The Yankees signed Mark Teixeira today and the effects of the signing were wide ranging. Let’s take a look at who benefitted and who didn’t.

The Winners

The Yankees: They got the best first baseman on the market and, outside of Albert Pujols, probably the best first baseman in baseball. Teixiera will represent a major upgrade over prospective first baseman Nick Swisher, who can now be moved to a corner outfield spot (where his average power will be more forgivable). Or, the Yankees can trade him for something useful.

Teixeira: OK, so signing with the Yankees is horribly predictable. But Teixeira got a huge contract, a no-trade clause and he’ll play for a winner. That’s a pretty good deal. Something tells me he’ll be happy he didn’t sign with the Nationals.

Derek Lowe: The Red Sox say missing out on Teixeira won’t impact their search for more pitching. But you’ve got to think that some of the money they had earmarked for Teixeira could be spent on Lowe. Right now, it looks like the Mets are the only serious bidder for Lowe’s services. Getting the Red Sox involved could spark a bidding war that would culminate in an expensive contract.

Billy Beane: The Oakland GM is trying to field a winner in 2009. He took a hit when Rafael Furcal spurned his very generous four-year offer, but now that the Angels have missed out on Teixeira they are looking even more beatable. Beane must smell blood. Will he sign Adam Dunn or Jason Giambi and really put some pressure on the Halos?

Scott Boras: Now that his biggest client has signed, maybe Boras can shift his attention to the other five gajillion free agents he represents.

The Losers

Manny Ramirez: Now that the Yankees have signed Teixeira they’re extremely unlikely to sign Manny. Who is going to give Ramirez the longterm contract he wants? Probably nobody (unless Ned Coletti goes on a bender).

Red Sox: They missed out on a player that would allow them to vastly improve their middle of the order production. Moreover, that player signed with their chief rival. Burn.

The Angels: Who will play first base for Los Angeles next season? Who will provide protection for Vlad? (No, Tori Hunter. Not you. Please sit down.) This could be a blessing in disguise for the Angels, as Adam Dunn could be a great addition and will require fewer dollars and years.

Word on the street yesterday was that the Boston Red Sox had offered free-agent first baseman Mark Teixeira an 8-year, $175-180MM contract. Today, it sounds like Boston’s offer was closer to $165-170MM. The Angels’ rumored offer has been greater than $160 but less than $180, while some speculate that the Nationals have ponied up $200MM. All the same, everyone seems to be offering 8 years — and agent Scott Boras seems to be holding out for a $185MM offer from a team that doesn’t suck.

Recently, I kvetched about a feeling of “inflation” in baseball — Mark Teixeira’s good, but is he really a $200MM guy? I don’t happen to think so. But what do you think?

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Now that CC Sabathia has signed, the competition for AJ Burnett is heating up. Burnett has said previously that he wants to be within driving distance of his house near Baltimore. This week we’ve learned that the Red Sox had extensive talks with the hurler and his agent, that the Braves remain in hot pursuit (and have reportedly offered in the neighborhood of 5 years, $80MM), and that the Yankees are making a concerted push as well (Thursday update: reportedly offering $85MM, five years). Ken Rosenthal has named the Cardinals as another interested team, and the Phillies are rumored to be in the mix too (Thursday update: via MLBTR, the AJC says Larry “Chipper” Jones talked to Burnett and the only NL team he would be interested in is Atlanta). The Jays have not been officially eliminated, but they are not expected to meet AJ’s asking price. (Um, ultimate update: Burnett signed with New York. He is condemned to one of the worst commutes ever!)

Our question for this afternoon: how far would AJ’s commute be from these six teams? Let’s look in the order of his likelihood of signing with each team, as we know it today:

Atlanta: 11 hours, 4 minutes

Atlanta is rumored to be pushing extremely hard for Burnett. But at first blush, that 11-hour drive is a doozy. Fortunately, this drive is (or can be) reasonably scenic. Though Google Maps wants to route AJ through Richmond on The Dread 95, it’s not that much longer just to take scenic state highway 29 through Virginia (through Danville and Charlottesville, skirting the Shenandoah Valley and the Monongahela National Forest). G-Maps puts that route just 19 minutes longer at 11 hours, 23 minutes. In fact, the scenic route may even be the quicker route if there’s nasty traffic on 95. And if AJ’s really got some extra time, there’s always the gorgeous Blue Ridge Parkway.

