From ESPN’s Free Agent Tracker, these are slightly different than the ones from Detroit Tigers Thoughts (who were pretty spot on!).
Anyway, here’s where the Yankees Free Agents stand:
| Type A | Type B |
|---|---|
| Bobby Abreu (OF) | Ivan Rodriguez (C) |
| Damaso Marte (LHP) | |
Here’s my thoughts:
Bobby Abreu
The Yankees will offer him arbitration, and if he accepts that’s great. If he doesn’t, he’ll go sign somewhere else as he’ll likely have a number of suitors (the Mets, people are tossing around the Cubs as a fit, etc). I don’t think Nady will match Abreu’s offensive production but I just can’t tolerate watching him “field” anymore and with his OBP on an extreme downward trend Abreu is just not worth the money he will command.
Damaso Marte
Moving past my extreme hatred for Damaso Marte because of his inability to throw strikes during his time with the Yankees this past year, he does have a track record of being pretty good. The Yankees have turned down (or are going to turn down, I don’t think it’s been made official yet) his option to allegedly try to sign him to a multi-year deal. I think what’s more likely to happen is that he will walk–which means they are really overvaluing the potential draft picks they could get for him. His track record means that you could trade him for some nice smaller pieces (and maybe something very interesting as teams start to figure out their real needs), but oh well.
Ivan Rodriguez
Pudge being a Type B is honestly even more reason to offer him arbitration, since as mentioned before he’ll likely decline and teams would be more willing to sign him if they’re not giving up a first round pick for him. This is not a situation like Jason Varitek in Boston, where he might accept arbitration, but he might also not be very sought after from teams because (other than that whole sucking thing) they’d have to give up one of their picks for him. Anyway, I think someone be willing to sign Pudge to a 2 year or 1+1 deal.
