But, Andy shores up our staff big time, with three solid starters in CMW, Moose, and Andy, and then two "who knows..."

meh.

As Cliff pointed out in the last thread:

CMW
Moose
Andy
RJ
Igawa
Rasner/Karstens/Hughes

Not much room for Pavano. He can fit into Rj's spot while he recovers/take the 5th starter spot, but it would not surprise me at all to see him traded in the offseason, or after spring training if he shows himself to be healthy...

To me, just get him out of here and if he gets healthy, well, so be it...

"Pettitte... spent the last three seasons with the Astros, who reached the World Series for the first time in 2004."

I gotta give that little tidbit the ol' Scooby Doo "Ehhhh????"

"I had offered the Astros $14 million and an option," Randy Hendricks said. "But they wouldn't take it. Both teams know that if Andy gets hurt, he won't take the option. The Astros flat turned me down."

So, Astros offered 1 yr/$12 mil, Yanks offered 1 yr, player option $16 mil... and Hendricks went back to the Astros and asked them to split the difference. To me that tells me that Andy did want to return to Houston as long as he didn't get insulted with Gil Meche money, and that they at least in part did use the Yankees to drive up the price. Make sense to anyone else?

At one year this is good news and a "very big smile".

7 I'm surprised that Andy didn't give them another home town discount. Something must have happened there.

What makes you think he won't?

Oh, right....

Is that Andy "using" the Yankees? Sounds more like Andy acting like a client and Hendricks acting like an agent to me.

Had Hendricks approached Andy early on and laid out a strategy wherein he plotted to negotiate with the Yankees without intending to sign there for the purpose of driving up Houston's bid I do believe Andy could properly be excoriated. That didn't happen.

Sounds like Hendricks just did his job effectively and completely. You might as well get angry at Coyotes for eating Jack-rabbits.

I don't expect miracles from Andy at this point, but I think the Yanks are a better team today than they were yesterday.

Has anyone paid any attention to the If Andy goes will Rocket follow discussion. Could there be anything to that?

Pavlov is worth close to nothing now.
IF he does come back...
and IF he pitches well...
there is no reason to ditch him.

We have a lot of older and injury prone pitchers. You can NEVER have too much pitching.

If Pavlov does have a decent year, we can always trade him and get something in return next year. I personally want to see this guy come back and earn some of his paycheck.

I'm glad Andy's coming back, although I was hoping the second year option would at least be mutual.

I was hoping we'd get Matsuzaka. Or that we'd be able to pry one of the Marlins' young arms away from them. (Not necessarily Willis.)

I will acknowledge that he pitched some pretty special games for the Yanks, especially in 2000 Post-season.

Well, maybe he'll be better now that he's had back surgery.

And there's Phil Hughes to look forward to...

I guess Igawa could be sent to the pen--but that's a lot of bread to spend on a long reliever. Or maybe they just won't negotiate with him now that the rotation is more or less full, and just send him back to Japan?

Otherwise, someone has to go, and the only reasonable person would be Pavano. But who is going to take him? And how much salary do the Yanks eat?

"Andy Pettitte followed his heart back home to Houston, making a "gut-wrenching'' decision Thursday to leave the New York Yankees and accept a $31.5 million, three-year contract with the Houston Astros. " … "Pettitte took $7.5 million less to sign with the Astros -- the Yankees' last offer was for $39 million over three years. But the Astros play near Pettitte's hometown of Deer Park, an important factor for the pitcher's wife and children."

Here's a link: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=1683732

Lupica is well … he's Lupica. If he told me the sun rose in the east I'd check. I tried the others in the Banter link and Olson was the only one that came up. Hers doesn't seem to resolve the issue.

Clearly we remember this differently. As I look back at your 16 above I'm not sure that it couldn't have happened that way yet it doesn't seem to fit with my recollection or with what I've found. The words "Yankees last offer" lead me to believe they made more than one which may preclude a "foot out the door" scenario.

In any event I think this is a good move considering the options and a host of worse moves that occupied their decision horizon.

Andy's heading out the door and they say (as a CYA maneuver, or out of oh-crap-we-dropped-the-ballism) "Hey you, want a job for X?" (where X is insulting or otherwise not enough), Andy says thanks but no thanks, then they say (out of wanting to be able to say they really tried, or perhaps out of clueless hope), "Well, how about Y" (where Y is reasonable but too late), then "How about our final offer, Z"?

At the link Alex thinks he would have stayed if they had tried to keep him, and my guess is that's right. Anyway, we got Brown instead.

As I say it seems to be down to a matter of opinion now but I would ask only: why, if he was treated so shabbily by the Yankees on the way out, would he return? Maybe the player option explains it but it seems in this market he could have done nearly as well elsewhere.

Anyway I'm glad he's back. Haven't heard from you in a while either, glad you're back. Have you found that pesky old "unified field theory" yet?

I gave up on the unified field theory and am kinda working on observing gamma ray bursts and exotic astronomical phenomena - but mostly being a dad -
http://rosenschale.blogspot.com/2006/11/worlds-cutest-felon.html
- and paying the mortgage.

Ah yes "the mortgage" now that is a foreign country and they definitely do things differently there.

http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/

Keep refreshing for new ones.

Priceless.

Pettitte made 35 starts for the Astros last year, amassing 214 1/3 innings. He made 33 starts in 2005. It was Pettitte's first year with the Astros that the pitcher encountered injuries, making 15 starts.

Year Starts

1995 26
1996 34
1997 35
1998 32
1999 31
2000 32
2001 31
2002 22
2003 33
2004 15
2005 33
2006 35

Acknowledging that Pettitte will be 35 years old next June, I'd say that durability is a plus factor in predicting his value for the team next season.

Also, I echo a few persons comments regarding Pettitte in that I am glad to see him pitch for the Yanks again. He was part of the core.

charlie h.
buffalo, ny

Scott Proctor is a class act: http://tinyurl.com/sfzbg

Once again, in Cashman I trust.

http://retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B07140BOS2005.htm

Awesome...

I think that's what happened to Pavano...

Yes, he has improved. Had a career year with 27 hrs, although just a .313 OBP and a .776 OPS

Just got 4 years @ 6$m per. Can I assume even using his career year with an OPS of .776 that he is around league average, with better HRs?

Are these desperation dollars? Although we are now paying a league average SP a (desperate) 16$m.

If FA prices come back to earth over the next few years, a lot of teams are gonna be paying a fortune for average players.

Thank God for Man-of-Cash. I'm proud of you baby.