Score: 6 out of 10. What this route lacks in brevity, it makes up for in beauty. And if you take 29, you don’t have to worry about traffic. Plus, there almost no tolls at all — maybe one when you get to DC.

New York: 3 hours, 18 minutes

New York’s goal heading into the offseason was to score two of the these three free agent starting pitchers: Sabathia (check), Burnett, and Derek Lowe. They’re also supposedly kicking the tires on Manny Ramirez. (Clearly, there are no financial restrictions after an embarrassing season in which they failed to make the playoffs.) Anyway, in terms of commuting distance, NY-to-Baltimore is one of AJ’s shorter options. However, I’m hard-pressed to think of a more depressing drive than this. First, this drive takes you through the rusty heart of New Jersey — a dreary drive even on the cheeriest of days. Driving through New Jersey not only presents you with a bleak landscape to look at, you’re not even allowed to pump your own gas at the rest stops on the turnpike. And traffic? The whole state is a giant traffic jam. Throw in the getting-out-of-New York traffic, the getting-past-Philadelphia-traffic, and another nice little jam outside of Baltimore, and you’re looking at soul-sucking gridlock almost the entire way. Oh, and tolls. Lots and lots of tolls. Especially in Delaware. Ugh.

And I’m not even going to mention New Jersey State Troopers.

Score: 3 out of 10. This drive may look short as the crow flies, but what you save in miles you will pay dearly in soul.

Boston: 7 hours, 0 minutes

This is essentially the same drive as above, only with all the mind-numbing hours of Connecticut thrown in. Again, G-Maps wants AJ to take 95, but again, it makes more sense not to. If AJ sticks to the parkways (Route 15, essentially), he can skip a lot of traffic and construction, avoid having to deal with any trucks and buses, and enjoy some leafy scenery and beautiful 1930s bridges to boot. But he’ll have to deal with even more tolls in MA and CT.

Score: 2 of 7. A seven-hour drive in the best of circs, and AJ still has to tackle the soul-sucking NY-to-Baltimore leg of the journey.

Philadelphia: 1 hour, 53 minutes

Jackpot! This isn’t even a two-hour drive. Though the Phillies are rumored to be more interested in Derek Lowe, if they do make a run at Burnett, they can use this quick cruise as a selling point. Though G-Maps again wants Burnett to put up with the Delaware tolls, he can easily circumvent them by taking Route 1 through bucolic suburban Pennsylvania instead. Yes, it will increase his drive time by about half an hour (assuming he doesn’t run into traffic on The Dread 95, which is not an assumption I would ever make), but when you’re only talking about a 2 hour 20 minute drive, max, what difference does it make?

Score: 9 of 10. Hop, skip, and a jump.

St. Louis: 13 hours, 14 minutes

Deadly. While the St. Louis-to-Indianapolis stretch is hardly the decaying sprawl that is the New Jersey turnpike, it’s not even close to the rural beauty of Virginia. Plainly put, this is a boring drive. And because of the length involved — this is, by a couple of hours, AJ’s longest commute — you don’t really want to start taking scenic detours here or there. Now, once he gets into Pennsylvania he can choose between reasonably scenic I-68/Route 40 or not unpleasant I-70/I-76. But of course, by then, he’ll be totally fried. In my experience, once you hit that 12-hour mark, the drive stops being a fun adventure and just becomes a slog. This is basically your old-fashioned put-the-pedal-down-and-make-some-time ass-haul. Also, Columbus is ugly.

Score: 1 out of 10.

