Yankees Offer Arbitration to No One: It's No Deal in New York!

Out of fear of having to actually pay some of their arbitration eligible players money, the Yankees have chosen not to offer any of them arbitration.

"The determination 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,” general manager Brian Cashman said.

“We did not want to put ourselves in a 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 Bobby’s case, they made $16 million last year.

"It’s been tough in the past to try and deviate from previous years earnings in an arbitration setting. We wanted to be able to control the cost that we would allocate for every position on the club.

“Even though we wanted draft picks if we lost anybody, by offering arbitration we would lose out ability to determine a final cost. So by doing so, we chose to go a different direction, not offer arbitration and we’ll still stay engaged with the entire free agent market including those two players.”

So essentially the Yankees didn’t want to risk spending $16 million each on Andy Pettitte and Bobby Abreu. It isn’t a terrible plan, but it will cost the Yankees draft picks. They have five in the first three rounds right now, and will almost certainly lose at least one of those.

Bringing back Pettitte at $16 million doesn’t sound right to me, but to get Abreu on a one-year deal would have been great for the Yankees. If he insists on staying on a multi-year contract he could be as good as out the door.

Unless he settles for something in the range of two years at $20 million, which is possible, then I suppose you are just getting a second year for a mere $4 million.

This also means Cashman must be ready to go into 2009 with an outfield of Johnny Damon, Xavier Nady, and a platoon of Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner.

There is also the situation with Ivan Rodriguez and Mike Mussina. Now if Moose decides against retirement, like Roger Clemens did a few years ago, the Yankees get nothing for him instead of two picks.

This also means that they figured it was too risky to offer Rodriguez arbitration, figuring he might take it just to earn the nearly $13 million he likely would have been awarded.

This article originally appeared at the Bronx Baseball Daily.