The Santana Watch Day 74

Tyler Kepner has a piece in the times today echoing a line we have heard before;

Hal Steinbrenner would try to do it with the existing payroll of roughly $200 million. Hank is more inclined to add Santana, largely to keep him away from the rival Boston Red Sox.

On the surface this seems reasonable, 200 million is already a ton of money. But Johan is signed for 13 million for next year and the year after Pettitte, Abreu, Giambi and Farnsworth come off the books which will reduce the payroll by over 60 million dollars. Also, the new stadium revenue could boost already sky high revenues significantly. So the financial question really only applies to 2008 and are the Yankees really going to nix trade for baseball's best pitcher over 13 million?

Strategy Playing Out?

In this NY Times piece, Brian McNamee's lawyer, Richard Emery, pretty much guarantees that they will sue Rocket if he calls his former trainer a liar on 60 Minutes.

Emery said if Clemens says on “60 Minutes,” before an audience that will probably exceed 10 million people, that McNamee was not truthful, it would lead to a lawsuit, which would allow him to put Clemens under oath. “He’s got a chance to protect himself,” said Emery, who is based in New York and specializes in libel and defamation actions. “We’re not going to sue him if he doesn’t do it. But if he does it, we’re going to sue him.”

I am becoming convinced that our previous take on Clemens' strategy is playing out.

Stay tuned!