Arbitration Eligible Yankees

The Yankees have quite a bit of money coming off the books this off-season as some pretty big names are becoming free agents, but they have to make some choices when it comes to offering players arbitration. Abreu Pettitte arbitration casesIf a player is offered arbitration the Yankees can get draft picks from a team signing that player. For type-A free agents the Yankees get two picks, a first round pick and a supplemental pick between the first and second rounds. A type-B free agent nets one pick either a supplement round or second round pick based on the signing team's record. The Yankees have six arbitration eligible players: Andy Pettitte, Bobby Abreu, Ivan Rodriguez, Carl Pavano, Jason Giambi, and Mike Mussina. Three of them are type-A's: Abreu, Pettitte, and Mussina. One of them is type-B: Ivan Rodriguez. Pettitte should be offered arbitration. He wants to come back and the Yankees would probably prefer the one-year deal. If he didn't come back and went to the Dodgers for instance then the Yankees could get a couple of draft picks for him. Abreu will definitely be offered arbitration. The Yankees want to keep him, but not on a multi-year deal that he's going to want, but should he accept arbitration they'd love having him on such a limited deal. He would then likely be a type-A free agent next year. For an aging player like Abreu the Yankees can't go wrong with one year deals. Mussina announced his retirement last week and none of this is likely to matter with him. But the Yankees still need to offer him arbitration because if he backs out of retiring and signs somewhere else they don't want to miss getting draft picks. The team didn't offer Roger Clemens arbitration in 2003 after he announced and ended up losing a few picks because of it. Rodriguez is an interesting case. The Yankees don't want him to come back, but it could be worth it to offer him arbitration. The catch here is that he could accept and they'd be stuck with both Jorge Posada and Rodriguez expecting a starting job. Although that might be what makes it worth it to tempt fate by offering it to him. Cashman has not closed the door on either Giambi or Pavano returning, but that doesn't mean they should offer them arbitration. It would be a bad idea for the team to do that because if either accepted than they couldn't back out of a deal and might get stuck with players that have been albatrosses for the past couple of years.