Burnett Deal

So the Yankees have kept up their busy expensive offseason so far by now signing A.J. Burnett to a 5 year $82m deal. Of the big 3 after Sabathia (Burnett, Lowe, Sheets) Burnett seemed like the least helpful to the Yankees. They don't need a potential ace, they need consistency which is what Lowe would give them. And as far as inconsistency goes, maybe Sheets would be a better choice. Neither are safe health risks, but when healthy Sheets is definitely better. A lot was made of Burnett winning 18 games last year and leading the AL in strikeouts. Not much emphasis is on his ERA although not bad, over 4 at 4.07 and his not too snazy 105 ERA+. Burnett's highest ERA+ in his career is 122 back in 2002, Sheets' worst since 2004 has been 117. Burnett is also 2 years older than Sheets, although Sheets has more innings on his arm.

This isn't to say that Burnett isn't a good pitcher, he's still really good. Burnett has also done this in the AL east and proven he can win there. The other times the Yankees brought in NL pitchers it hasn't worked well -Carl Pavano, Randy Johnson, Javier Vazquez, Kevin Brown, Jaret Wright... With that said, it's reasonable for the Yankees not willing to mess up again with an NL pitcher, especially a brittler one like Sheets. Maybe a 5th year can come back to haunt them, but the Yankees can afford that risk. So overall although I think Lowe would be a better fit, this isn't a bad move, just maybe not the best move for the team. The Yankees set out to fix there rotation and they've done that putting together a rotation of Sabathia, Wang, Burnett, Joba, and Hughes/outstanding offer to Pettitte. Another positive of this is that the Yankees are really putting the pressure on the other teams. They've more or less finished the bulk of their offseason work, and the other competing teams haven't really started.