving up the stakes for the teams in the West, who will do the “real” bidding. Maybe it’s some kind of favor that Boras will pay back in the future. After all, it would be very difficult for A-Rod to get his $30M per year without a New York team entering the picture.

Here’s my fantasy: Omar talks to Boras, finds out the the bidding begins at $300M. Omar says OK, we’re in. Boras flies out West and tells the Dodgers, Giants, and Angels that A-Rod can be had, but there’s already a $300M offer on the table from the Mets. While the Angels spend two weeks trying to figure out how to placate their current highest-paid ($15M) player Vlad Guerrero, the Dodgers and Giants are dumping salaries left and right and driving up the bidding to somewhere around $330M. At that point the Mets drop out and watch LA and SF duke it out, when finally the Giants offer a 12-year, $375M contract to seal the deal.

Unfortunately, this is what I see as the reality: Omar is still hung up on erasing the Steve Phillips / Jim Duquette era, and proving to everyone how much smarter he was than both of them. He looks at the current A-Rod free agency as a “second chance” for the Mets to “do right”. The last time, Steve Phillips failed to recognize A-Rod’s value and thereby failed to sell the idea of buying A-Rod to the Wilpons. Omar will not allow the Mets to fail this time. He sees the value of Rodriguez — both to the Mets’ chances of winning and to SNY — and has a very nice PowerPoint presentation to blow away the Wilpons. They buy the idea, and they buy A-Rod. If A-Rod does indeed return the expected value over the next ten years, Minaya looks like a genius and is offered part-ownership of the Mets. (OK that last part is actually Omar’s fantasy.)