Update from Dana Point
Posted by: Peter Abraham - Posted in Misc on Nov 03, 2008 
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It’s quiet so far at the General Manager Meetings. Most of the teams will arrive today. The GMs have a dinner tonight that includes the awarding of The Sporting News Executive of the Year award. There’s also a seminar on arbitration today that many of the assistant GMs will attend.
Because of the money they have to spend, the Yankees are the team everybody wants to talk about. There are teams that believe the Yankees will simply re-invest all their money and sign CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira.
That would solve a lot of problems, obviously. But keep in mind that the Angels felt Teixeira was a key for them and will likely do all they can to retain him.
We won’t hear anything worthwhile for another week or so. Could you imagine a rotation of
CC
AJ
Wang
Petite
hughes
I think that ultimately JOBA will be the heir to the 9th.
No ash. It was already announced that JOBA will be in the rotation for the upcoming 09 season so get that through your head. Right now the rotation locks are Joba/Wang
Ash,
Have you ever heard of Mark Melancon?
I love JOBA as much as anyone and would LOVE for him to be in the SR, but I don’t think that will be the case long term.
Even if you want him to be there, he can’t be viewed as a part of a WS winning rotation next year, his innings would never allow it.
Or are we going to repeat the great plan we used this year with JOBA and move him back and forth?
“Right now the rotation locks are Joba/Wang”
Locks?
Oh, I forgot that we live in a world of locks and guarentees. My bad.
Pete, I think the yanks will sign CC,AJ and Tex bottom line is they have a ton of money and will go all out. We all know the players care about the money and they wont turn down the most money. I think the Yanks are good enough if they do that. They could have the best rotation,they already have the best late innings with MO,Bruney,Coke,Marte and the best infield if you add Tex. Yanks 09. Remember the Yanks did win 89 games in the best division with the injuries to Posada,Wang,Joba,Matsui,Bruney so its not like they are that far away.
“Ash,
Have you ever heard of Mark Melancon?”
Or Jonathan Ortiz or Wilkins De La Rosa for that matter?
I give credit to the Brewers already for supposedly offering Sabathia a $100M or more contract. Even if they made the offer knowing that Sabathia wouldn’t accept it, that’s a good faith effort by the franchise to retain a pitcher who many (myself included) felt they were abusing their rental all the way until they were knocked out of the playoffs…not that I blame them for doing so. But you don’t necessarily risk offering that kind of a contract to a guy if you were intent on simply abusing him and then letting him go. There’s always the chance he loved Milwaukee so much that he accepts the deal. Good effort by them.
bigjf, the offer that is supposedly coming from the Brewers is $100 million for 5 years. That doesn’t seem like nearly enough to get the job done. Despite CC saying he enjoyed the time with the Brewers, he also said that it opened his eyes to playing for another club.
Ash, Cashman and Girardi both have stated that Joba is going to start the season in the rotation. This is in reaction to seeing what happened this year with him and seeing that it didn’t work out so well. As a 5th starter he can be skipped for games to keep the innings down some, and they can always bring up someone like Hughes to take some of his games to further limit his innings. You state concern over the Yankees doing the same thing next season, yet that is exactly what they are trying to avoid and you are faulting it.
I said it all last year and I agree with ASH – Joba’s future is (a) setup for Mo and (b) successor to Mo. Joba’s body type and mechanics suggest that he’ll be injury prone as a starter. Besides his fastball (which lost speed somewhat after his shoulder problem), his slider is plus, but the rest of his pitches a still “works in progress”. I’d rather have him as an “automatic” setup/closer for a whole season, than an often-injured promising starter.
The Yankees’ recent lack of success in signing Free Agent frontline starters suggests that CC won’t be in Pinstripes. So if they fail to sign at least two major starters, look for Joba to start – unfortunately.
Does anyone else feel that Aceves is a strong candidate for No. 4 or No 5. in 2009?