Many, if not most Yankee fans are licking their wounds right now over their dreams of seeing Cliff Lee in a Yankee uniform being dashed by his decision to sign with the Phillies. I wanted to add a few notes of perspective for those who think the Yankee chances for next year and beyond are greatly diminished.

1-Long term deals on pitchers rarely work out well

Sam Borden of LoHud discusses this in his column this morning. He writes:

The rejection is a blessing. The Yankees may not think so. Not right now, at least. But they also thought giving Carl Pavano a four-deal was going to work out.

Examples like that are littered all over baseball, carcasses of long-term deals for pitchers that went sour. Mike Hampton. Kevin Brown. Russ Ortiz. Barry Zito. Did the Yankees get a positive return on their deal with Mike Mussina? Sure. But let’s not act like they’ve got a great batting average on these deals, either. Kei Igawa hasn’t exactly been a good investment for $46 million. A.J. Burnett sure doesn’t look like one, either, at just about twice that price.

If Lee had signed with the Yanks, we’d be reading article after article about all the things that could go wrong, and how rarely these deals go right. Remember what Kevin Goldstien of Baseball Prospectus wrote recently, that when the money gets as crazy as this, the winner most often the team that finishes 2nd in the bidding. You’re paying for past performance for a 32 year old pitcher. 

2-The Yanks aren’t worse off today

As difficult as it may be to hear right now, the Yanks haven’t suffered any significant losses from the team that went to the ALCS this past year. The 2011 Yankees aren’t any worse than the 2010 team, they just didn’t get any better by adding Lee. Here’s the players that the Yanks have lost so far this off season from last year’s roster:

Javier Vazquez-Marlins

Lance Berkman-Cardinals

Juan Miranda-Diamondbacks

Do any of those losses concern you? Nope. There are still some key potential losses in Andy Pettitte and Kerry Wood, but until they sign with other teams (or in Andy’s case officially retire) they are still in play. Brian Cashman now has an extra 23 mil to play with, and we all know he’s going to spend some if not all of it to improve the club. It’s also worth noting that two of their main rivals from 2010, the Texas Rangers (Lee) and Tampa Bay Rays (Crawford, Soriano, Pena) have suffered huge losses and have much work to do if they just hope to stay even. The field is worse, and while the Red Sox have improved lets not forget they finished with 89 wins and were 7 games back last year. The Sox needed to improve to catch up.

3-Lee would guarantee nothing

The 1990s Atlanta Braves teams had starting rotation that featured 3 future Hall of Famers in Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, and was rounded out by some fine pitchers like Steve Avery, Denny Neagle and Kevin Millwood. The won 104 games in 1993 and 100+ games for three straight years from 1997-1999. The have one World Series championship to show for a decade of dominating the National League. Further, the team that went all the way in 1995 wasn’t one of their best editions, going 90-54 in the regular season. Point being, we’ve seen All-Star rotations assembled before and it doesn’t necessarily translate into winning championships. It may improve your odds a bit, but we all know the playoffs are still a crapshoot. Adding Lee simply doesn’t mean as much as most fans would like to think it does.

The news broke late last night, the mystery team was real after all and it proved to be the Phillies. There were reports that Cliff Lee let it be known in recent days that his first preference would a return to Philadelphia, and the two sides worked out an agreement for 5 years and 120 mil, with a reachable 6th year option. Here’s some quick reactions:

-For potential trade targets (and a glimpse at next year’s FA class) check out the MLBTR 2012 Free Agent list. It’s not a great class, but with Pujols looking for a monster extension maybe someone like Chris Carpenter can be had on a 1 year rental. Most of the rest of that list is either old, uninspiring, or unlikely to be had with the various contract options attached.

-Until Andy Pettitte comes back, as Yankee fans we have to admit the Red Sox are clearly the better team. The lineups are comparable, but the rotations aren’t close as things stand right now. Even once Andy comes back, I’ll give the edge to the BoSox. But at least then it’s a fight, right now it isn’t. Sergio Mitre and Ivan Nova simply aren’t as good as Clay Bucholtz and Dice-K.