Toronto: 8 hours, 19 minutes

The Jays are not expected to be able to re-sign Burnett, but let’s consider the commute AJ has now, just for the sake of completeness. Though facing this drive is likely one of the reasons that AJ has stated his preference for a team closer to home, this is actually one of the pleasanter options on the table right now. Shorter than the commutes from Atlanta and St. Louis according to G-Maps, this is likely even shorter than the drive from Boston, for the simple reason that you don’t have to find a way around New York City. Indeed, after Buffalo, the only major city you pass through is Harrisburg. Certainly, Harrisburg is a depressing husk of post-industrial American urbana, but no one would hold a gun to AJ’s head and make him pull off the highway there. And the rest of the trip really isn’t too shabby — in fact, I would imagine this is a pretty interesting drive. (I’ve been through NY and PA pretty extensively, but I’ve never gone the North-South route, come to think of it….maybe I’ll try this drive!)

Score: 5 of 10. Not great, but not terrible either.

Now, assuming he’s going to get a pile of money no matter where he signs…

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The Boston Globe has launched “an upstart weekly publication” called “OT - Our Town. Our Teams.” The paper version is 50 cents, and it also appears online at Boston.com.

Readers, it’s a blog. It’s a blog that happens to be printed every week in dead-tree format. It’s published online in the same single-column format that UmpBump and countless other blogs are published in. And while countless other blogs might write the following screed, countless other blogs would be doing it because they, of course, are actual baseball writers’ wives who sit in their pajamas in mom’s basement all day making sh*t up. Or, they’re me, and they’re just really sick of Julio Lugo’s 18 errors and 27 strikeouts per game and have to let off some way over-the-top steam.

But theoretically, Chad Finn is more informed than Murray Chass’s wife and actually meant it when he wrote this about about Jason Varitek — either that, or it’s just the fledgling site’s attempt to get comments and incoming links. Some excerpts:

“Recent events suggest he’s teetering on becoming one of the most vile subspecies of professional athletes: an aging, subpar performer who demands the salary and security of a prime-of-career star.”

That’s just factually incorrect. The most vile subspecies of pro athletes are the ones in their prime who have everything going for them and who don’t play hard or who blame their teammates for losses. Other key subspecies: the ones who beat their wives, rape hotel clerks, get arrested for torturing dogs, or unlawfully discharge firearms in strip clubs.

“Scott Sauerbeck. Chad Bradford. Jeff Suppan. Byung-Hyun Kim. Ramiro Mendoza. Bobby Howry. Matt Clement. Wade Miller. The point isThe Red Sox had enough pitchers who failed miserably here in recent years to fill every staff in the Can-Am League. If Varitek is going to get heaps of praise for the successes, shouldn’t he accept some measure of fault for the failures? Funny how no one ever mentions he caught 13 of Clay Buchholz’s 15 starts this season.”

The Buck’s problem is that he suddenly couldn’t locate his fastball. That’s the first rule of pitching, and I fail to see how Tek can help him there. In start after start, we watched Buchholz try to establish his fastball, only to fall behind in the count when he couldn’t put it over the plate. His breaking stuff was still nasty, but without the fastball, pitchers had no incentive to swing at it.

Varitek is tied for most no-hitters caught, and would have the record if Curt Schilling had listened to him with two out in the bottom of the ninth in 2007. Are we really going to blame him for Matt Clement, who had to have season-ending shoulder surgery? Most of the pitchers on that list are Dan Duquette “bargains” — and for those of you who weren’t living in the baseball Guantanamo that was Boston during the Dan Duquette years, Dan Duquette’s idea of a bargain is sort of like my boyfriend’s. “Hey, this is cheap! Let’s take it. Maybe we can use it. Yeah, it’s kind of broken…maybe a little smelly. And I’m not sure exactly what it is. But it’s just so cheap! How can you say no?!”

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If I could tuuuuurn back tii-iime….if I could fiiiiind a waaay!

If I, or Theo Epstein, could turn back time and find a way, there is no doubt what we would do: make Jason Varitek younger. Specifically, age 31, the year he hit 25 homers or age 32, the year he OBP’ed .390. Sure, maybe some hoary wisdom would be lost — but think of all the offense that would be gained!

Similarly, if David Ortiz could go back to being 27, the Red Sox could expect five consecutive 30+ homer seasons from him (including two 40+ homer seasons and one 50+ homer season).

