I actually think this is fair.

Unless you're going to exclude everyone who took steroids -- and it's too late for that -- then I think the whole point for any candidate is to assess their worthiness based on several factors.

If you think Bagwell took steroids, I don't even think that should necessarily exclude him from the Hall of Fame.

If you think he would have been a .260 hitter with 90 HRs without steroids, then, yeah, you should exclude him from the Hall of Fame.


My gripe, of course, is that the same guy voted for cokehead Tim Raines.

I want to play poker with Darek Braunecker.

" 'A.J. just had a down year,' Braunecker said. 'You know, it happens, and I'll bet you anything that he's going to have a really good year this year. He's focused. He's not happy, of course he's not. He's disappointed. But that's part of the game and part of life, ups and downs. I promise you, he's going to come back with a vengeance.' "

I'll bet $100 million.

Mike Lupica displays integrity. I'm shocked.

Two days later, after Lee signs with the Phillies: "The Yankees say they weren't desperate to get Lee. Yeah, they were, or they wouldn't have offered too much money and too many years. But that's what they do, who they are. I still believe it would have been a bad contract for them and is a bad contract for Philadelphia."

Cheating the Constitution is worse than cheating a baseball homerun record.

My intuition tells me Filip Bondy doesn't know what he's talking about.

"But then every once in a while - not too often, really, but at least twice in recent memory - something intuitively feels amiss and the chase becomes garish, excessive and short-sighted. It felt that way with Jason Giambi, about to turn 30, back in 2001, when the Yanks signed him to a seven-year, $120 million deal to replace Tino Martinez, for no great reason."

The only reason was because Giambi was a great offensive player.

In his first year with the Yankees, Giambi drove in 120 and scored 120.

.314, 41 HRs, 109 walks.

Made Mark Teixeira look like Andy Phillips.

It was the third season in a row Giambi finished top five in the MVP voting.

So unless Bondy intuitively knew Giambi was on steroids -- which might not have been too difficult to conclude, come to think of it -- then Bondy had no reason at the time to claim the Giambi deal was short-sighted.


"It felt that way again when the Yanks offered Alex Rodriguez, at 32, a 10-year deal worth $275 million. The idea of being stuck with designated hitter A-Rod, untradeable at 41, is not a happy glimpse into the future."

ARod is a great baseball player.

Don't trade him.


It's unclear to me when and how the conventional wisdom regarding ARod's contract tilted to the negative without any thoughtful debate.


"If he succeeds, however, he would be getting a top pitcher in his prime. Greinke is 27, and has two years left on a reasonable contract at $13.5 million per season. The Yanks would be able to renegotiate and extend it easily enough."

Right ... and that contract extension would be garish and excessive.


"That isn't the issue here, though. Desperation is. Forget the Rays for a moment. Cashman right now understands the Red Sox lineup is every bit as impressive as his own. Bullpens are unpredictable. There is really no way to plan them. The one thing the GM can do, must do, is shore up his starting rotation."

The Red Sox lineup is not every bit as impressive as the Yankee lineup.

The Red Sox lost Beltre and Martinez, right? Bondy is aware of this?


Assuming Ellsbury plays CF instead of Cameron, the Red Sox probably have an advantage in LF and CF and that's it.


Evoking the debates about Willie, Mickey, and the Duke, I'll call it a tie between Jarrod Saltalamachhia and Francisco Cervelli.

This is pretty much how I feel about it.

I just think Lee is overrated and his value is buoyed by some stellar playoff performances:

"The World Series that you might win with Cliff Lee—I am not sold on the idea that 24 current Yankees plus Cliff Lee equals a World Series, but even if you win one—is like cake. It feels good at first, but then over the next five or six years, you have a perhaps rapidly declining asset who used to throw 91 with great location but now throws 89 with great location and misses 10 starts a year because his spine is shaped like the letter Q. I could be wrong about that, and in the infinite parallel universes that exist, there will be many in which Cliff Lee pitched terrifically for the length of the contract, but there will be many more where he will not, because that is the way of things.

This morning, you will no doubt read many columnists who say things like, 'Now that the Red Sox have signed Carl Crawford, the Yankees must sign Cliff Lee!' I don’t quite understand this reasoning, much as I don’t understand the way that Crawford was supposed to be Plan B to Lee as Plan A. Saying that Crawford is an alternative to Lee is like saying you’re baking cookies and mustard is an alternative to sugar. It’s like saying that the alternative to your right leg is the Eiffel Tower. These are completely different players. If you need a left fielder, you pursue a Crawford. If you need a pitcher, you pursue Lee. Because you didn’t get Lee doesn’t mean that you now need a left fielder, and if you didn’t get Crawford it doesn’t mean you now need a pitcher. The needs stay the same, but the solution set changes."

