Cliff Lee to the Yankees...Really?

Alright, this is getting ridiculous. Last offseason was bad enough. Bud Selig, have some balls and put a stop to this. Having one super team is not good for baseball.

Allowing one team to sign 3 type A free agents in one offseason should've been against the rules to begin with. CC Sabathia, Mark Texeira, and AJ Burnett all signed and the only deterrent was taking away two draft picks? The Yankess won the Series after inking the top three free agents for over $500M and adding them to a team that already had the highest paid SS and 3B in the game.....big deal. They should've lost a first round pick for this year and the next two for those moves, at minimum.

But letting this team add Lee is embarrassing. Okay Yankees, you are the Goldman Sachs of baseball. We get it. I'm not saying the Yankees don't have a right to be the best team in baseball, just do it the right way. They'd probably end up with Lee on the open market next year anyhow, but this just makes my stomach turn.

The only way giving up a truckload of prospects for a guy like Lee makes sense is if you have a reasonable shot at signing him longer term. Otherwise, you end up like Houston with Randy Johnson or the Brewers with Sabathia. If a guy has more than one year on his contract, like an Oswalt, okay. But the Yankees are reportedly going to give up their best positional prospect in the deal, and I don't know that a team like the Reds could afford to do that.

A team like the Reds not only takes the salary hit in the short term for the pitcher, but also loses the years of affordable pre-arbitration years for a potential 25 man roster player (and probably more than just one). Remember that the Reds are only paying Joey Votto, Jay Bruce, and several other 25 man guys the league minimum this year. The vast majority of teams must, MUST, have contributions from young, minimum salary players.

Only a superteam can afford to pay everyone market rate, and baseball only has one of those. There's a reason that the NFL drawfs MLB in popularity. I have absolutely no faith in Bud Selig to understand and/or do anything about it. Anyone who lets an exhibition game determine home field advantage for their championship is a moron. But I guess that's a different rant.