Wood, Vazquez to be offered arbitration; Javy to reject

This is certainly unexpected. ESPN New York’s Wallace Matthews reports that the Yankees will offer arbitration to Kerry Wood and Javier Vazquez. While the Vazquez news comes from a source of Jayson Stark’s, the decision on Wood comes right from Cashman: “I’m thinking yes on Wood. We’ll do them a favor. If we put them into an arbitration setting, then we can take them out and make a fair market value offer to them.”

Updated (2:49 p.m. by Ben): Here’s an interesting twist on this deal: Ken Rosenthal reports that Javier Vazquez has agreed to reject the Yanks’ arbitration offer. In doing so, the Yanks will earn a supplemental first-round draft pick. “Teams frequently make such gentlemen’s agreements with Type B free agents,” Rosenthal said. “No harm is done to the signing team, which does not lose a pick for signing a Type B player.” As I predicted yesterday, the Yanks are doing their best to salvage the Javier Vazquez deal.