Acewipe Yankees get Texierra

[Willy]

The dirty, stinky, cheating Yankees just bolstered their lineup a little more today and signed the greedy Mark Texierra.

So to date, they have spent $82.5M on Burnett, $243.5M on fat boy and 180 on Tex. That is 506 million for those without a calculator handy. That is probably more than the Twins have spent since they became a major league franchise.

And I am sure they will sign whatever other FA that is on the top of the heap still.

I hate the Yankees and I hate the MLB's salary structure.

Hope you eastern snobs are happy. Thank you Steinbrenners for ruining baseball.

P.S. Morneau is a better player and we own the right to him for almost half the money as Tex.

[Scott M]

Wow. Looks like the Steinbrenners have gone long enough without a pennant...Might be cheaper to just buy out the whole league at this point....

[ole]

Other teams have tried to buy a title and failed. I hope the Yanks crash hard this year. Maybe the NYY organization could help bolster the economy with some of that wasted cash!

ole

[Marmot]

Anyone think baseball's salary structure is FUBAR?

*raises hand*

[blue_healer_guy]

Disagree 100 percent. MLB has no laws against how much you spend. The Yankees are gonna pay the Twins for this in revenue sharing. It hasn't worked for them in what? 10 years spending this kind of money. But, can you imagine the excitement of the pinstripe fans right now? It must be a good feeling at the start of every MLB season as a fan you know your club has given you a chance to win. Doesn't always happen like mentioned earlier, but here we are with our free agent signing of Nick Punto. The sad part of it is our owner is the richest in baseball. Go Twins and Yankees.

[Pikester]

I hate the Yankees. I know it is free market and they can spend what they want yadda yadda yadda. I just have no respect for an organization that doesn't grow any of their own talent but a few. The thing the sent me over the edge was the Johnny Damon signing. When he sold out and got a haircut for George I had enough. GO TWINS! GO RED SOX! (I had to pick a team about 10 years ago that could compete with the Yankees on salary! LOl)

[Marmot]

Well MLB is exempt from anti-trust laws....so it really isn't a free market so to speak.

The Yanks have to cough up $26.9 mil for revenue sharing. How much do the Twins receive? Hint: It ain't enough to sign any of these inflated salaries the Yankees are paying.

Everyone likes to comment the Yankees haven't won it all in several years spending the coin. Well, the Twins haven't won it all in 17 years without spending any money either. It is six of one and half a dozen of the other, but I still like the Yankees chances better than the Twins.

The Yanks can DIAF!

[SledNeck]

Red Sox every bit as evil as the Yankees

[mike morris]

Why don't the Yankees just discard their roster and sign the best free agent at every position?

[PoorWordUsage], they apparently have the money, so why not? All of this spending tells me one thing... The Yankees are the most ignorant team in baseball. Have they ever heard of raising their own great players? [PoorWordUsage] no! They wait until someone else grooms a player into an all-star, then throw an offer at them that they cannot refuse. Realistically, they use the rest of the teams in the MLB.

The day that the MLB has a salary cap...

[Willy]

Disagree 100 percent. MLB has no laws against how much you spend. The Yankees are gonna pay the Twins for this in revenue sharing. It hasn't worked for them in what? 10 years spending this kind of money. But, can you imagine the excitement of the pinstripe fans right now? It must be a good feeling at the start of every MLB season as a fan you know your club has given you a chance to win. Doesn't always happen like mentioned earlier, but here we are with our free agent signing of Nick Punto. The sad part of it is our owner is the richest in baseball. Go Twins and Yankees.

You are always making this argument, but take a look at how much revenue and profit the TEAM makes, not the owner.

Yankees with their YES network, (which is actually a monopoly somewhat like cable, they HAVE to carry the channel and the fees for it are outrageous) have more money than any team in the league. They also have a bigger population than any other city in the US, so that helps.

