Wang now waits for a result
Posted by: Peter Abraham - Posted in Misc on Feb 14, 2008 
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Chien-Ming Wang’s arbitration hearing has finished. It was held at a hotel in St. Petersburg.
A three-person panel heard the cases presented by the Yankees and agent Alan Nero. Brian Cashman and Jean Afterman represented the Yankees.
Wang will learn today whether he will be paid $4 million or $4.6 million this season. The hearing was the first for the Yankees since they beat Mariano Rivera out of $2 million in 2000.
“I’m happy it’s over,†Wang told Taiwanese journalists outside the hotel. “Whatever is the result, I won’t be upset. I’m excited about the season starting.â€
i think he’ll do great this year
i can’t believe they went to court over the $600K. amazing.
As well do I. Hoping he gets 20 wins this season, at least =). I just can’t believe that it came down to this, and how they were unable to strike any sort of deal? Does this mean that they will continue to have to go through arbitration until he gets a new contract or he is traded?
I’m guessing wang will get his first W of the season!
This just doesn’t jive with the Asian culture of respect… It is perfectly understandable why Yankees are doing this since everything is just business oriented. The fact is that Yankees own him and that is that. Respect and loyalty just mean very differently in the Western culture…
I’m guessing the Yankees kept it much more positive than a higher stakes arbitration where the parties were further apart.
Hopefully the team just focused on salary precedents for pitchers w/Wang’s service tenure, which shouldn’t hurt anyone’s ego.
wanger will win, no doubt. not that i really care
This is big, the 600K might put the Yankees over their budget!
The Yankees might be the most brain dead organization in all of baseball. Well, ok, maybe not the most brain dead (see Texas & Cincy), but certainly not in the “brains” department when it comes to giving out contracts and signing deals. Wang is our best pitcher, and has had model consistency since he got here. The wise thing to do would be to sign him to a long term deal now. Instead, the Yankees go to arbitration over $600 measly thousand dollars. LOL. What stupidity. That’s about the cost of a single Carl Pavano out. Wang is going to be 28 next month, and has 2 total years left counting this one, of arbitration. Why not sign him to a 4 or 5 year deal? The price of pitching is only going to go up, and signing him now would be a good investment. Security for a extra year or two of service. The Yanks are just dumb when it comes to this stuff. They bid against themselves, and massivley overpay when they don’t have to, but then nickle and dime their best pitcher over chump change. To think Kei Igawa gets $4 million per, and they knickle and dime Wang.
come on yanks. seriously. taking the dude to arb over 600 f***ing K? give me a break!
My sources report that Wang was pretty tired going into the hearing, but that worked for him as it helped keep his sinker down and out of the zone. Cashman swung for the fences and hit a grounder to Cano.
2 years after this one I meant to say, or 3 years total. He has 2008, 2009, and 2010 as arbitration years.
“It was held at a hotel in St. Petersburg.”
…the only St. Petersburg I know of is in Russia…
Why oh why would the Yankees not compromise and split the difference and go to $300,000 + the $4 million. Wang (1-0) will win this one even without his best stuff.
Jim maybe the Yankees did want to split the difference and it was Wang’s side that held firm. You would think with that little money seperating the two there would have been a compromise but it obviously didnt happen
The problem I have with this kind of deal signing concept is that it discourages players to put team need over personal need. A pitcher may be screwed if he over commits himself for team’s need and shorten his lifetime like CMW did. If CMW is smart enough and thinks like the Yankees do, he should do anything to protect himself first (by learning from Pavano) and get paid minimally as expected. Then he can reap big with a lot of gas left in his tank when he gets paid for what he is worth and even achieve more. But it requires him to look at the big picture at a personal level. I am not saying he should not be a team player – just not to kill himself for what is not worth.
Maybe Wang wouldn’t accept a deal lower than $4.6 mil, we don’t know. Either way it isn’t nearly as big a deal as people are making it out to be. This is the business of baseball. Why sign a pitcher to a 5 year deal? When did that ever make sense? The fact is, the Yanks have enough money to be cautious now and pay up later. If Wang blows out his arm in two years, everybody is going to be saying how smart it was for them to NOT sign him long-term.
I have no problem with Wang fighting for what he deserves in salary but some of you talk about 600K like that’s what you use for tip money.
I understand that as a percent of total payroll it’s a drop in the bucket but 600K + luxury tax is more than what Hughes and Joba will make this year combined.
As for the respect angle, I wish someone respected me enough to be willing to pay me 4 million dollars.
Blarg: St.Petersburg is where “Tampa” is. Most of the things that go on in “Tampa” actually occur in the town of St. Petersburg.
Wang is such a classy guy, got to love his great attitude.
Agree with Dan!
Andrea: Thanks, that makes sense now
Love to have his problem.
“The wise thing to do would be to sign him to a long term deal now.”
i respectfully disagree.
in fact, i submit that this would be extremely UNWISE of the Yankees.
