On a slow Friday in New York, I was perusing the Yankees' page of
Cot's Baseball Contracts, a wonderful resource for player-by-player and team-by-team contract information. When I landed on their second-highest paid player, CC Sabathia, I was sort of surprised to see this bullet point:
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| It's possible CC may not wear Pinstripes after 2011 (ESPN) |
- Sabathia may opt of of deal after 2011 season.
I wasn't shocked because I didn't know about it, but, frankly, because I don't remember it being mentioned since Sabathia signed his big contract back in December of 2008. In fact, I forgot how important that opt-out clause was to Sabathia's contract being signed. According to
Tim Brown and Gordon Edes of Yahoo! Sports (whose article was titled "Opt-out clause key to Sabathia going to Yankees"):
The deal, according to a source close to negotiations, gives Sabathia the right to opt out of the contract after the first three years, by which time he will have been paid $69 million. Sabathia appreciated the clause because it satisfied concerns he had about living in New York and the impact it might have on his wife and three children.
He will make his opt-out decision after the 2011 season with four years and $92 million remaining on the deal, at which time he could renegotiate, leave or stay.
Yahoo! Sports wasn't the only one;
New York Daily News and almost every other news outlet mentioned the opt-out if not in the title of their article, then at least in the body. Since then, not much has been said about this opt-out clause.
I searched on Google News for any mention of "Sabathia" and "opt-out" in the past year and there were 21 results, more than half of which seem to be about either A.J. Burnett or Alex Rodriguez opting out. So this is not a much-discussed topic to say the least. But should it be? Should we just assume that the hefty lefty and his family are happy in New York and they are going to stay? Or will CC Sabathia be hitting the open market at the end of next season at the age of 31?
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