Carl Crawford:

"As for Crawford, I hate to disillusion anyone, but he is just not a huge run producer for the simple reason that he doesn’t get on base that much. Clarifying: he’s an asset. Discounting 2008, when he was hurt, from 2006 to 2010, Crawford averaged .308/.354/.474 and averaged 54 stolen bases (and 11 caught stealing) a year, all while playing excellent defense. You can’t be dismissive of that, although you have to be aware that it’s not unusual for left fielders to have on-base and slugging percentages right in that zone. It’s a slugger’s position, and 2010 was the first time that Crawford was, on a per-game basis, a top-five producer at the position.

Now that Crawford is with the Red Sox, you can, just maybe, start subtracting from your expectations. Crawford is a better hitter on turf than grass. His .291/.332/.425 rates on natural surfaces aren’t spectacular for the position. His career .275/.301/.406 at Fenway is abysmal. Stolen bases only add so much when you don’t hit overall. Add in that Crawford is going to be hanging around from age 29 to age 36 and the Red Sox could really regret this deal, and that is even if Crawford doesn’t have some kind of catastrophic leg injury. All he has to do is lose a few leg hits a year and there goes the batting average that is at the heart of his game.

It is understandable that the Sox wanted to take this risk, because left field killed them last year. The position of Teddy Ballgame, Yaz, and Rice gave them just .230/.303/.396. Whatever Crawford does for them, it will be better than that. Put him together with Adrian Gonzalez and does he boost them up to 95-win territory this season, all else being equal? Yeah, maybe he does. But by himself is the move something that should panic the Yankees? No, not at all."

Mike Lupica is an Unfrozen Caveman Sportswriter who is Confused by Free Agency.

"Cliff Lee may turn out to be the most rare of free-agent starting pitchers, which means that he may be worth as much at the end of his contract as he is at the beginning of it."

All free agents, not just pitchers.

Freakin' Carl Crawford just signed a contract worth $20 million per year. He wasn't worth that much money when he was 27 years old. He's going to be 37 years old when this contract expires.


"So Lee might still be worth $25 million a year to the Yankees when he is 37 – the age Derek Jeter turns next year – or 38 or 39. So Lee might turn out to be the exception rather than the rule with insane contracts, money and length, for starters that often turn out to be a complete waste at the back end."

Well, you'll have to put some metrics around that. I think the Yankees would be happy with 110 wins overall, a .600 playoff winning percentage, and two Championships.

Is that fair?

When Lee is 38 or 39, assuming Lee is still alive and healthy and still playing for the Yankees, by then he'd probably a .500 pitcher. For argument's sake, let's say 12-12 and a #5 starter.

But how could I possibly know?

If Lupica expects 160 wins over 7 seasons, then that's not realistic.


For what it's worth, I think Lee is overrated. I also think the Yankees should offer him a seven-year deal and hope for the best. That's the Talent Pyramid.


"But here's the key thing: The Yankees have no idea if Lee will hold up or not. Don't know, don't care. They just care about next season."

No, you are wrong.

The Yankees care very much about Lee's longevity and the Yankees care very much about the future of their team beyond next season.


"The Yankees don't care how much they have to spend on Lee because the Red Sox now have Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford locked up."

No, you are wrong.

Mike Lupica is stating that the Yankees are going hard after Cliff Lee --
The 7-year, $185 million offer that everyone knew was coming for the past two years -- because the Red Sox singed Gonzalez and Crawford.


"When the Yankees absolutely have to have somebody, can't live without him, they spend whatever they need to."

I guess so.

They sign a lot of free agents. They also don't sign a lot of free agents.

I'm sure Lupica thought the Yankees needed Joe Mauer for sure.


"They were supposed to be done a couple of years ago after spending $240 million on CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, and then they found another $180 million on a shelf in a closet for Mark Teixeira."

The Yankees were supposed to be done spending on free agents.


"But, man oh man, the Yankees sure did have to hold the line on Jeter. Various Yankee executives and accountants nearly tore rotator cuffs patting themselves on the back for saving and all Steinbrenner heirs everywhere some money on the captain of the team."

Snarky.


"We hear that the Yankees are terrified, that's what they are, about having too much money tied up with aging ballplayers. Except now they are prepared to commit a ton of money to Cliff Lee when he is ... an aging ballplayer!"

