Who Goes First?
As the Winter Meetings kick into high gear, it has become clear that we have a frozen free agent market. Obviously, everyone is waiting to see where Sabathia and Teixeira land, but the problem is those two players are waiting for the other one to move first.
Sabathia wants to play for a West Coast team, but most of them do not have the money to sign him. One team that does is the Angels, but they want to bring Teixeira back and would only consider Sabathia if they fail at that. Teixeira wants a huge deal and is repped by Scott Boras. That means Teixeira is going to wait for a long time to move and will want to make sure the Yankees are truly not interested before signing a deal. But, the Yankees are not going to sign Teixeira unless they know that Sabathia doesn't want to be a Yankee. Does your head hurt now?
I have no idea how this gets resolved. You have to imagine that sooner or later one of them will get sick of waiting and Sabathia does have a huge offer on the table. I would bet Teixeira waits a long time because Boras never moves quickly unless he has to. What will be interesting to watch is if AJ Burnett doesn't wait for Sabathia to set the market. Reports are he has a 4-year offer from Atlanta with an easily attained fifth year option for around $70 million. I can't imagine he could do better than that, but then again if the Yankees lost out on Sabathia they might blow that away.
If I had to guess, the one area that I think we will see some movement is with the closers. There are a lot of free agent closers and several rumored to be on the trading block. I think those guys will find homes quickly because the leverage is clearly with the clubs and not the players.
Don't forget that Vegas is three hours behind the East Coast, so news may come out late at night.
