No particulars have been issued by the club yet but it is official: the New York Yankees have offered Derek Jeter a new deal. This was made known by the Co–Chairman of the club, Hank Steinbrenner.
In a phone call to the press, he said, "The ball's in Derek's court now, and his agent. It's up to them."
Jeter’s agent, Casey Close has denied the comment but Steinbrenner goes on to say, "We don't know how happy they are. We'll see. There's no possible way anybody could criticize us for what we've offered."
If that’s the case, one can assume the negotiation saga between the two parties will end soon, if not this week. The ball club has been pushing through a 3 year $45 million deal for the past few months but the shortstop Yankee
has been more than dismissive of the offer. Close came out to say that he was baffled by the deal after what Jeter has done for the team.
Jeter, who’s going to turn 37 in June, is looking for a 4 – 5 year deal that will pay him $23 million, annually. One man who has come to earn anything close to that amount is the Colorado Rockies’ Troy Tulowitzki and his recent
7 year extension, will attain him $15.7 million per year.
Though it seems Derek is testing his luck, the Steinbrenner brothers are not easy to take on. There is no team in the National League and the American League that can afford the Yankee shortstop and that acts as a determinant of
how strong the club’s stance is, in Major League Baseball.
Jeter will probably have to accept any club offer that comes his way, eventually. The fact that no other team is able to make the kind of offer that Brian Cashmore has made, on the behalf of the Yankees, states how limited, Jeter’s
options are.
The other reason many believe the shortstop Captain will continue on with the Yanks is due to his limited club experience. Derek hasn’t played for any other team and this accounts for the kind of familiarity he has in the batting
and the fielding line up.
With the winter meetings coming in a few days, the deal is expected to come through after the next week. The Yankees will be more than happy to let the agent check in the period for better offers as the likeliness of that happening
would be low.
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