Yankees extend "final offer" to Twins

Jayson Stark of ESPN reports that the Yankees have told the Twins that their offer of Philip Hughes, Melky Cabrera, and a "respectable" third prospect is their final offer for Johan Santana. The Yankees have also given the Twins until Monday night to accept this offer, at which point they will pull it off the table.

"I'm not going to be played against the Red Sox. That's not something I'll do. That's not something the Yankees should ever do, and that's I think what they're trying to do now," Yankees senior vice president Hank Steinbrenner said Sunday. "So if they want the best offer that has been offered to them, then they need to make up their minds."

The Red Sox offer, believed to be some combination of Jacoby Ellsbury, Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz, Coco Crisp, and other prospects, would likely be the best offer on the table if the Yankees were to pull out of the negotiations. However, considering how they handled the Alex Rodriguez negotiations, we can never count the Yankees out of the running.

In Mets-related news, Erik Bedard has supposedly told Baltimore officials that he will not be resigning with the Orioles. This new development exponentially increases the likelihood of him getting traded and will also probably drive his price down, if only slightly. Look for the Dodgers and the Mets to be the front-runners in this trade. ESPN 1050 said that the Mets and the Orioles had the framework for a deal put together last week, only to have it fall through--that report may have been based on the Gomez, Heilman, and Humber offer that I talked about a few posts ago.

Apparently, one of the complaints the Orioles had with the Mets offer was that it didn't offer enough major league-ready talent. Humber hasn't fully bounced back from his Tommy John surgery, and Gomez is still very young and raw, so I can understand where the Orioles are coming from. I can't help but wonder if the Mets started putting together a deal centered around Mike Pelfrey/Kevin Mulvey, Ryan Church, and Aaron Heilman, would the Orioles like that better? The Mets would probably have to add another piece to the deal, but a deal built like that could be more favorable to the Orioles in the short run. The Mets could then swoop in and pick up someone like Jose Guillen (who they have been talking to) or Kosuke Fukudome to play right field for them until Fernando Martinez is ready to take over in a few years. Andruw Jones would also be an interesting option to explore, but would probably command way too much money.