-No faulting Brian Cashman here. He met with Lee twice and offered him more money than anyone else. MLBTR has the details:

Crasnick hears the Yankees offered a deal that guaranteed Lee $132MM over six years, plus a $16MM player option for a seventh year (Twitter link).  At $148MM guaranteed, that was the highest bid.  The Rangers offered $138MM over six years, and their proposal included a vesting option that could have brought the value of the deal to $161MM, according to Yahoo’s Tim Brown (Twitter links).

I must admit I’m surprised at how aggressive the Rangers were, but it didn’t matter. Lee just didn’t want to pitch here or in Texas, and took anywhere from 28-41 mil less to go back to Philly.

-As depressed as you might be right now as a Yankee fan, think about rooting for the team across town. The Mets plan on doing nothing this off season, and already project to be at the bottom of their division. Now the best team in their division just got MUCH better. The Met rebuilding plan should target 2015 as the next year they have a realistic shot at winning the division.

-Philly must be a great place to play and/or their GM Ruben Amaro has a knack with getting great 32 year pitchers to sign below market. First Roy Halladay signs a below market deal, now Cliff Lee. Their rotation is now unstoppable with a top 4 of Halladay, Lee, Oswalt, and Hamels. That’s easily the best top 4 in the game, and paired with their offense all they need to do is stay healthy and the National League is almost a forgone conclusion. Never know in a short series, but that’s as good as it gets. Their only question is age, seems like most of the key elements are 32 and older, but they could be a dynasty for the next few years.

Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus recently published a piece (subs required) where he posits something that I know many Yankee fans have been ruminating about in recent days, myself included. The money and years in the Cliff Lee sweepstakes have reached a point where the team that loses the bidding will ultimately be better off. He writes:

Meanwhile, we continue to wait, with Rangers fans hoping to keep the hero that led their team to their first World Series, and Yankee fans wishing to prove that their team’s financial might can bring them the biggest free agent name once again. 1-At this point, I’d recommend that both fans start rooting for the other side, as the ‘winning’ the Cliff Lee sweepstakes has all the makings of a classic Pyrrhic victory.

The age aspect of any deal is easy to see, as no matter the length, Lee will be well into the downside of his career during the latter part of the contract. The bigger risk is simply Lee himself. 2-It’s easy to forget that this is a pitcher just three years removed from pitching his way back to the minor leagues, with the Indians trading him away as much of over the risk of him declining as to his potential price tag.

And there is simply Lee the pitcher. Even the great version of Lee is succeeding mostly on nearly super-natural command. While his pure stuff is far too good to be classified solely as a finesse arm, it’s hardly the arsenal of a power pitcher, and to be the Cy Young-level pitcher, 3-he can afford no degradation in his ability to not only throw strikes, but to place his pitches nearly perfectly in the zone. When that’s not happening, Lee falls from elite to very hittable, with game one of last year’s World Series serving as our most recent exhibit. The chances of Lee being the pitcher he’s been over the last few seasons two years from now are slim, four years from now, tiny, and six years from now? Unfathomable.

I’ll address each of his main points in order.

1-I think this is more true for Texas than the Yankees. Bad deals rarely tie the Yankees hands in terms of acquiring players. The biggest problem it gives them is roster inflexibility, as we saw in the out years of the Jason Giambi deal, or in forcing them to make a headache for headache trade, as we saw when they extended Jeff  Weaver and later dealt him for Kevin Brown. In either case, the team still had enough elsewhere to make the playoffs. The Rangers, however, can’t afford to have too much payroll tied up in any one player an still be able to compete. That’s why Alex Rodriguez is playing for the Yankees.

2-It’s easy to forget because he won a CY Young award in 2008 and posted 3 terrific years despite playing on two very bad teams, the 2009 Cleveland Indians (65-97) and the 2010 Seattle Mariners (61-101).

3-And this isn’t true of every pitcher who ever lived? Hard throwing AJ Burnett doesn’t get blasted when his control is off? The consistency with which he threw strikes this past year was no doubt superhuman, he walked a mere 18 batter in 212.2 IP. But his career BB/9 rate is 2.2 and a lefthanded fly ball pitcher (1.13/1.04 GB/FB rate the past two seasons) pitching half his games in lefty-friendly Yankee stadium only figures to do better, not worse.

