Quote:Contreras, Yankees agree to four-year deal

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Associated Press

NEW YORK -- The New York Yankees' need to cut payroll ends at the U.S. border.
For the second time in less than a week, baseball's biggest spender broke its budget for a big international acquisition, reaching a preliminary agreement Tuesday on a $32 million, four-year contract with Cuban defector Jose Contreras.

Last week, the Yankees agreed to a $21 million, three-year deal with outfielder Hideki Matsui, Japan's biggest slugger. The agreement with Contreras means the Yankees will have eight starting pitchers on the roster as soon as their deal to re-sign Roger Clemens is completed.

"We couldn't, the right word is we wouldn't, sacrifice the opportunity to sign these talents on the basis of reducing payroll first,'' Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said.

New York had been cutting payroll, letting go of relievers Mike Stanton and Ramiro Mendoza, re-signing third baseman Robin Ventura at a pay cut and negotiating with Clemens to take far less than the $15.45 million he averaged under his last deal. Cashman has tried to trade outfielders Rondell White and Raul Mondesi, and pitcher Sterling Hitchcock.

"The mindset is still for me to reduce payroll,'' Cashman said. "Obviously, when the opportunities to sign Hideki Matsui or Jose Contreras presented themselves, it was time for us to make decisions, to move now and continue to work on cutting the payroll down the line.''

Contreras, a right-hander who says he is 31, got the largest deal ever for a Cuban defector, topping the $14.5 million, four-year deal Cleveland gave pitcher Danys Baez three years ago. Contreras throws in the mid-90s, and the Yankees envision him as part of their rotation.
And what a crowded rotation it is.

Quote:Steinbrenner leaves Yankees
with little room for error

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By Peter Gammons
Special to ESPN.com


Jan. 4

OK, so the Yankees payroll has crossed the $165 million mountain, somewhere between 50 and 55 percent higher than any other team. OK, it certainly is their right to spend and spend and spend and accumulate the entire home Raul Mondesi and Sterling Hitchcock also live in. OK, their luxury tax money goes to some of the have-not teams. OK, they have between $75 million and $80 million invested in a pitching staff whose rotation's theme song is "Eight Days a Week." That's in contrast to the Kansas City Royals, whose highest paid pitcher is Jason Grimsley at $2 million per season, no one else in seven figures and not one starter on their current roster who won five (yes, five) games last season.

And, oh yes, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner had every reason to be set off by Red Sox team president and CEO Larry Lucchino's ill-advised "Evil Empire" comments, although when George was done skewing Lucchino, he did his Dave Winfield, "you-didn't-hear-from-me routine" with his trusted New York media buddies in order to undermine Red Sox GM Theo Epstein by planting a story that Epstein broke a chair after Jose Contreras signed with the Yankees. That manager Georgina Lacayo of the Campo Real Hotel backed Epstein's story that it was a fabrication that he broke a chair never kept Steinbrenner from the Winfield routine, and he actually got someone to write that the action raised questions about Epstein's maturity.

George Steinbrenner raising questions about someone's maturity because of a temper tantrum? That would be like Hillary Clinton criticizing someone as a publicity seeker.

Then came the flags raised above the heads of two of his most distinguished employees, manager Joe Torre and shortstop Derek Jeter. Just watch Jeter take ground balls and do his work or run the bases or always throw to the right base.

OK. OK. OK. They Yankees have a great team. They are going to win. George has bought the championship and they'd better Damn well win. He assumes it, and so does everyone in New York.

All of which brings it down to this: what happens if their pitchers pitch in October as they did last October, when the Angels hit the New York pitching so brutally that if you took Anaheim's series OPS, it meant that every batter they sent up in that series was turned into the statistical equivalent of Jason Giambi by the Yankees pitchers? Every win is something that will be assumed, expected.

If they don't win? It will start with Torre and Jeter.

