Yanks CC to Have Knee Surgery

Today it was determined that CC Sabathia will require micro-fracture surgery, thus ending his season and threatening the continuation of his career. I sincerely wish CC the best in his recovery and future.  However; this has got to be a lesson to the Yankees.  Stop paying over 30 players to opt back in after they've opted out.  Heck, this year's free agent signing should be a lesson about hiring any over 30 FA's.


UPDATE:  Cashman says it is not micro-fracture but "clean up" surgery, though he is still out for the year.   I guess we'll see.

The killer kicker to this year's underperforming FA class is that the draft deadline just passed and unless someone changed their minds in the last 15 minutes, the LHP Andrew Chin was the last signing from this year's class.

Had the Yanks just kept one or two of their first round picks, they could have targeted and signed more and different picks.   The idea behind this is not just to have a shiny farm system while the MLB team falters.  

The fact is, the past two CBA's and the money they have stolen from the Yanks and other successful teams, has made it easier for teams to retain their best players, meaning the cream of the crop no longer hits free agency at the beginning of their primes.  Instead they are hitting it at the middle or end of their primes, and at that point the Yanks must learn to stay away.

So, the reason to aggressively build the farm isn't just to supply the MLB team with homegrown stars, but to have the extra ammo to go get other teams' stars without having to re-start the farm from scratch.  

That's why they needed a second monster draft in a row much more than they needed Ellsbury, McCann and Beltran.    It's so they could build something much better.

We could be in for a craptacular couple of years until the Yanks figure this out at the ownership level. The Tanaka signing was great.   The IFA splurge was great in principle.   Punting three first rounders for three 30 or over FA's, the best of whom was Gardner duplicative was bad business.   Though I do believe the scouts got us bang for the buck and will earn praise from the underfunded draft class of `14.