More intriguing Yankees news: They just paid $5.75M for 3B Aaron Boone, he of the career .780 OPS and who turns 31 before next season. A deal which will cripple them? Certainly not. Doesn’t seem like a good place to spend money, though.
Alrighty… that new Big Board I promised a few posts ago is up. Enjoy.
There’s another part to this, though — Beltran’s a 1-year player and he’ll demand top dollar after next year. The Yankees would (obviously) want to sign him to a long-term deal, but they’ve also got huge salary commitments that are pushing them over the cap *now* with penalties that grow more severe every year. While it may seem now like George is willing to spend whatever it takes today and forever, this CBA is going to start giving them noogies next year and purple nerples the next, at the same time that team’s really going to be old and decrepid. They might be giving up Johnson as part of a Beltran deal that makes them close to invincible next year, but for the remaining years when Johnson’s cheap and awesome while the Yankees pay out $bazillions in cap fees, that may end up tying their hands for either Beltran’s extension or pursuing the kind of quality FAs we take for granted they’ll be after.
Also, my nightmare is that Dave’s entirely right, that the Yankees have a checklist that goes
– sign Sheffield
– trade Johnson for Beltran
– sign K-happy fly ball staff to minimize Jeter-Soriano shortcomings:
– sign Colon
– sign Millwood
– etc
I shuddered just typing that.