MLB Free Agents 2012: NY Yankees Look to Prevent CC Sabathia from Hitting Market

How important is CC Sabathia to the New York Yankees?

To answer that question, all one needs to do is to take notice that the Yankees are looking to lock-up Sabathia before he officially files for free agency.

That may seem somewhat routine, but consider this.  Last season, the Yankees were willing to allow both Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera—arguably the two most crucial components of the Yankee legacy for the last 16 years—to hit the open market before negotiating new contracts.

That's not the direction the Yanks are taking with Sabathia, though.  Nope, with regards to CC Sabathia, the apparent object is not the standard one where you allow a player to hit the market and then engage in negotiations, hoping that the offers made by other teams won't ultimately convince the free agent to sign elsewhere. 

The Yankees aren't taking a chance on that with CC. It makes sense, though.

If one were to take a look at the current landscape of Major League Baseball, taking into account players who are going to be free agents, the competition and the market for pitchers as a whole, what quickly becomes crystal clear is that Sabathia represents plans A, B, and C for the Yankees.

Put simply, there is no logical or rational path to replacing him under the unlikely chance that he were to sign with another team. 

This also shows that Brian Cashman and the Yankees' hierarchy learned some valuable lessons in the Cliff Lee sweepstakes last season.

One of those involves a sense of urgency and why it's important. Last offseason, the Yankees were certain they'd end up signing free-agent stud pitcher Cliff Lee to a lucrative deal. So it wasn't too big a deal when the bulk of other free agents signed elsewhere, as Lee took his time making his eventual decision. 

It wasn't a big deal, because of course the Yankees knew they had the biggest money deal on the table, and of course in the end that would bring Lee to New York.

Except it didn't work out that way. Lee took a little less money for his preferred location and organization in Philadelphia. The Yanks had lots of money left to spend but no one really worth spending it on. 

Well, that's not going to happen to the Yankees this offseason. At least they hope it won't.

The conventional wisdom seems to suggest that Sabathia probably has almost every intention of returning to the Bronx. What he wants isn't a huge raise but an extension. That's where it gets tricky, though. 

With Alex Rodriguez on course to become a $30 million annual largess around the necks of the Yankees' accounting department, Sabathia is now looking to extend his current deal into one that would take him into his late 30s.

That's somewhat treacherous territory for any major league player—but a slightly hefty power pitcher?

Let's just say there's some real risk there. Make no mistake about it—the Yanks are for the most part negotiating with themselves on this one.

Would six years and $150 million get this deal done? Perhaps.

Sabathia has four years and $92 million left on his current deal. That's $23 million a year. The above extension means a $2 million a year raise and an additional two years of paid service.

It also means that Sabathia would be 37 by the time the deal is over. That's not young, but it's not outrageously old either.

This deal's ability to get done for once doesn't really come down to the money. It comes down to the years.

The Yankees just do not want to enter the 2017 season with a designated hitter named Alex Rodriguez getting paid $30 million and a now injury-prone and out-of-shape lefty named CC Sabathia making $25 million.

There's no franchise in sports that could absorb that type of burden except New York, but that doesn't mean they want to go down that path.

So with last season's Cliff Lee incident fresh in their minds and the current and future state of Alex Rodriguez weighing on their payroll, the Yanks are going to try to walk a tightrope with CC Sabathia.

Not too many years where they're overpaying him well past his best years, but not too few so that he decides to test the market and see just how desperate some other prominent franchises are for live arms.

Boston, Texas and the Cubs would be the prohibitive favorites to land Sabathia should he hit the open market and decide to move away from New York.

That doesn't seem likely to happen, though.

If Sabathia does in fact end up re-signed before he ever hits the market then Yankee fans can thank Cliff Lee—if he instead chooses to become a free agent and sign elsewhere then Yankee fans will have yet another reason to hate Alex Rodriguez.