Lets See Action

Negotiations Likely To Pick Up Soon

Rick mentioned earlier this week some of the ways that the Johan Santana trade will affect the Indians. In the post Rick mentioned that one way it will affect the Indians is by setting the market for Sabathia. Well, Scott picked up on this in his minutes column today by posting a story Hoynesie wrote for the Plain Dealer.

I normally enjoy Paul Hoynes’ articles on the Indians quite a bit. But I found his article today to be completely reactionary and filled with over the top hyperbole. We all knew Johan Santana was going to get traded soon, and we all know he’s going to get paid a ton of money for a big number of years. This isn’t news. Fans knew it, the Tribe’s front office knew it, and Sabathia and his representatives knew it. This trade doesn’t change anything.

There are plenty of differences between the Santana situation and the Sabathia situation. I touched on this a little while back, but lets face it, there are no guarantees in life. Sabathia’s ceiling will never get higher. He’s almost certainly unlikely to make more money than Santana’s about to get, no matter how well CC pitches this year. However, his ceiling absolutely could go down. He’s pitched a huge number of innings, particularly for his age. Many scouts and analysts have mentioned that they believe the Indians brought Sabathia up to quickly and rushed getting him to the majors at such a young age, and have questioned how this will affect his longevity down the road. His weight will always be an issue. Look, I’m not trying to bash Sabathia….I think he’s a fantastic regular season pitcher and will be a key for the Tribe if they hope to get back into the playoffs this season. I am merely trying to point out some issues that will definitely be on the mind of teams if they get a shot at trying to sign Sabathia. So keep in mind, while Sabathia is a great pitcher coming off a Cy Young season, Johan Santana doesn’t have near the question marks that Sabathia does. So Santana, while setting a comparable market for a pitcher like Sabathia, is still the standard bearer for this market. Sabathia will not get paid equal or greater money than Santana.

Lets also not forget some other differences. Santana has never professed a strong desire to stay in Minnesota. Not in the same way Sabathia has stated his love for Cleveland and his strong desire to stay here. He’s not going to accept a charity contract to stay, but you can believe Sabathia would be willing to compromise a little bit if possible. Furthermore, the Twins have never been a team to keep their key free agents around, especially not in recent years. They have followed much closer in the mold of the Oakland A’s, in always looking to rebuild around youth and prospects rather than pay to keep guys around. The Indians are a bit more of a hybrid. Sure, they’ve let guys like Belle, Thome, and Ramirez sign elsewhere, but they have signed guys like Victor, Hafner, and Westbrook to mid range deals to keep them in town. Sure, Sabathia is more of a Belle, Thome, and Ramirez type talent than a Hafner or Westbrook type talent, but the point is that in the last few years, the Indians have actually shown more of a willingness to negotiate with their key free agents.

The good news is that once Santana signs his new deal, it will almost certainly kick start the Sabathia negotiations. You better believe the main reason Sabathia’s representation haven’t responded to the Indians’ initial offer yet is because they’re waiting to see what Santana gets. They’d be doing their client a disservice not to. But I wouldn’t assume that they will automatically expect to get exactly what Santana is getting. I think they will use the Santana deal to find a comfortable price scale to counter the offer at. From there, the negotiations will pick up and we will quickly find out how serious CC is about sticking around with the Indians.

At the end of the day, no matter what Johan Santana gets from the Mets, the biggest hold up will still be that magical 5th year on the deal. The Indians, according to most reports, are going to try to stubbornly stick to a 4 year offer. Understandably, there’s no way Sabthia can really sign a 4 year deal. It’s way too much of a discount for a pitcher of his caliber. If compromise is to be reached, I suppose some kind of creativity is going to be needed. The DiaTribe has an excellent look at one such creative way to make both sides feel good. It would just be unfortunate if this 5th year really is what kills the deal. I understand the hesitation to signing a pitcher to a long term deal. The stats are out there…it never ends up well for the team that signs the pitchers to the long term deals. But even if CC falls off in year 5, is that reason enough to throw away 4 more years of Sabathia’s skills just to save face on that 5th year? That’s the question Mark Shapiro and Chris Antonetti must ask themselves.

The point of all of this, though, is that the sky is not falling here. This isn’t really news, other than the location of where Santana is headed. Sure, Sabathia’s people are going to look at the Santana deal and use it in their counter offer. But this by no means that the Indians cannot come up with a solution. In fact, I don’t even think it lowers the odds of Sabathia staying in Cleveland unless Santana gets a deal more ridiculous than the A-Rod deal (which isn’t going to happen). We’ve all been planning and thinking about how this deal would affect Sabathia, so you can believe the Indians front office was prepared for this as well. There’s no reason to start jumping off cliffs and saying the end is here. It’s not. There’s still a lot of time left to negotiate with Sabathia and a lot could happen. This thing is FAR from over, no matter what Paul Hoynes is telling you today.

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