ARod to the Yankees.

I invented and used several new expletives when I read that this deal may happen. If it does go though, I'll go into detail about my thoughts about revenue sharing in baseball and a salary cap (summarized: "more" and "no", respectively).

It does makes one wonder whether the Yankees have any fiscal limitations at all, though. I was under the impression that their revenues were somewhere in the $250 million range. This deal sounds like it'd put them close enough to a $200 million team salary that they'll go over it with their inevitable expensive midseason pickup.

From a baseball perspective, it'd suddenly give them the best hitting third baseman in baseball. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a better left half of the infield in baseball history. But Soriano's awesome. Interestingly, their careers are pretty parallel. Each had short appearances in the Show for their first two years and then caught on full time in the third. So one can compare Soriano's third season with ARod's. The only knock on Soriano is his batting eye, but his walks are trending upward. He had 38 last year while at this point in his career ARod had 45. Soriano had 130 k's, ARod 121. ARod had 42 dingers (in an old bandbox stadium in Seattle), Soriano had 39. At the same time, with the power numbers for Jeter, Giambi (though both were hurt last year), Williams (it's not possible not to love Bernie Williams, though) trending lower, they may ARod would ensure they remained offensively dominant. But it wouldn't help the offense that much, because of the Soriano loss. They say that the may have to include Contreras as well. That would be a loss, because I think he's going to have a terrific year now that he's settled.

Sidenote: it's amazing, but Soriano's only two years younger than ARod. If it seems like ARod's been around forever, he has. He first came up in 1994!