Yankees Try to Keep $30 Mil Man

The Yankees opened the season with a statement: they will not give contract extensions to any player whether that is Mariano, Jorge, or Arod. It looks like they’ve now changed their tune.

Well it turns out that when you go into the break hitting .317 with 30 homeruns and 86 rbi’s that gets the Yankees to change their policy. So now the Yankees are trying to extend Alex and keep him from looking somewhere else for a bigger and longer contract.

Now the tables are turned. It is Alex who does not want to talk to the Yankees. "We are not going to be negotiating during the season,” his agent Scott Boras told the Post. "This is Alex's decision. This has been his policy, and I fully expect this to continue to be his policy."

This is the part that gets interesting apparently if Alex does not exercise his opt-out he will be guaranteed at least $32 million annually not the original $27 million like everyone thought. The way it works is he gets that $27 million plus an additional $5 million more OR $1 million more than the highest paid non-pitcher in the league.

"The way the provision operates, he either gets that or he can become a free agent after any of those seasons again," Boras said in the Post. So he can elect to stay next year at the tune of $32 million then if he feels like walking again he can leave after the 2008 season, 2009 season, or wait until 2010 when his contract is actually up.

If he does stay until his current contract is up it will be worth at least $96 million over the next 3 seasons.

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