New York Yankees Trade Rumors: Considering Ted Lilly Not Roy Oswalt
July 26, 2010 · Bronx Baseball Daily · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
The other day we heard that the Yankees weren’t interested in LHP Ted Lilly, but apparently missing out on your top choice can change things. According to Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated , the Yankees are now considering Lilly and will not make an attempt at Roy Oswalt.
Lilly, 34, is actually a former Yankee whom they included in a deal with the Tigers and A’s for Jeff Weaver back in 2002. Safe to say that deal didn’t work out the way the Yankees had planned. Lilly is a decent, but not great pitcher. Over the last three seasons his ERA+ is 123 while pitching for the Cubs in the NL. When he was last in the AL, with the Blue Jays, he averaged a 103 OPS+ from 2004 to 2006.
When I’d heard that the Yankees were previously not interested in Lilly it was slightly confusing, but I’d chalked it up to the fact that he’s 2-7 with a 6.09 ERA against them in his lifetime and thought that maybe they’d like to see him go somewhere else and help them out instead. It turns out they probably just weren’t interested in him while there were bigger fish available at the market.
At this point it is hard to say what the Cubs would expect in return for Lilly, who is the final year of a four-year $40 million deal that pays him $12 million this season. More importantly Lilly is set to become a Type-A free agent this offseason which could mean that the team he walks away from this winter would get two first round draft picks. If that team is the Yankees though, they probably wouldn’t offer him arbitration for fear that he’d accept it.
So Yankees fans shouldn’t look at Lilly as a pair of draft picks. Cubs fans might want to though as he would probably reject arbitration from them, again the Yankees would be far less likely to even offer arbitration.
Related Stories
Read more New York Yankees news on BleacherReport.com
Yankee Tickets
Shop Yankee
