FANalytics Baseball Blog

I was reading an update over at MLB Trade Rumors about Jake Peavy and the fact that he is legitimately on the block.  Basically Peavy would have a similar effect as Johan did last winter.  A couple of differences.  Peavy has a limited no trade clause, and Peavy is under contract that is considered under market value.

His current contract calls for him to make the following:

2009 – $8 million
2010 – $15 million
2011 – $16 million
2012 – $17 million
2013 – $22 million dollar option ($4 mil buyout)

So that is essentially a 4 year deal with $60 mil guaranteed, and if you pick up the option its 5 year deal for $78 million dollar deal which is an average annual salary of $15.6 million.  That’s probably about what AJ Burnett would cost, so its quite a deal.  Additionally, Peavy will be 28 for the 2009 season, so a 5 year deal for a 28 year old would take him through his age 32 season, which means your getting him for only his prime years.

The bigger question is, how will this affect the Sabathia market?

Well according to the information provided at MLB Trade Rumors, Peavy prefers to stay in the NL and likes every major market other then NY, and is from Alabama, so he would like to be near there also.  So it seems like the Yankees or Mets would have to really over pay to get him.  I would think San Diego would prefer to trade him out of the division, but the Dodgers do have great prospects and young players to trade.  Atlanta could possibly be dangling Yunel Escobar, and askig for Khalil Greene back.

Either way, if one of the LA teams lands Jake Peavy, they will almost certainly drop out of the Sabathia bidding.  A team like the Angels who arent mentioned in the link above, have the pieces to get him if they want (as long as Peavy would agree to go to an AL team). I also cannot imagine Peavy wanting to pitch in the Texas Rangers’ ballpark, but they def. have a deep farm system and plenty of talented young catchers to give back, and they are desperate for an ace pitcher, and Peavy would like to go to Texas.

So this really starts to possibly limit the potential bidders on C.C. Sabathia.  Because there are only a handful of teams that will and can pay 24 mil per year for a pitcher, and some of those teams might prefer to pay less for a Ben Sheets, AJ Burnett, Derek Lowe, trade for a Jake Peavy, instead of commit 144 million to one player.

This kind of market starts to reall favor the Yankees chances at landing C.C. Sabathia, unless he is willing to take a significantly smaller offer to stay closer to home, or in Milwaukee.