I can’t go to bed without at least re-visiting this one more time. I can’t find any exact numbers for what the Rangers offered Cliff Lee following the 2010 season. The Best I can do is find that late in the bidding, the Yankees reportedly offered him $23 million a year for five years. I know we beat that, but Lee took a similar deal in a place he felt he had a better chance to get back to the dance. Of course we know how that turned out. (sorry my new Philly readers)
Here’s the deal we had on the table:
MLB.com reported the Rangers offered six years and $138 million plus a seventh-year option. Yahoo! Sports reported that option could have pushed the value of the contract to $161 million.
That works out to about $23 million a year. No idea of the details of the seventh year. But Lee would have been 39 with OUR deal. Everybody suddenly has heartburn over his age on the Philly deal. Doesn’t compute.
Here’s where Lee is in his Philadelphia contract (and feel free to comment if I am way off the mark here):
2012: $21.5 million
2013: $25 million
2014: $25 million
2015: $25 million
2016: $12.5 million buyout or $27.5 million option (the option vests at 200 innings pitched in 2015 or 400 innings pitched in 2014 and 2015 combined)
So we’re talking about $6 mil. My thinking is, instead of asking the Phillies to pickup a large portion of that, why not just ask for $6-10 million. The extra four – for additional wear and tear.
Now I know we took that money and a year later and gave much of that to Yu Darvish but we didn’t anticipate the learning curve being what it is for Darvish. We get lee who can HELP Darvish, Holland and Harrison. For longer than just the rental time he spent with us in 2010. It’s a win-win.
When Nolan said we were slightly over budget to start the year, I have to believe that there is a budget part two. For the trade deadline. It’s time to tap into it. Let’s do this.
No Pepper 