Yanks need to lock up Jeter, Mo, Joe Now

I woke up this morning to a radio report that Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman has indicated that he will not discuss contracts with Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Joe Girardi, all of which are expiring in 2010, until after the season.  With Jeter turning 36 this June and Rivera now 40, under normal circumstances, Cashman is taking what under normal circumstances would be the prudent course.

But these are the two cornerstones of the franchise, and that franchise is the Yankees.

I understand the straight baseball side of the move.  Jeter was, after all, the second-oldest starting shortstop to lead his team to a World Series (Pee Wee Reese was 37 on the 1955 Dodgers) and Rivera has been the closer for 13 years, about a decade more than the average shelf-life for a ninth-inning specialist.  There is no denying that one day, their performance will not match their names.  It could be all of a sudden, like Roberto Alomar or Eric Gagne, whose production fell of the proverbial cliff.  Or more gradual, like Carl Yastrzemski and Dennis Eckersley, who were both still effective after their most dominant days were done.  Some, like Paul O’Neill and Mike Mussina, retired when they may have had something left in the tank but before they felt they were just hanging on.

But Jeter and Rivera, even more than any other players of the past 15 years, have to be considered Yankees for Life, and if that means their spots on the roster eventually outlive their performance level for a year, so be it.  Even though you never know whether they’ll be the next Alomar/Gagne or Yaz/Eck, I’d gamble on the latter and reap the marketing and fan goodwill benefits that locking both in now would garner.

Girardi’s situation should be an easy decision.  A World Series title should earn him at least the lifting of the potential “lame duck” status.  Do the Yankees think his skills would decline by 2011?

Cashman’s dilemma is that he feels he can’t “…separate one from the other.”  That if he were to extend Girardi and not the players, or one player and not the other, that the question of why one happened and not the other would be too difficult to answer.

I think that each individual should be treated differently, certainly the manager as opposed to the players.  And, looking at each one, I think they Yankees should lock them in for two additional years each, and that it should have been done already.