Patience is a virtue. Or so I have been told.
For the Yankees and the Rangers, they have basically been waiting on a decision from Cliff Lee over the last week.
Now, it seems like it’s been forever (more like a few days) since the Yankees had increased their offer to Cliff Lee, which was for seven years and around $161 million.
If anyone has not noticed the change in my profile picture, this past Friday in my hometown of Toms River, NJ, I got married and now begin a new journey in my life.
I thank fellow Bleacher Report writers like Stephen Meyer, Jonathan Mathis and Lewie Pollis for their sincere congratulations and well-wishes over the weekend.
It was funny during that weekend and during my reception, people of all sorts came up to me and asked me, “Is Cliff Lee ever going to accept the offer from the Yankees?”
In a perfect world, that would have been a nice wedding gift to me, but it just hasn’t been that simple. Not for the Yankees or the Rangers.
Last week, Rangers owner Chuck Greenberg flew down to Arkansas to meet with Lee and agent Derek Braunecker to increase their original offer of five years and $100 million to six years, probably around $120-125 million.
Greenberg gave Lee a menu of choices to choose from, as did the Yankees and their general manager, Brian Cashman, with the highest offer being the seven-year deal.
Right now, as we sit here after the weekend, Lee has yet to make a decision. But we do have some new developments.
According to ESPN’s Karl Ravech, through Buster Olney from Twitter, the Rangers are aggressively going hard after free-agent third baseman Adrian Beltre.
If Texas is going hard after Beltre, does that mean the Rangers are essentially out on the Lee sweepstakes?
You can almost think so, considering Beltre is looking for a deal of about five years and around $70 million.
Texas does have Michael Young at third base, but last week, there were a lot of discussions of the Rangers looking to move Young or switch him to another position.
If Texas is going after Beltre, it would cost Texas less money to sign Beltre than to go after Lee.
According to ESPN’s Olney, again through his Twitter, Braunecker has been in contact with the Yankees today, and the process has been ongoing through the day.
Personally, I wonder from Olney’s tweet and of my own interpretation is Braunecker and the Yankees possibly working out the financial terms and makings of a contract?
Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions here, maybe I am not.
Maybe Lee has decided to take the Yankees’ offer over Texas, Braunecker has been talking with the Yankees to get everything in order, and Texas is moving in the direction of Beltre.
Just pure speculation and guessing on my part.
But as we sit here early in this week, we are still continuing to wait on the biggest decision from the biggest prize still on the free-agent market.
New York or Texas?
Stay tuned.
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