The LoHud Yankees Blog

Andy Pettitte said he’s leaning toward retirement
My guess is that a few weeks after the season isn’t the best time to ask Pettitte’s thoughts on retirement. He just got home. He’s regularly seeing the family for the first time in months. He just finished the grind of 162 games, and those games were split by an injury. The better test will be mid to late December.

Brian Cashman flew to Arkansas to begin the Cliff Lee pursuit
Obviously. No sense wasting any time. Everyone knows the deal here. The Yankees need a front-line starter, and there’s only one on the free agent market. Cashman would rather not part with the prospects it would take to trade for a Lee-type starter, so the Yankees will give chase. This Cashman trip was a no-brainer. He was actually pretty close to my home town. We should have invited him to the wedding.

Cashman met with Derek Jeter
The sooner this deal gets done, the better. As long as Jeter is unemployed, this will remain a never-ending topic of discussion.

Cashman said none of the Yankees young catchers will be handed a job
Goes without saying. Even so, it’s pretty cool to hear Cashman being asked regularly about the top prospects in the Yankees minor league system. It’s fun to talk about potential, but at some point a team has to take the leap and give the kids a chance.

Jeter won a Gold Glove
I don’t think Jeter is the best defensive shortstop in the league, but I don’t think he’s as bad as people make him out to be. Managers like the guys who make every play and limit mistakes. Jeter does that. He’s still pretty good at turning the double play, and I don’t remember a game in which I thought Jeter’s range cost the Yankees a win. Did he deserve the Gold Glove? Probably not. But the Gold Glove has always been a strange award, and everyone knows it. Calling him the best defensive shortstop in the league is too much praise, just like the resulting backlash probably went too far the other direction.

David DeJesus was traded
This deal happened not long after I got home, and I was thrilled by the timing. I can’t imagine how many emails Sam got in the hours and days after the trade was announced. DeJesus is a nice player, and for whatever reason he’s always been a favorite fantasy trade target within the Yankees fan base. The Yankees don’t need an outfielder right now, but I’m sure there was considerable disappointment to see him traded to the other coast.

One question I heard time and time again during my week back home: So what do you cover now that the Yankees season is over?

My answer: The Yankees.

After an incredible week and an absolutely perfect wedding, I’m spending the day driving up to St. Louis and flying down to Orlando for the general managers’ meetings.

Predictably, the past few weeks have been slow, but the GM meetings serve as a kind of unofficial beginning to baseball’s offseason. I wouldn’t get too excited for huge news — save that sort of buzz for next month’s winter meetings — but there will be a lot of decision makers in the same building, so there is certainly the potential for signings and trades. And changes to baseball’s offseason schedule have opened the door for more activity than in past years.

Last night, Sam gave a good explanation of the GM meetings. Our friend Ken Davidoff did the same over at Newsday. There will be a lot of official talk about rules and the collective-bargaining agreement, and there will be unofficial whispers about free agents and trade targets.

The GM meetings, for all intents and purposes, begin tomorrow night in Orlando. (I think technically the actual meetings start on Tuesday but most people are getting into town tomorrow.) Chad will be on the scene for us and doing his best to unearth all the news, rumors and Hot Stove speculation.

So what can you expect?

• Some actual meetings: This year baseball has smushed the GM meetings and the owners’ meetings back-to-back, so there will be a lot of talk from everyone about the impending collective bargaining negotiation that is looming after the 2011 season. There is always some discussion about rules changes; you can bet instant replay will come up (again) for discussion.

• Plenty of hot air: Obviously there’s plenty of conversation amongst the various GMs outside of the formal sessions, and that’s where the Hot Stove gossip emerges. Informal meetings, sit-downs between agents and teams and even casual conversations between executives can start a firestorm of Tweets, blog posts and reports on potential deals. Much of it doesn’t amount to much but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to follow.

• Legitimate groundwork: There is, on occasion, a genuine transaction or two that’s completed at the GM meetings (a minor trade or a free agent signing with his former team, typically) but despite the high percentage of undeveloped activity that doesn’t mean real foundations aren’t laid. A most recent example came last year: The Yankees and Tigers got together at the GM meetings and had preliminary talks that led to the Curtis Granderson trade just a few weeks later at the Winter Meetings.

Along those lines, I wouldn’t expect a whole lot of action from the Yankees this week. At the very least, Cliff Lee’s agent, Darek Braunecker, will be at the meetings so you can bet Brian Cashman will be looking for a second sit-down with him.

