Yankees Don't Offer Arbitration To Anyone

According to various reports, the Yankees didn't end up offering arbitration to any of their arbitration eligible free agents. I'm a little surprised, and puzzled, by their decision not to, but at the same time I understand why they didn't.

Pete Abraham has this quote from Brian Cashman on his blog:

"The determination we made today was to make sure that we control what amount we’d be spending at least in the event that we’re fortunate enough to bring those players back. We did not want to put ourselves in a position of having that determined by a third party without knowing what that figure would be. The arbitration time period falls in early February, so obviously as we attempt to put this team together, in Andy’s case and Bobby’s case, they made $16 million last year. It’s been tough in the past to try and deviate from previous years earnings in an arbitration setting. We wanted to be able to control the cost that we would allocate for every position on the club. Even though we wanted draft picks if we lost anybody, by offering arbitration we would lose out ability to determine a final cost. So by doing so, we chose to go a different direction, not offer arbitration and we’ll still stay engaged with the entire free agent market including those two players.”

It makes sense that they wouldn't want to risk having these guys accept arbitration and then paying them a salary close to what they earned last year. Pettitte definitely isn't worth $16 million. Abreu? Maybe. I go back and forth on Bobby. It's still possible that both Andy and Bobby can end up back in Pinstripes. If they do, it's going to be on the Yankees' terms. I like that aspect of it.

It sounds like Cashman has an idea of what he wants the overall salary for the upcoming season to be. I'm still not sure that he made the right call. It would have been nice to pick up those extra draft picks but what's done is done.

I wonder why he didn't offer arbitration to Moose? That one seemed like a no-brainer.

J-Boogie