C.C. Sabathia's wish list for 2008 is first, for the Cleveland Indians to win the World Series, and second, for the New York Yankees to miss the playoffs.
Ring.
Then bling.
It took me three times just to figure out what Gammons meant, since, ostensibly, the Yankees' missing out on the playoffs has nothing to do with Sabathia's "bling". Incidentally, I just consulted both dictionary.com and the Urban Dictionary to make sure, and the consensus is that "bling" refers to excessively gaudy jewelry often worn by rappers and African Americans.
As I see it, two possibilites exist:
a) Gammons actually meant to say "Cha-ching", which also rhymes with "ring" and correlates more directly with the Yankees, since (according to Gammons) the Yankees will pursue Sabathia and give him lots of money if they miss the playoffs.
b) Gammons is terribly racist, and used the word "bling" to indicate that Sabathia, as an African-American, is most definitely going to use his upcoming extreme wealth to purchase excessively gaudy jewelry.
Given how chummy Gammons is with all the players, I am forced to go with the former possibility, as fun as the latter would be. That said, it's still a weak argument, even once you get past the poor word choice and missing logical leaps, because the Yankees have always gone after the most expensive free agents on the market, regardless of their level of success the previous year. In fact, because they've made the playoffs every year since '96, and that was also around the time that their ridiculous spending took off, we really have no idea how the Yankees would react if they missed the playoffs entirely. For all we know, they would use the failure as an opportunity to reflect on their wild spending ways, and conclude that perhaps it's best not to overpay dearly for free agents. (Probably not.) Regardless, does anybody really buy that the Yankees are more likely to spend the money to sign Sabathia in the unlikely scenario that they miss the playoffs?
One can argue that the landscape never was the same after the San Francisco Giants gave Barry Zito $126 million last winter, because Zito isn't Johan Santana. Perhaps no one is Johan Santana. He makes the New York Mets the clear favorites to win the National League pennant in 2008, his picture will be up on Hank Steinbrenner's wall next to the picture of Brian Cashman and he is the reason the Indians have no chance of re-signing Sabathia unless someone finds oil in Lake Erie.
What? What landscape? If Zito isn't Johan Santana, then what does Zito have to do with anything? And if "perhaps no one is Johan Santana" (how poetic of you, Peter!) then why is Santana the reason the Indians can't re-sign Sabathia? If anything, Zito, not Santana, is the reason that the Indians can't re-sign Sabathia.
Later:
The Oakland A's received more by trading Dan Haren to the Arizona Diamondbacks than the Twins got for Santana. If the Baltimore Orioles decide to trade Erik Bedard, they will get more for him, who is a week older than Santana and never has thrown 200 innings in a season.
Sigh...
Now, when the Nippon Ham Fighters decide to post Yu Darvish -- the half-Iranian, half-Japanese phenom -- can they expect to get a $100 million posting fee in addition to whatever Darvish can extract from the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox or Los Angeles Dodgers? Probably. No prospects will be involved, and those players carry significant value.
What does he mean by "those players"? "Those Japanese League players"? "Those half-Iranian, half-Japanese phenoms"? "Those players whose first name is 'Yu'"? Kidding aside, assuming he's referring to Japanese League players, why are they more valuable than American free agents? You don't have to give up prospects to sign them, either.
By the way, we're now like eight paragraphs in, and I have absolutely no idea what his point is.
Sabathia might not be Santana in terms of his longterm viability, but we are looking at $20 million per season if the Yankees don't make the playoffs this season and the Mets play the Red Sox in the World Series. No wonder the Indians haven't traded Cliff Lee or Jeremy Sowers, and will keep developing Adam Miller as a starting pitcher.
Again, I have to assume what Gammons means, because despite his inordinately long blog posts, he never explains his (usually flawed) reasoning. I will assume here that "Sabathia might not be Santana in terms of his longterm viability" because Sabathia does not have the best, um, build, and he might be more prone to breaking down (see: Colon, Bartolo). In fact, I don't even know why Gammons says this at all, since he said earlier that "No one is Johan Santana". Then Gammons clarifies his earlier stupid argument that the Yankees would only throw a ton of money at Sabathia if they miss the playoffs, even though recent history would suggest that their lavish spending has nothing to do with missing the playoffs.
I would say I give up, but I will continue pursuing my dream of convincing everybody in Internetville that Peter Gammons, despite his reputation, is horrible at his job.
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