Don't Read Too Much Into It

Today brought a couple interesting stories in the ol' rumor mill.   ESPN's Buster Olney wrote in his blog today that the Red Sox will be meeting with CC Sabathia in a couple days.   And apparently The Yankees met with Mark Teixeira yesterday.   At this point, both these stories have to be taken with a grain of salt.   I'm not saying they're not true, I just don't take either team's interest in those players seriously at this point.

First off, the Red Sox aren't going to sign Sabathia.   This is a classic case of trying to scare the Yankees into spending more money.   The Sox could theoretically fit him on the payroll, but there are other issues.   For one, they already have Matsuzaka, Lester, Beckett, Wakefield and Buccholz under contract.   It's also likely the team could add another decent starter, or someone as good as Derek Lowe.   Now it's easy to see that Sabathia could replace Buccholz or maybe Wakefield, but then there's issue #2.   With Josh Beckett's contract up in a couple years, if they are already paying Sabathia $25 million per year, Beckett's going to want something at least equal to that.   And even though the Red Sox have a lot of money, can they really have two starters making a combined $50 million?   Chances are this is all just a move designed to give the Yankees something to worry about, and we won't hear a whole lot more on it.

As for Teixeira, the Yankees aren't going to sign him unless they know they're not going to get Sabathia and maybe even A.J. Burnett too.   Again, a lot of this is to try to get Boston to spend more money on Teixeira, and cause the Angels to focus more on him and not Sabathia.   And if you read the article, the meeting was arranged by Scott Boras, not the Yankees, so at this point Teixeira is still just a backup plan for the Yankees.  

These rumors are always fun, but in these two cases, there is probably more smoke than fire.