This Yankee team should be very good, but we don't know how private people like Jeter and Bernie Williams will take to the 50 member media entourage that will be following Hideki Matsui. We don't know that Mariano Rivera, Steve Karsay(coming off back surgery) and Chris Hammond are what Rivera/Mike Stanton/Ramiro Mendoza were two years ago. We don't know what kind of cross-culturalization support Contreras will have in what will be a very difficult lifestyle change.

As good as they've been, the Yankees could easily have been knocked out in the first round of the postseason three straight years. In fact, in the first round over the last three years the Yanks are 7-7 against the A's (2000 and 2001) and Angels (2002).

Oakland could win it all this fall with their Big Three, or if Boston ever got in, they could as well if Pedro Martinez and Derek Lowe are at full throttle ... and that's without thinking about Bartolo Colon, whom Expos GM Omar Minaya says "would make the Red Sox better than the Yankees on paper right now" because Boston arguably would have three of the AL East's four best starters, with Toronto's Roy Halladay being the fourth.

If Torre and Yankees GM Brian Cashman and senior vice president of baseball operations Mark Newman are allowed to do their work, the Yankees will be fine; they won four world championships on talent, character, logic and good management, not a madcap spending pattern that puts them 50 percent above the next highest spender. But now this is the '80s George, sending representatives to Nicaragua and suggesting their jobs were on the line if they didn't bring back Contreras, firing scouts and office staff to save money, cutting back on health benefits ... then throwing around $166 million (they're over $100 million in salary commitments in 2004 and 2005) so someone will write that he's a great man because he wants to win at any cost, in this case for the little people.

What Steinbrenner has bought is no room for error. If the Yankees win, fine. George Steinbrenner will have bought New York a championship. That was expected and demanded.

If the Yankees don't win, he will fire a lot more little people and plant stories about Torre and Jeter and Cashman and Mike Mussina. But in the end, if the Yankees don't win, it will be Steinbrenner who will be the laughingstock of the baseball world. What a shame. What a way to live. Or win.

Steinbrenner just doesn't get it
What Steinbrenner doesn't understand is who and what beat his Yankees last October, the world champion Angels. Had he watched, he would have seen:


Why Cashman always wanted Darin Erstad, who led the Angels by sheer determination, enabling Angels manager Mike Scioscia to sell the notion of unselfishness because Erstad cares only about winning and proved it with his rocket homer off Giants reliever Tim Worrell in the eighth inning of World Series Game 6 (right around the time he broke his hand) that he can rise to any occasion. There is no statistic or dollar figure that applies to Erstad.


David Eckstein proved that grit, intelligence, instincts and energy are more important than name.


John Lackey and Francisco Rodriguez proved that sometimes you have to provide room for the season to evolve, and that talent will often beat experience.


The pure, unexpected joy of winning is more fun and more condusive to winning than the weight of unlimited expectation.


Players do make huge improvements from year to year, as evidenced by Scott Spiezio and Adam Kennedy.


That scouting and development matter, in Anaheim's case, the foundation laid by Bill Bavasi and Bob Fontaine, Jr.


That sometimes ownership is wise to allow baseball folks to run the baseball operation, and ownership run the theme parks and networks.

Few teams ever enjoyed winning more than the 2002 Angels. Even if the Yankees sweep the 2003 World Series in four games, they or their fans will never experience what the Angels experienced.

Quote:Few teams ever enjoyed winning more than the 2002 Angels. Even if the Yankees sweep the 2003 World Series in four games, they or their fans will never experience what the Angels experienced.

Quote:Obvioulsy no one gave a shit about the Angels except themselves and Yankee haters. I didn't watch an inning of this World Series and from the ratings neither did anyone else

Quote:Didn't we experience that in 1996 when we came back from 2-0 and beat the braves in 6 or in 2000 when we kicked the Mets ass or the year they won 125 games.

Quote:My point is that Gammons has always hated the Yankees and always hated Steinbrenner.