As much as you may love baseball, when the World Series is done and the weather gets crisp like this, it’s hard not to get into football on the weekends.

Truth is, everyone is doing it:

• Joba Chamberlain was flat-out fired up about his Nebraska Cornhuskers yesterday.

• CC Sabathia has never made any secret about his passion for the Oakland Raiders.

• Even Chad probably wouldn’t want to answer if someone asked him which made him happier this weekend: Watching his sister get married or seeing a big Mizzou win on Senior Day? (Don’t worry, pal, your secret is safe with us.)

As for me, I’m headed out to the Meadowlands today to write a column for the paper on the Giants-Cowboys game. If you’re a football fan, enjoy the games; if not, then take comfort in this: Pitchers and catchers report in just 92 days.

Critiquing and discussing the media – including writers like me – is a big part of what sports fans do. Those of us in the business (should) understand that. It’s part of the deal.

When it comes to the radio and TV voices of a team, that criticism and discussion is even more magnified, which makes sense. These are the people that fans listen to all season long; of course they’re going to have an opinion on them. And of course there is going to be a lot of passion from both defenders and critics.

All of that is a long way of saying this: The Yankees radio deal with WCBS is up after the 2011 season and, as Bob Raissman points out, that could lead to the Yankees moving their radio broadcasts to a new station as well as changing their on-air talent.

Is either one definitely going to happen? No. There are a lot of factors that will be played out between now and the end of next season, so there’s no reason to think the games are going to be moving around on your radio dial or that John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman won’t continue in their current roles. It’s just worth noting that a new station is a possibility, and Raissman speculates that if the Yankees do sign with a different station than it’s more likely the new station will want to install a new broadcast team.

What does the future hold for the voices of the Yankees? Long story short: Stay tuned.

Here are some nuggets for you tonight if you’re not into spending $60 on a boxing fight …

• Looks like Dan Uggla could be on the move from Florida. Look for him to be a popular topic of conversation at the GM meetings next week.

• Kevin Towers is one of the best guys in baseball and I wish him all the luck in the world as he tries to rebuild the Diamondbacks. Don’t be surprised if the Yankees and D-Backs do business down the road, either; Towers and Brian Cashman have been buddies for a long time.

• Interesting two-step going on in Boston: The Red Sox want Victor Martinez and Adrian Beltre back but have already had conversations with Kevin Youkilis about moving over to third base if Beltre isn’t retained.

• I found this funny: Anheuser-Busch is suing MLB because it says the league backed out of a contract agreement and is asking for more money to continue a sponsorship deal. Is it possible that this is why beers at the ballpark cost like $12?

• A signed Babe Ruth home run ball goes for well into six-figures at a memorabilia auction that includes a 2009 Yankees World Series ring. As this blog post speculates, is it possible the ring is one that was allegedly stolen from a Double-A Trenton employee this summer? (UPDATE: I’m told by friend of the blog Josh Norris that the Trenton employee actually got his ring back. Josh knows this because he wrote the story about it, which you can read here. Thanks, Josh!)

• Lastly, a shameless self-promo: In my weekly round-up of “Fair or Foul” for SNY.tv I managed to work in references to Tecmo Bowl, Turkey and everyone in the world hating Joe Morgan. That’s at least worth a click, right?

OK, back at it tomorrow as we get prepped for the GM meetings which begin Monday in Florida.

Although the David DeJesus emails have definitely started to slow down, there is still a reasonable amount of Zack Greinke-related questions coming in, all of which are some variation on the theme: “Can the Yankees get him? And for how much?”

Look, I know there aren’t a lot of options out there after Cliff Lee. And, truth be told, I think the Yankees are going to succeed in signing Lee which will render the “Plan B” issue moot. But if, for whatever reason, the Yankees don’t end up with Lee than I wouldn’t hold your breath on the Yankees pulling off a trade for Greinke.

Why not? Two main reasons.

1. The Royals don’t seem particularly likely to deal him. At least not yet. More likely, a deal will come a little ways down the line. In an interview with MLB Radio on Friday, Royals GM Dayton Moore said that if the club can’t sign Greinke to a multi-year deal “then we are going to have to make a decision to move him at some point in time. Is that this winter? I don’t know. Is it prior to the deadline in 2011? Possibly. Is it off-season 2011? But we will have to make that determination no different than other clubs have had to make. Minnesota had to make a similar decision with [Johan] Santana and, of course, Cleveland had to make a decision similar with [Cliff] Lee and [C.C.] Sabathia. So we will have to maximize his value certainly at some point in time.”

