agree with Brown here. A month into last year, we were seeing a whole lot of "ROFL at the Yankees for not getting Santana for Hughes and Kennedy". Now, a year later (albeit a terrible year by yankee standards) the yankees have gotten a comparable player for almost the same money and no players.
I'm not saying that its gonna work out. It could be a bad deal on the backend. But i think CC is worth the risk. The Yankees will be ridiculed and people will take pot shots at them no matter what. (and some of them are deserved) We Yankee fans are used to it.
Err...sorry to burst the Yankee fans bubble but Santana > Sabathia and they're paying him more for a longer period plus they give up some draft picks.I'm also

that the Yankee's somehow overpaying 50 million is a good thing. Even the Yankee's are having trouble selling their premium seats and some of the boxes in the new stadium. They don't have an unlimited budget and that 50 million could go to...oh finding a competent CF or 1B.
All passing on Santana did was make their old line-up a year older and probably cost them the playoffs this past year.
If the Red Sox made this signing, the entire popluation of New England would be a furious circle jerk right now. The national media would be tongue bathing Theo Epstein and Sox fans would be throwing out sabremetric stats proving the worth of sabathia. No matter what any Yankee fan says here, they'll be ridiculed with smilies, economic generalizations and cherry picked stats. (although i think the playoff histories have obvious merit, even though they are fairly small)Lets say the Yankees had stuck to their initial offer (6 for 140) and he went to Anaheim for the same price. What would Yankee bashers say then? I've got a pretty good idea. I'm sure it would go something like "You have a bottomless pit of money and you werent willing to fork over an extra 2 mil a year? ROFL. Good luck with Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy in the rotation!!"
Yankee fans cant "win" nor are we expecting to. Hell, i agree that Santana is better than Sabathia. But I'd MUCH rather have Sabathia and Hughes' potential than Santana. I'm sure an endless barage of

's and

's are headed my way for that statment, but whatever. I'm over it.
I've never agreed more with a post than I do with this one.As far as the postseason stats, for years I was told (on this board) that there was no correlation between A-Rod's postseason failures and some sort of trend. It was too small a sample size, and what I should look at is regular season numbers. So now, three years later, I'm told that Sabathia's postseason career of five starts is suddenly a large enough sample size to determine that he's not close to Santana in playoff ability? Based on 5 games? That's silly.
I'm not saying he's been a great, or even good, playoff pitcher. All I'm saying is that there is no measurable stat that can show me Santana is all that much better than CC. If you want to use a 5 game sample size in which neither player has been all that effective, by all means go for it but I'm not sure it's the slam-dunk winner you think it is.
I fail to see the huge discrepancy between the two guys, and like TLEF says above, give me CC and a potential ace down the line over just Johan every time. Anyone who disputes that is just being ridiculous.
Red Sox fans, would you rather have CC and Buchholz or just Santana?
Tiger fans, CC and Porcello or just Santana?
Rays fans, CC and Wade or just Santana?
You get the point.