Via ScottBoras.com, er, I mean, MLB Trade Rumors, we get some commentary from Hall of Fame journalist Peter Gammons. He spoke of Mark Teixeira, the Yankees’ choice of A.J. Burnett over Derek Lowe, All-Star Catcher Jason Varitek, and the AL East. So let’s hear what Gammo has to say.
First we’ll start with Tex. Gammons doesn’t add much to the story we’ve come to know over the past two weeks. He does say that the Red Sox were kind of blindsided, and that Boras kind of hemmed and hawed in order to get things going with the Yankees:
They didn’t know it. They were waiting on the day that he signed . . . they thought that they were going to get him. They tried to close the deal on Monday night [Dec. 21], and Scott [Boras] said, ‘Well, the Teixeiras are flying, and they haven’t quite done this, and they haven’t quite done that,” and he kept putting it off an all along it was to just finish the language with the Yankees.
Shortly after this quote, Gammons goes on to note the “testiness between Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira when they played in Texas together.” He doesn’t comment on what that could mean for the Yankees, but allow me. It won’t matter. They’ll be together in New York, with no-trade clauses, for the next eight years. They’re professionals. They can handle it.
After saying that it might have taken $220 million for the Sox to actually nab Tex, Gammons goes on a little rant about the media, specifically as it exists on the Internet:
What happened this winter is that, as the internet has expanded to become the media power, the flow of information is quickly controlled by agents. A lot of general managers and those of us in the business kid about a couple of sites referred to as ScottBoras.com, and Scott will float things out there and throw it out there and people will report it, you know, ‘The Brewers are jumping in on Derek Lowe.’ They’re not jumping in on Derek Lowe. I mean, please. ‘The Red Sox are really hot for Derek Lowe at $16 [million] . . . ‘ No, they’re not. But Scott floats this stuff out, and he’s able to get people to report it.
Not only does it get reported, but it’s then aggregated at MLB Trade Rumors and other similar sites. So the news does spread rather quickly.
Next topic: Derek Lowe. As Gammons tells it, he could have easily been a Yankee if not for the efforts of A.J. Burnett’s agents:
[Lowe] could have gotten four-times-$15 million from the Yankees, but A.J. Burnett’s agents stopped Scott Boras [who is Lowe’s agent] and beat him to the Yankees. The Yankees wanted Lowe, but A.J. Burnett’s agents did a better job.
At the time, considering the market was still pretty wide-open, I have a hard time believing that Derek Lowe would have taken a four-year, $60 million deal. Then again, since he’s probably not going to get that now, maybe he would have. I don’t know.
On the subject of Jason Varitek, Gammons, like most of us, can’t believe he and Boras declined arbitration:
How Scott Boras looked him in the eye and said, ‘By the way, I turned down $10 million [in arbitration],’ is beyond me.
(snip)
I know the players’ association was strongly advising agents not to take arbitration. They felt that teams were trying to control players for one year at a lesser amount than they’d have to pay down the line. But again, if you’re Jon Garland or Ben Sheets or Orlando Cabrera or Jason Varitek, it cost you a lot of money.
Finally, on the AL East:
I picked the Red Sox second, just because we don’t know about the health of David Ortiz and Mike Lowell, and I think Josh Beckett will be fine. You never know about J.D. Drew’s health. And the Yankees, with the innings that [CC] Sabathia and [Chien-Ming] Wang can give them and all the offense they should have, they clearly have to be the favorites.
There’s plenty to discuss here, so fire away.
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