Yankees, Mets in race for the Ace

[ngdot]

Clicky

Make that shit happen Cashman.

[apawllo]

dusty has been talking about bringing him to cincy ever since he signed on with the reds. i don't see it happening though.

[ngdot]

I sincerely doubt Prior has any desire to be reunited with Baker.

[apawllo]

i don't really want him to come to cincy. he's had one good season and he's been injured for the rest of his career. don't get me wrong - there's no doubt he has talent, but in a small market i wouldn't spend more than a couple million on him. too much of a risk. i heard houston just made an offer and apparently 10 other teams have expressed interest so there's a strong likelihood that his price tag is going to rise a bit.

[ngdot]

I posted this on a different forum, but it's applicable here as well.

Lets look at some options here:

Lets say team "A" signs Johan to a 7/125 deal with incentives. Johan is going on 29, so lets look down the road in years 5 6 and 7 - when Santana is no longer in his physical prime making over 17 million.

Team "B" inks Prior to a 3 year deal worth 15 million which takes him up to his 30th birthday. The deal includes incentives all the way up to a total value of 25.

For the sake of argument, we'll say Prior achieves all of them, while Santana doesn't achieve any.

7/125
3/25

Johan has a career ERA+ of 141, Prior 123. However, last season was the worst season Santana had since he was 22 years old. Some may call it an aberration - others call it wear. Lets say Santana and Prior both match their career high for ERA+ again, 182+ and 178+

Is it worth the risk of signing Johan longterm? Or is it worth the risk of taking a flier on Prior?

[apawllo]

All that and any teams who want Santana are going to have to give up a few top prospects since Santana is still under contract in Minnesota. Prior, on the other hand, is a free agent. Assuming a team has the money to spend/ability to give up prospects on Santana (which leaves only a few teams) and a strong need for starting pitchers (which leaves only the Yankees) I would think that they would try to pick him up over Prior.

In the Yankees unique case though, after what's happened with Andy Pettitte just recently, Wang is the only completely reliable pitcher they have. Picking up both Prior and Santana is definitely not out of the question....actually it's almost essential at this point if they want to compete with the AL elite next year, IMO. Santana is beginning to like a long shot for anyone but the Yanks have to land Prior for sure.