Possibly, in hopes of forcing the met ownership to give the same deal to Dickey or lose him, which is what the Yankees would love to seehappen. Who in their right mind would pay Andy Pettitte that kind of money when he's worth half on the open market.

Conspiracy lol, but I don't think it is so. Yankees always overpay less valuable players because they can. It's stupid, but they do this with all their players. Look at their bench, they're all overpaid veterans.

I read an article a while back about what makes the Yankees so good. And it is not just the buying of the best players. It's also the buying of the bench players. Ibanez produced so well in a lesser role for the team. Their financial flexibility allows them to do this.

In Mets' situation, if we sign Hairston to what he's worth this offseason, this would be a similar thing. We pay a bit more than face value for a lesser role, it fleshes out the team.

You won't see this much longer. The Yankmee$ will be living under the threshold by 2014! The Stienbrenners have mandated it. It will show how poor a GM cashman is. He will no longer be able to buy his way out of his bad contracts by purchasing even more overpaid players.

Because 38 year-old Hiroki Kuroda got $15 million and supposedly turned down $17-18 million from the Padres.

Probably because he is part of the core 4 from all those 90s championships and they don't want to insult him with a lower salary than last year - plus their franchise is a huge money making machine . Unfortunately something this team will never have to worry about .

There's definitely additional value in his indirect contributions (mentoring, overall good clubhouse guy). Still agree that it's too much tho

They like to play their players well for past achievements.

He's probably the supplier.

The worst one was actually $18M to Clemens for 1/2 a season (probably still a record for Million$ per start), I think he pitched about .500 if I remember correctly.

Perez was a terrible contract, but the Mets usually have more problems with high paid position players (like Bay), while the Yankees for some reason have a lot more problems with high paid starters (Burnett, Pavano, Brown, Vasquez, even Randy Johnson only lasted one season with them).

It's called loyalty to players who have done well for the team and promote good will with the fans. I'm glad we did that with Wright. Dickey is next.

"Because 38 year-old Hiroki Kuroda got $15 million and supposedly turned down $17-18 million from the Padres."

The same type of loyalty that Wright and Dickey have shown by expressing their desires to stay with the Mets. Now its up to the Wilpons and Alderson to show that type of loyalty to R.A.

Hiroki Kuroda was never part of their core.

I never said Perez was a good signing in fact even when Perez was winning it always annoyed me how often Rick Peterson had to visit the mound to talk him through so many innings,
actually I liked John Maine a lot more than Perez (it's too bad Maine got injured).

Pettitte is 40, way past his prime and once left the Yankees for more money with Houston. Andy's loyalty is to the money he can extort from the Yankees. Mariano, is a decent guy, took a cut. Mariano is a true star, great person and loyal Yankee. Pettitte is a phony bologna.

And the Yankee attendance was down almost 20% last year They couldn't even sell out for the playoffs. The contract makes no sense.