“2 years after this one I meant to say, or 3 years total. He has 2008, 2009, and 2010 as arbitration years.”
it’s actually THREE more years after this one.
so your idea of a 4-5 deal doesn’t make that much sense from the Yankees’ POV.
armed with the information that the Yankees control Wang for the next FOUR seasons, do you still think that it is “braindead” to not give him a long term deal now?
“Why oh why would the Yankees not compromise and split the difference and go to $300,000 + the $4 million. ”
echoing others, why does everyone assume it is the Yankees who would not compromise? maybe it was Wang.
Andrea, not quite right, St. Pete is actually in pinellas county, while tampa is in hillsborough. they’re close, but not the same. the Rays actually play in St. Pete, while the bucs and lightning play in tampa. tampa is more city while st pete is more residential. st pete/clearwater are where the beaches are. More actually goes on in Tampa than St. Petersburg.
re:wang, as people have already said, when similar or better pitchers in wangs position (bedard, kasmir, etc.) are accepting much less (under 4 mil) the yankees are being generous by offering 4. why isn’t anyone getting on wangs case for being greedy in asking for 800k more than kasmir?
Why does all the good stuff happen on the days I have class from 11-5? I miss everything.
thank you hmmm and EricVA
we dont know the details, so dont make assumptions. and unless wang was going to give a significant discount on a long term deal, there is no incentive for the yanks.
wsr
Obviouly Wang’s agent is dealing for Wang and the difference lies in the contract year, not the difference in 800K…
wsr: most of the Yankee stuff happens in St. Pete though, no?
Roger Clemens-$28 million
Jaret Right-$8 million
Johnny Damon-$13 million
Not Giving Chien-Ming Wang a extra $600,000-Priceless
Not necessarily. George M. Steinbrenner Field is in Tampa, right across the street from Raymond James Stadium (site of next years superbowl.) I believe George lives in South Tampa, and there’s stuff all through the area named after him. The yankees and the boss have been very, very good to the whole area, including St. Pete, Tampa, and a lot of the surrounding areas. Most people who move down here despising the Boss for what they read about him in the papers end up gaining huge amounts of respect. Most of what he does, he doesn’t take credit for, too.
Just in case you’re wondering, with $600,000, Wang can have that extra dough to buy the 9 and a half 2008 Mercedes-Benz SLK-class SLK55 AMG Roadsters his family has been waiting for.
Maybe we do need a Bill James type in the organization. We did all this for 600 grand. We spend that on coffee and sandwiches everytime we have a press conference. Very weak of my team. As a matter of fact…bush league. We need to stop this nonsense…and now!
retire21, rjpinstripes…
how much are scott kazmir and eric bedard making this season?
wsr: oh well. it must be really close then. Anyone I know who’s gone to Spring Training games have stayed in St. Pete.
They are really close, just right across the bridge.
Heh, with $600,000 I could go to grad school a couple times over…
Rebecca,
With $600,000 and a well placed donation, you could get an honorary PhD and be done with it!
This is not classy at all from the Yankees management,Wang deserves that money (and probably more)if we compare him with other subpar individuals at the mound.Including Igawa.
Raul,
After 2 years at your job, did you get paid at about the same level as others in your position, or did you get paid more than your supervisor because you did a better job than him?
I’ve never been to an arbitration process (obviously) but I’d imagine that since it was such a small difference, the Yanks focused on comparing Wang’s salary to others in his service time/ability range. I doubt they did a lot of Wang bashing to bring down his price.
Sorry, arbitration hearing, not process.
EricVA,
I pay my employees according to perfomance,if someone does better i do believe in bonus or extra compensations…in the Wang case i ll apply these conditions and give him the raise.
He is getting a raise. He made way less than $4mil last year.
Wang made $490,000 last year and $350,000 the year before. He will be making 10x what he did last year. I think that’s pretty fair.
Ok … my point is that N.Y. Yankees have always been top notch,classy people..In this case going to arbitration for 600k (Pocket money for them) was disappointing to me.
Clemens gets heckled by PETA.
http://www.peta.org/mc/NewsItem.asp?id=10972
EricVa: Nah, it’d have to be more like $60 million.
In recent years, the only thing of real significance in St. Pete to be Yankee related other than playing the Rays on 3 visits each year is George’s former son-in-law Steve Swindal getting nailed for DUI and womanizing.
Sorry to go off topic here, but I’m in the middle (page 62) of Brian McNamee’s deposition, and on that page he states that Roger Clemens did not do growth hormone. Am I missing something here? Why did no one else pick up on this discrepancy, since Pettitte spoke of Roger only in terms of HGH and not steroids, at least insofar as his conversations with Roger were concerned.
There was a point in Pettitte’s deposition that he said McNamee told him Clemens was taking steroids, but in his conversations with Clemens, he says Clemens talked about HGH, and not steroids.
Back to the current topic, it doesn’t sound that CMW is half as upset as a lot of you seem to be. The Yankees are not cheating him, and are not treating him any differently than they did Mariano and Jeter in the past. Yes, they proceeded differently with Cano, but CMW has had some arm problems in the past. I think they are wiser to be cautious, and if all goes well, CMW will get his multi-year contract at the appropriate time.