It’s a cold, rainy day here in New York, and in the Yankee universe (ahem) all anybody wants to talk about is the waiting game for Cliff Lee. I’ve weighed in here numerous times, as have most of my fellow writers. So I thought it would be a good time to open things up to the readers, and let you guys hash things out for yourselves. To get the conversation started I’m going to post some recent comments from Mo’s TYU Twitter. If you don’t already subscribe, you really should. Here’s a few tidbits:

Honestly, I’d love to give him an opt-out after the 4th season. Even if he’s great, let him use it.

Bingo. Anyone who complained about giving CC an opt out a few years ago was nuts. I’d love to have one of these in the middle of every long term deal around the 3rd or 4th season. Let Lee opt out as a 35 year old after a big season, thank you very much. The risk of most deals is in the out years of the contract, and the only time this didn’t work out well was the A-Rod opt out, but that was a result of Yankee ownership being in flux, which no longer applies. Do you think Blue Jays fans are still crying over AJ Burnett’s opt-out? JD Drew gave the Dodgers one and a half big years and has been banged up or unproductive half the time as a Red Sox .

But that suggests that 7/161, considering future inflation in value of win and standard aging, might not be a bad deal.

Assuming Lee starts at 5.5 fWAR next yr, 2011: 26.1M 12: 25.6M 13: 24.9M 14: 23.9M 15: 22.6M 16: 20.9M 17: 18.85M Total: 7yr/162.85 million.

The problem I have with this is that it assumes 7 injury free seasons, and when it comes to pitchers there’s typically no such thing. But it’s impossible to predict such things, so you just have to make an arbitrary adjustment in your own head and move on. The Yanks rarely make any money on their big free agents. The Steinbrenners operate the franchise at break even or a small loss and make their money on the playoffs, YES, Steiner Collectables, Legends Hospitality, etc. This contract is par with the deal they just signed for Derek, the A-Rod pact, the CC and AJ deals. The Yanks are lucky to break even on these deals.

“The chances of Lee being the pitcher he’s been over the last few seasons two years from now are slim” I dont think that’s true.

The issue is that people using standing aging curves even for players who have already proven to be outliers.

Yep. Elite talents like Lee are by their nature unique and exceptional, so comparing their aging curves to a group that includes loads of fringy guys who were barely hanging on in the bigs is kinda silly. For a much more targeted group, check out Lee’s top 10 player comps on his BR page.

BTW-Do you folks know that Cliff’s full name is “Clifton Phifer Lee “. Yep.

Move over Felix, there's a new king in baseball

On the heels of the Red Sox (or as Jon Heyman now calls them, the ‘Best team in Baseball’) signing Carl Crawford, there is a palpable sense of panic among the sports media on behalf of the Yankees. You couldn’t by tell listening to their GM making the media rounds this past week, Brian Cashman is his usual, monotone self. But the Red Sox acquisition of Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford have catapulted them to being at least on par with the Yanks heading into next season, maybe slightly ahead in the eyes of some observers. Some of us in the blogosphere have our doubts, the differential between Victor Martinez and Adrian Gonzalez is significant, but not enormous. Crawford is a clear upgrade to their putrid outfield of last year, but his best asset of speed will largely be wasted playing LF in Fenway. But you’ll get no argument from me they’ve made themselves better, and the Yanks need to keep up with the Joneses.

The running joke around the Winter Meetings is “It’s good to be Cliff Lee”, where every move that happens seems to make his bargaining position stronger and stronger. Brain Cashman has stated that none of these moves will affect his offer to Lee, and they have steadfastly (and I would add wisely) refused to add a 7th year to their offer. However, with the way salaries have inflated this year you have to leave open the possibility that bidding for Lee will get past the point of rationality. Do the Yanks walk away at that point? Can they afford to pass on Lee? What if Lee just decides money isn’t the biggest factor, and he opts to pitch in Texas, close to his native Arkansas home? Joel Sherman provides some clues in his latest column: