The Yankees Offer Nobody Arbitration

(Zell's Pinstripe Blog)

  Say goodbye to all of those draft picks you thought the Yankees would obtain. According to Peter Abraham, the Yankees are not offering anyone arbitration.

The LoHud Yankees Blog:

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That’s right, nobody. So forget those draft picks.

More to come …

UPDATE, 5:27 p.m.: It came down to economics. The Yankees did not want to risk going to arbitration with any of their players given the salaries they made last season. To refresh your memories:

Bobby Abreu made $16 million, Andy Pettitte made $16 million and Pudge Rodriguez made $13 million. All three would have been in a position to get at least as much via arbitration and likely some sort of raise.

Meanwhile, if Mike Mussina suddenly decides to play for somebody else, the Yankees get nothing in return. Sure, that’s extremely unlikely. But that was supposedly the case for Roger Clemens, too.

Cashman said the Yankees remain engaged with Pettitte and Abreu. To what degree isn’t certain. Today’s decision certainly indicates they want Andy back only at a pay cut and the same would be true of Abreu.

That the Yankees would make his decision, especially in the case of Abreu, should be all the proof you need about how determined they are to control the payroll.

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from Rotoworld.com:

The Yankees have declined to offer arbitration to Bobby Abreu, Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi, Ivan Rodriguez, Sidney Ponson, Carl Pavano and Chad Moeller. We imagine the Red Sox and Rays are plenty pleased to see that the Yankees won’t be getting any extra draft picks next year. Having Abreu back for about $16 million wouldn’t have been such a bad thing for the Yankees, and odds are that he would have left and brought back two picks. Now the Yankees are facing the possibility of not picking to the second or third round of the draft, depending on how many free agents they sign. CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Derek Lowe are among the pitchers that would cost them their first-round choice.

and Cashman’s reasons:

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We certainly have been going through this process for quite some time. First and foremost, unlike in past years, we’re not in a position not to be able to sign these players as we move forward. That’s the most important thing. In the past and in the previous basic agreements, you were in a position that if you didn’t offer, you lose the ability to sign.

“Today’s date really has everything to do with the compensation attached to various players, if they had some. Bobby was a Type A and Andy was a Type A, so the determination that we made today was to make sure that we control what amount we’d be spending, at least in the event that we’re fortunate enough to bring those players back.

“We did not want to put ourselves in the position of having that determined by a third party without knowing what that figure would be. The arbitration time period falls in early February, so obviously as we attempt to put this team together, in Andy’s case and in Bobby’s case, they made $16 million a year. It’s been tough in the past to try and deviate from previous years’ earnings in an arbitration setting.

“We just wanted to control the cost that we would allocate for every position on the club by offering them arbitration, even though we wanted Draft picks if we lost anybody. By offering arbitration, we would lose our ability to at least determine a final cost. By doing so, we chose to go a different direction, not offer the arbitration, and we’ll still stay engaged with the entire free agent market including those two players.”

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