Not saying I don't think Carl should spend some more of his money. The front office of the Twins already wasted the best pitcher we may ever see in a Twins uni by not adding the additional 10-20 mill that it would take to make us a TRUE WS contender.

They need to strike while the iron is hot. They have 2 of the best players in all of baseball, surrounded with a pitching staff that is up and coming and best of all CHEAP, and still they will not add that one or two guys that could and probably would take us to the WS.

That is what makes me sick. When all the stars align, which they are right now in Twins Territory, you have to go for it. Twins have never done that. Even their 2 championships were somewhat of a fluke. They got by with their own players and scrap heap FA signings that just happened to work out for the best. Those signings(Chilli, Morris, Baylor, etc) could have worked out the same way RonDL, Bautista, Ruben Sierra, (insert washup here) have worked out.

They got lucky.

[Jim Uran]

I agree, now is the time to take action. Who knows where Mauer nd Morneau will be in a few years. Year after year it just gets me sick. But they always have a pretty darn good season. We just need a one or two big bats to take us to the championship.

[blue_healer_guy]

willy, I guess what you are saying is how I've felt for along time. We are not that far away which may make us envious of what the Yanks/Sox do every year. Our window is closing soon.

[PierBridge]

I gues I dissagree signing a 20 million dollar a year pitcher puts us in the category of a World Series contender. As a matter a fact the reason we have all these good young players is we don't cave in and waste are money and players on short term fixes or long term contracts.

[SledNeck]

Quote:

As the Mark Teixeira free-agent negotiations go, so might go the market for Joe Mauer, who can become a free agent after the 2010 season.

Teixeira, 28, is seeking a deal in excess of $20 million a season. Mauer, 25, the Twins' two-time batting champion and Gold Glove catcher, next season will be the Twins' third-highest paid player at $10.5 million. He'll make $12.5 million in 2010.

...

People in the know say the Boston Red Sox already are salivating over Mauer, who would be only 27 as a free agent. There have been no talks this winter about extending the St. Paul native's contract, in part because Mauer's value after last season is at a premium, and it's uncertain whether the seismic downturn in the nation's economy will affect baseball salaries a year from now.

[KMR85]

With the money they are spending anything short of winning the WS will be a dissappointment for them. I hope they miss out on the playoffs again because it would be even more laughable than last season.

[blue_healer_guy]

Regardless if you think/yankees think he is 20 million dollars. He is/was the best pitcher in the market. Money talks.

[greebs]

I'm glad the twins aren't a team like the yankees that just try to buy a title all the time; however, I also wish the twins weren't the extreme opposite and never go after the occasional free agent that could help the team out.

The twins method works pretty well for having a team that generates excitement and contends for a division title and/or possibly wildcard. I think to have a world series winner though takes a little bit more. Somewhere in between the yanks and twins spending habit would be about right.

[zamboni]

I agree, now is the time to take action.

Actually the best year to "fix" what was wrong currently with MLB was 1994 when they had a strike. There weren't tons of huge money guys out there, and the Yankees were horrible and weren't spending too much. Bud Selig became commisioner 2 years before that and things have gone downhill ever since. Introduction of a salary cap back then was feasible, but isn't now. In order to introduce a salary cap, the contracts of every player in the majors would have to be torn up, and as you all know, a contract is legal and the players lawsuits would flat out pretty much make Major League Baseball cease to exist. One thing that could be done is if every player in the leagues contracts were all up by the year 2020 for example, the league could introduce a cap after that, and noone could be signed into a deal past that year until the specifics were ironed out. But like the NFL, owners would just introduce a ton of incentives and signing bonuses to get around the cap.

One thing I never liked about MLB is the fact 3-4 teams usually scoop up all the great overseas talent- Red Sox, Dodgers, Mariners, and Yankees. These players should be subject to the draft, and teams as bad as the Royals, Padres, etc could draft and sign them. It really isn't fair to all the other teams when just a handfull get all the talent.