Zell's Pinstriped Blog, A New York Yankees Fan Blog

With Yankees organizational meetings now over, the plans for the Yankees have become a little bit clearer than they were a mere few days ago. As expected, the Yankees plan on shedding some payroll this year, how much, is unknown at this time. While Buster Olney tweets that it should be between $190-$200 million, but it isn’t a hard number, obviously. Considering that Buster Olney’s blog always keeps us in the know, it has to be true. ESPN reports that the payroll could go as low as $185 million, though I doubt it will go that low. Time will tell…

Moving on to other news Olney has reported, it appears as if the Yankees don’t have Jason Bay or Matt Holliday at the top of their list, especially if they can resign Johnny Damon for about $7-8 million. I am glad that they are not going to spend a ton of money on either one of them, especially Matt Holliday, as I don’t think he’d be a great AL player, regardless of what Scott Boras tells you. In a minor note, Arn Tellem and Brian Cashman are to get together to talk about Hideki Matsui during winter meetings.

Moving on to plans not related to hitting the ball out of the yard. As you probably have heard, retaining Andy Pettitte is Cashman’s number one priority, which makes sense. If Pettitte retires, that would set a number of contingency plans in motion that would obviously bring in any combination of Ben Sheets, John Lackey, Aroldis Chapman or Roy Halladay. However, this is not to say that Lackey and Halladay aren’t on the Yankees radar, because they are.

In addition to previously mentioned pitchers, the Yankees are reportedly going to look into Rich Harden, Randy Wolf and Joel Piniero. I don’t know about you, but I would only entertain the possibility of one of those pitchers and that would be Rich Harden. Randy Wolf has spent his entire career in the NL, so I don’t want Denny Neagle, part two. Joel Piniero, while has pitched in the AL, finally had a good year after a five year slide, not exactly the guy I would go after. If they want to give Rich Harden a incentive laden deal, I wouldn’t be against it as his upside is pretty high.

So, obviously, the number one priority overall this offseason is pitching, if you haven’t picked up on that pattern yet. Going this route, obviously is the best way to go considering how past seasons have paid off when they have focused on pitching. I wonder if we’re going to see Lackey and Halladay in Pinstripes next year? I doubt it, but the thought is appealing, isn’t it?