"We hear."

Who hears this?

Does Lupica hear this?

I don't hear this.


"When they got Teixeira and Burnett and Sabathia, it was supposed to be the beginning of another Yankee dynasty, even if it hasn't worked out that way."

This has to be one of the weirdest analyses, even by Lupica standards.

How can Lupica know in December 2010 if this will be the start of another Yankee dynasty?

Lupica has determined the status of a potential dynasty after just two seasons.

Think about that.

These players won a Championship their first year in pinstripes. In their second season, they made it to the ALCS.

So if they continue a 50% Championship rate for the remainder of their contracts, will that be a dynasty?


"One of these days the owners of the Yankees should go back and look at where the Yankee payroll was in comparison to the rest of the sport when the team was winning four World Series in five years."

What they will find is that their good players were young and inexperienced and not yet eligible for free agency.

Then, these players became eligible for free agency, and the Yankees paid them a lot of money.

So the payroll went way up while the talent didn't magically increase proportionally.

Because that's how free agency works.

Almost every young all star -- Mattingly, Jeter, Soriano, Rivera -- is a bargain until the exact moment they become a free agent (or sign a free-agent-equivalent contract extension).

They sign long-term contracts when they are young. These contracts are burdensome when they're old.

This is how it works.

The alternative is to be a bad team with AAA players.

Mike Lupica is a man who is so stupid, he doesn't even realize who won.

Golly, I hope the Yankees don't regret their negotiating tactics during the Jeter talks. It would be costly if Jeter signed with another team.

Oh, wait.

Jeter signed with the Yankees:

"So here we are, close to what the Yankees wanted to pay. The Yankees acting as if they had some moral high ground on this. As if they were making some kind of big, loud statement. About the quiet captain of the team who helped win them five World Series, who was as valuable a player as they had between 1996 and 2000 when they were as great as any Yankee team ever has been.

You can't be a better Yankee than Jeter has been. It is the Yankees who will someday wish they had done things better on this."

I don't think the Yankees acted as if they had some moral high ground. I don't think the Yankees were acting as if they were making some kind of big, loud statement. The Yankees just wanted to bring Jeter's asking price down, and that's what they did.


This is nothing new. A successful negotiation with a free agent. What is the regretful consequence that Mike Lupica is referring to? Another nasty article by Mike Lupica?

What's the rush?

"The fun with Derek Jeter and the Yankees really never stops and won't stop until he and the Yankees reach an agreement, and we can only pray that it's sooner rather than late."

I know you need stuff to talk about in the offseason, but this is not a big deal.

The Yankees traded for ARod in February. Then, a few years later, the Yankees signed him as a free agent in mid-December.

The Yankees waited until January to sign Bernie Williams.

CC Sabathia signed on December 20th.

Mark Teixeira signed on January 6th.


"Just so you know: The Yankees don't just want to cut Jeter's salary because he's getting older, or because he had his worst year. Or because his range has diminished - this at a time when you can actually see A-Rod calcifying in front of your eyes at third base - or because they don't want to be saddled with another huge contract for an aging champion.

They want to be able to sign Cliff Lee for an insane amount of money and then stand in front of their fans and say, Look, the payroll went down!"

Just so you know, it snows in December.

Thanks for the cogent analysis.

Oh, and if they're going to sign Cliff Lee, when?

I pray it's sooner rather than late.


"- We keep hearing that the Yankees can't bid against themselves on Jeter. No, because that would be wrong, wrong, wrong. Looking back over the past 10 years, we see that the Yankees never ever bid against themselves."

You keep hearing that from the straw man in your head.

Jeter will be overpaid. Everyone knows this.


"Hank, you made one guy rich:

A-Rod.

A-Rod opted out of his contract during Game 4 or the 2007 World Series and everybody from the groundskeepers on up at Yankee Stadium, old and new, knows that Cashman was ready to let him walk.

But not you.

Oh, no.

You gave him a contract that takes him to the age of 42 and could pay him up to $200 million, which means twice what A-Rod was going to make anywhere else."

Well, I think it's up to $275 million, and even that is not twice what ARod was going to make anywhere else. He had just hit 50 and driven in 150, for cryin' out loud.

But remember what you just said about Cashman was ready to let him walk? That's right. That's what they always say before they sign you.

This is not an unusual negotiating tactic, even for the Yankees. It's what they always do. When they overpay Jeter, Lupica will complain that they spent too much money on an old player.