Moore has also said he has nothing in the works, has not called any other clubs about Greinke and he doesn’t anticipate anything happening soon unless another team “just blows us away.”

2. It seems very, very unlikely that he’d want to come to New York. And if you don’t really want to be here, it’s infinitely harder to do well here. Greinke has a limited no-trade clause in his current contract and there have been reports already that he has told friends he won’t waive it to go to a New York team. As someone who deals with social anxiety issues, a big-city fishbowl seems like a poor fit; more likely, I could see Greinke ending up somewhere like Texas, a team which has said it wants to pursue him regardless of what happens with Cliff Lee.

Put both factors together and you end up with the Yankees having to pay a steep price in prospects and money to land and then sign a pitcher who may or may not really want to play in the big city. I know Greinke is good – really, really good – but this is one of those situations where it just seems like the Yankees would be better off staying away.

* Thanks to the AP for the photo of Greinke.

Bernie Williams played with the jazz band at William Paterson University last night and before taking the stage he took a few questions.

Does he think Derek Jeter or Mariano Rivera could ever leave the Yankees?

“The laws of nature say there’s got to be a point that will have to move on,” Williams said, according to Newsday, “but hopefully not next year.”

Like most Yankees fans (and everyone else in the universe), Williams thinks Jeter will ultimately sign a new deal with the only team he’s ever known.

“I don’t think he wants to go anywhere,” Williams said. “He’s one of the pillars of the team, definitely one of the great parts.  . . . He means so much to the city. Hopefully, they’ll come down to a decision and work it out.”

Two other tidbits about Williams:

1. He has never officially retired, though he says in the same article that it “might be coming this year.”

2. He and I once spent 20 minutes talking about the terrific food at Ajili Mojili, a restaurant in San Juan that he recommend to me before I took a vacation in Puerto Rico and was absolutely fantastic. If you are ever in San Juan, I recommend checking it out.

* That’s an AP shot of Bernie playing a concert at the Nokia Theater last year.

Two years ago, the Yankees were definitely NOT in on Mark Teixeira. Definitely not. They wanted pitching, pitching, pitching and after signing CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, Brian Cashman was supposed to be done.

Except he wasn’t. He swooped in, completed a recruitment that he’d started much earlier in the winter and landed Teixeira, snagging him away from the Red Sox who thought – once again – they were on the verge of landing a big time player only to see him head to New York.

Could the same thing happen with Carl Crawford?

Although the Yankees are (again) focusing on pitching winter, they have reached out to Crawford’s agent. Most people think Crawford will end up in either Anaheim or – and here we go again – Boston, and I have to admit I think Anaheim, in particular, is a great fit. The Angels have a history of paying top dollar for outfielders and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them pull off a big-money deal with Crawford pretty quickly. But I also wouldn’t be shocked if the Yankees were in play for Crawford, too.

Look, we all know that Crawford is a great player. The question is, do the Yankees need him to put themselves in position to the World Series? I don’t think so. I’ll be the first to admit that I was wrong about Brett Gardner before last season, saying I didn’t believe he was going to be a solid everyday outfielder; obviously I was way off on that.

And while Crawford is absolutely a better player than Gardner, I’m not so sure he’s $18-20 million better. The Yankees have a lot of guys on their team who are going to be overpaid – starting with Derek Jeter, who will surely be overpaid whatever contract he signs. Gardner, for what he gives, is one of those players that is underpaid (Phil Hughes is another). Having players like is an important offset for the big-money stars. In my opinion, replacing Gardner with Crawford is an upgrade but not one that’s going to be worth the price.

Could it happen? I don’t think it’s likely. But as we learned with Teixeira, when it comes to the Yankees you can never say never.

* That’s an AP shot of Crawford.

Here are some nuggets for you to snack on if you’re not into “House Hunters International” on HGTV …

• Several teams have unveiled new uniforms recently and Craig Calcaterra has been doing uniform blog posts of his own. Here’s his take on the Yankees uniforms that includes several interesting tidbits.

• Like most people, I absolutely loved Target Field when I was there for the division series. Seems like Justin Morneau, who plays there, would like to see some changes to the dimensions.

• Nice read from Tim Brown on how changes to the offseason calendar could change the pace at which free agents come off the board.

• Have you seen the fallout from Paul Pierce’s mocking Tweet at LeBron after the Celtics beat the Heat? Hilarious stuff. Kudos to Pierce for an awesome dig that got the whole thing started, too.

• For those with a sweet-tooth: MLB has an official cookie deal now. Tasty.