Johnny Damon Needs to Follow A-Rod's Lead

As a veteran observer of all things Yankee, I don’t believe reports that the team’s divorce from Johnny Damon is final.

General manager Brian Cashman says the Yankees won’t resign the 36-year-old outfielder because the club needs to get younger and more athletic and keep the 2010 payroll under $200 million.

I’m not buying it.

When has payroll mattered to the New York Yankees?

The Yanks have never cared about paying a luxury tax (not even this season’s $25 million tax) for exceeding baseball’s salary threshold as long as they’re getting maximum bang for their bucks.

And a 27th World Series championship certainly qualifies as money well-spent.

During the Steinbrenner Era, the Yankees have always tried to field the best team money can buy.

The Yankees can achieve that again in 2010 if Damon takes the initiative and follows a strategy already executed by Alex Rodriguez.

No, that doesn’t mean Damon should divorce his wife and date free-agent starlet Kate Hudson.

Instead, Damon should tell agent Scott Boras exactly what A-Rod told him after negotiations with the Yankees had been severed following the ’07 season:

Butt out.

If Damon himself tells Cashman and the Steinbrenner boys, Hank and Hal, that he wants to stay, then they’ll make a deal.

Boras, in typically nauseating fashion, alienated the Yankees by saying publicly the club should give Damon the kind of multi-year deal it gave catcher Jorge Posada at age 36 and relief ace Mariano Rivera at age 39 and will give shortstop Derek Jeter who turns 36 in June.

That is not going to happen. Nor should it happen.

Jeter, Rivera and Posada have become Yankee icons. Along with southpaw Andy Pettitte, they’re the only on-field links to the dynastic Yankee teams of the late 1990s-early 2000s.

Those players have earned special treatment.

Boras also used the media to tell the Yankees not to make an offer to Damon unless it’s a three-year deal.

The Yankees essentially told Boras to take a flying leap.

The Yankees then traded for former Tigers All-Star Curtis Granderson—at 29, a superior athlete and outfielder to Damon—and signed free agent Nick Johnson, an ex-Yankee whose on-base percentage is one of baseball’s best.

Damon should remind Boras that he works for the player, not the other way around.

The Yankees would offer Damon a two-year, $16-million deal if he wants it. I’ve followed this club long enough to know that.

A-Rod is a Yankee today—with a world championship on his resume, finally—because he personally told the club he wanted to stay and he muzzled Boras.

There may be more upfront money elsewhere for Damon, or even a three-year deal, but he wouldn’t be a Yankee. He wouldn’t be playing for the reigning world champions, the most celebrated franchise in professional sports, in the media capital of the world.

It can’t make more sense to Damon to finish his career with the White Sox, Orioles or Royals.

Would the Red Sox offer him a return to Beantown?

Maybe. But only to try to tweak the Yankees, the team that tweaked them when Damon signed his four-year, $52 million deal after the ’05 season.

But that move wouldn’t make sense for the Sox, who need to get younger and more athletic just like the Yankee team they’re now chasing.

Damon should want to be part of the 2010 Yankees, part of what would be one of baseball’s most potent lineups ever:

SS Derek Jeter

LF Johnny Damon

1B Mark Teixeira

3B Alex Rodriguez

C Jorge Posada

CF Curtis Granderson

2B Robinson Cano

RF Nick Swisher

DH Nick Johnson

You could quibble with the batting order. You could even bat Granderson ninth (if he’s not insulted), but this lineup coupled with the Yankees’ pitching staff would be favored to win another world championship.

Damon should want a piece of that action.

But first he needs to follow A-Rod’s lead and check his agent at the door.

Hey, Johnny Damon, Curb Your Agent

For Johnny Damon to return as a New York Yankee in 2010, he will need to take a page from the Alex Rodriguez playbook.

And I don’t mean Damon needs to divorce his wife and then cavort with an aging rocker followed by a comely blonde actress in her early thirties.

What Damon needs to do is tell agent Scott Boras to curb the rhetoric because the Yankees can win in 2010 and beyond without him.

A-Rod nearly played his way out of New York after the 2007 season.

Taking Boras’s advice, he exercised his contractual option and announced, during Game 4 of the Red Sox-Rockies World Series, that he had become a free agent.

Only after A-Rod muzzled Boras and contacted the Yankees himself did he and the club work out the 10-year deal that allowed A-Rod to finally win his first World Series title.

Damon needs to borrow the Boras muzzle from A-Rod before it’s too late.

Clearly, Boras loves to use the media to negotiate contracts for his clients.

But his strategy often succeeds only in making a client a better-paid loser in a new city while alienating the fans in the city that player left behind.

Case in point: Former Seattle Mariner Alex Rodriguez of the Texas Rangers.

Another case in point: Former Los Angeles Dodger Chan-Ho Park of the Texas Rangers.

Yet another: Former Texas Ranger Pudge Rodriguez of the Detroit Tigers.

Damon turned 36 on November 3, the day before the left fielder helped the Yankees win their 27th league championship — a pro sports record.

Actually, November 3 was the day before Damon limped off the Yankee Stadium turf during Game 6 with a hamstring injury so severe he would have had to sit out Game 7, had there been one.

That is part of the problem: The Yankees need to get younger and more athletic in the outfield, and Boras’s rhetoric could compel the team to look elsewhere for a left fielder.

According to Boras, Damon’s durability is “off the charts.”

Yes, Damon has played in at least 140 games in 14 big-league seasons. But he played hurt more often than he should have to achieve that streak, and he has the weakest throwing arm of any starting outfielder in baseball.

According to Boras, the Yankees should pay Damon “market value” for a player of his age and track record.

Clearly, Boras is suggesting the Yankees offer Damon a multi-year deal commensurate with the four-year, $52 million contract signed by catcher Jorge Posada who was 36 at the time, or the three-year, $45 million contract signed by relief ace Mariano Rivera who was about to turn 38, or the multi-year deal that shortstop Derek Jeter will sign to remain in pinstripes as a 36-year-old.

The Yankees won’t do that. Nor should they.

Damon, however important he was to the Yankees’ championship season, is not remotely as vital to the team as Posada — a switch-hitting catcher with power from both sides and a team leader — or Rivera — the finest relief pitcher in major league history.

The Yankees should offer Damon a two-year contract worth between $20 million-$22 million.

If Boras convinces Damon the offer isn’t good enough…Sayonara.

The Yankees could then pursue Los Angeles Angels free agent Chone Figgins, who is 31 and faster than Damon with a better arm.

The Yankees could also hope World Series Most Valuable Player Hideki Matsui recovers well enough from knee surgery to play 40-50 games in left field in 2010. Figgins, or a rotating group of players, could man the position the rest of the season.

If that happens, it would be, as Yankees legend Yogi Berra would say, “déjà vu all over again” for Damon.

The Boston Red Sox let Damon walk after their 2004 world championship when he rejected their four-year, $40 million offer.

The Yankees came to the rescue with a four-year, $52 million deal.

That won’t happen this time.

Boras seems blissfully unaware of that. It is up to Damon to muzzle his media-loving agent while explaining it.