Doreen – You’re actually reading the deps? Please don’t interpret this the wrong way, because I really do respect your comments and input here, but why? Just from what you’ve mentioned, it confirms my belief that there’s so much misinformation that’s purposely been put out there, to cover various rear ends, without any fear of meaningful contradiction, that it is really impossible for anyone to figure out truth from fiction. We will never know the truth of who did what, when, and with who. Part of the tragedy is the sullying of reputations of those who really did nothing wrong.
Okay, so apparently this one particular year, Roger wasn’t taking HGH, but he HAD taken it at some point. Sorry.
From what I have been hearing on the news today it would not matter if Clemens was lying. Reports indicate that even he was indicted on perjury charges, President Bush would pardon him. Seems as though Roger and the President are good friends. That might also account for what a lot of us noticed yesterday that the republicans were nice to Roger and gave McNamee a hard time.
Yeah, Joe, I’m actually reading the deps. I don’t really know why, except to satisfy my own mind. The McNamee deposition is a mess. It’s all over the place with a lot of “must have beens” and “had to be’s”. Incredibly confusing. I do think a lot is just things he, as he said, remembered just because he forced himself to think about things again. But a lot of it is things like, well, this happened, so this must have happened – not necessarily a memory or a fact, but a surmise.
Anyway, I’m into them now, and I usually finish whatever I start reading out of habit. I’ll let you know how it ends!
Gee, President Bush going out of his way to help a “good ol’ boy.” How refreshing!
Doreen – Not surprising though. I am impressed with you reading through all of the depositions. I started to but did not finish. Maybe I’ll get back to it.
As far as the “pardon” goes, that was some lunatic mouthing off by McNamee’s lawyer. Nor is it a fact that the President and Clemens are friends. As for how the committee behaved, I think the members followed along party lines. The Democrats stuck up for Mitchell via his big witness McNamee, and the Republicans went the other way. Both parties were silly for doing so, but each side also made legitimate points. It still doesn’t justifdy the circus.
But puh-lease…. life is a little more complicated than trying to find a way to blame somebody named Bush for everything that happens.
McNamee’s attorney is the one who said that Bush was going to pardon Clemens so consider the source before going off about it.
Doreen:
Sources said before the hearing that Pettitte contradicted himself numerous times in his affidavit and was a bad witness. The inconsistency you noticed is probably just one example. Whether it’s his nerves or something else, Pettitte would not have been a very good witness with Congressmen alternatively yelling at him and praising him.
Murphydog and Pat -
Thanks for the clarification. The news was presenting it as fact and not as something said by McNamee’s lawyer.
Let’s see…
Wang = arbitration
K-Rod = arbitration
Perez = arbitration & the Mets just forked over 137M to Santana
Kazmir gets 3.7M leading the league in strikeouts
Howard = arbitration
Howard, Wang & K-rod = Player association pressure on agents to push salaries higher.
What they do here with Wang will have ramifications for others with top pitchers when Wang is used as a comp, especially with that abnorally low K rate.
I guess I miss heard, or espn misspoke.
I just read that it was McNamee’s lawyer who said it. I knew Rogers lawyer couldn’t be such a fool.
Fran did you hear that it was Rogers lawyer as well. I want to make sure I wasn’t going nuts.
Phil is on 880 now!! TUNE IN!
murphydog -
The inconsistency I found was actually in McNamee’s deposition, which is all over the place. He tries to control the deposition, and has to be brought back to the question at hand on a number of occasions. I am about halfway through it at this point.
I got the sense from Pettitte’s deposition that he was trying to get it right, trying to find the right way to say things. I also got the sense that on a few occasions when he was having trouble remembering things exactly, he was a passive witness, in that – and I don’t want to say the wrong thing here – but it helped him to have his memory jogged somewhat by the questioning.
I think he had a difficult time with knowing for sure if he misheard Roger Clemens regarding HGH, wanting to give his friend the benefit of the doubt, but reconciling that with what he truly believed he remembered. That’s the greatest source of contradiction, if you want to call it that. But I agree he would not have been a great witness. As we’ve seen, however, neither McNamee nor Clemens was particularly exemplary, either.
Jennifer –
No, you misremembered!
gotta make an example of Wang. You do have the triplets all pitching in their first full season ball. Imagine what the 3 amigoes will be asking for in 2 years if the Yankees management cave in now with (soon to be traded) Wang. It’d be like an extra gazillion!
>>Imagine what the 3 amigoes will be asking for in 2 years if the Yankees management cave in now with (soon to be traded) Wang.
I wouldn’t worry about that. The triplets will have to match consecutive 19 win to get the same raise. If they all end up doing that, I’m sure the seasons will be so good that money simply does not matter.
Now he lost the arbitration hearing, he should demand 15mil/year from the Yankee starting next year or become free agent and sign with Boston RedSox to piss-off the Yankee, lol!!!