Andrew Marchand on ESPN now...

Yankees are disappointed.

No mention of Zack yet...

Its coming, you cant blow this hilarious amazing story to page 2 yet. Reports are now saying that Lee may have actually turned down an extra $60MM to play for the Phillies, apparently Texas came in with a monster offer that would have beaten New York if it fully vested. How does a superstar turn down that much money to return to a team that traded him away for prospects just a year or so ago? People have to talk about that.

The people who actually matter around baseball are now focused on Greinke.

Insane amount of money, it seemed all along he may favor NY. Phillies are going to be sick

Goldstein's tweet is the first I've seen anyone take that stance. Previously, it has been that 2010 was an outlier.

And now that Lee has signed with the mystery team, a feeding frenzy should ensue in terms of offers for Zack. This was the best possible outcome for his value.

There are a lot of teams that need Greinke in the AL now, and the Braves will need help to stay competitive in the NL East.

The Royals will "win" the Greinke trade now. The sticker price is never going to be higher. Pretty hard to mess it up at this point.

I guess Lee really loves him some Gino's cheese steaks.

I'm sure they aren't. That's why they wanted Lee. They can either pay a king's ransom for Greinke or watch the Sox versus the Phillies battle it out for the next few years.

Screw that, it's not about Geno's or Pat's, it's about Jim's on South Street

Cliff Lee Signing: What We Learned

* You can never have too much pitching. Front-end starting pitching is exceedingly rare. Unless C.C. Sabathia opts out, there will be no free agent aces available after the 2011 season. The availability of an ace prompts teams to move parts around to make it work, and sometimes put more money toward the rotation even when the offense needs help. The Royals should trade Zack Greinke for nothing less than a king's ransom.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2010/1...e-learned.html

Dayton really does need to be a hard-ass about this and be willing to say that we don't have to trade him. If a team doesn't reach deep into their farm system to throw a very big offer at us we should simply walk away and let Zack continue to pitch here.

I am willing to see him walk in his free agent year and get absolutely nothing but draft picks for him and even risk the possibility that he is exposed as just a 2-3 WAR "good not great, 2009 was a total fluke" pitcher than to accept less than what we should expect in this market.

From what I heard during Francouer's press conference yesterday DM is willing to do just that. He even mentioned that Greinke had no intention of signing his current deal until things started to look up the year before with the Crisp/Jacobs etc etc signings. Pretty much saying you never know Zack could change his mind in a year and decide to stay.

Also he bluntly said that a lot of FA guys are signed basically because they can be flipped for prospects. Everyone knows it but it was kind of odd to hear the GM say that after 5 minutes of a Francouer lovefest.

Would the Yankees consider:

Montero
Gardner
Brackman

Too much? Not enough?

Not enough. Brackman sucks.

Martin going to NY. Interesting. Could be a pre-Greinke move.

http://sports.espn.go.com/new-york/m...=ESPNHeadlines