But, if time cannot be turned back, no matter how many sailors on that air-craft carrier wish it could be, the Red Sox will just have to try something else. Hence, operating under the assumption that those MIT researchers won’t find a way to magically re-youngify Tek and Papi, the Red Sox are looking for some replacement parts. Here’s how they should prioritize:

1. A good bat. Look, it’s only money. And the Red Sox have big fat gobs of it. Kevin Youkilis can play third base, if you want to stick Mark Teixeira (or Prince Fielder) at first. In my view, it’s even better if this extra bat is…

2. A young catcher. If you can get a young catcher with a good bat, you can hit two birds with one stone. But I don’t know that there’s a catcher available who could deliver the kind of bat the Red Sox need; names floating around out there are Taylor Teagarden and Jarrod Saltalamacchia of the Rangers (or perhaps Gerald Laird, if the Red Sox land Teixeira).  Ideally, the new guy would be defensively savvy enough (Teagarden! Teagarden!) to get the hang of Wakefield’s knuckler, since the Sox have already re-upped him and since Varitek hates to catch him. Let Tek be the backup and pass on the hoary w. to the new kid. Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing the Red Sox deal some of their sa-weet young pitching prospects to land a catcher they were truly excited about. They’ve been saving up their pitching prospects for years, and are now loaded with them. Which brings me to my next item….

3. Make Justin Masterson a starter again. Yes, he was pretty good as a reliever. But he was also great as a starter. I’ve never seen a satisfactory explanation for why they moved him to the bullpen than, “Mike Timlin just got really old.” A rotation of Beckett, Lester, Matsuzaka, Wakefield, and Masterson — with Buchholz or Bowden in the mix as well — sounds good to me. Besides, how hard is it really to pick up a random assortment of cheap relievers and let the bullpen sort itself out? A very few pitchers aside, this is pretty much how it seems to end up working every year, anyway.

The first two items above are essential — the third, just my personal preference. (And yes, in a perfect world, the Red Sox would find someone to take Julio Lugo off their hands, too.)

If the Red Sox can snag themselves a young bat and a young catcher, they’ll be well on their way to turning back time. And not in a scary hyperbaric chamber and/or bodystocking sort of way, either.

- What They Need Index -

We may only have another day to enjoy this, Sox fans, since Josh Beckett and his craptastic oblique will be taking the mound for Boston tomorrow and who knows what will happen. To get the maximum enjoyment out of this moment—and I am still doing secret little cha-cha moves up and down the corridors at work when I think no one can see me—here’s a roundup of links:

Yahoo’s Jeff Passan goes for goosebumps and raises the specter of Aaron Bleepin’ Boone.

Sox&Dawgs never gave up. No, really! (I sort of gave up, but gave up while still firmly believing that if they only put their freakin’ minds to it, they could come back. If that makes sense.)

Center Field is glad the Sox stuck it to the TBS broadcast crew, who did indeed start talking about the Rays-Phillies World Series before the game was truly ovah. (Thanks, announcerboys! A little reverse-jinx action never hurts.) And as we know, it ain’t ovah ’til the Big Papi swings.

Kevin McNamara homes in on the Crisp at-bat.

Fenway West has the wooooo-creepy numerology take.

Red Sox Monster highlights Curt Schilling’s (really awful) first pitch — the only pitch he threw from the mound in Fenway all year. Which, yes, means it cost 8 million dollars. But clearly it was worth it for a little bit o’ that bloody sock karma, right?

Joy of Sox notes that after falling behind 7-0 and intentionally walking Carlos Pena, the Red Sox only had a 0.6 chance of winning. If you turn the chart upside down, it looks sort of like the Dow.

As a bonus to her great recap, Amalie Benjamin has a video detailing the superstitious behavior of some Sox players during the final innings.

King Kaufman assails the fans who left early. Shame!

Tony Massarotti says “Wow.” And has a kind of creepy quote from Beckett: “Tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.” But before you get all Macbethian like I did, he’s just clarifying when he’ll talk to reporters.

Alex Speier reports that even with the hot, swampy breath of defeat steaming the backs of their grimy necks, the Red Sox dugout thrummed not with doubts, but with the steely resolve of a determined and indefatigable mantra: “Let’s win every pitch.”

Joe Posnanski calls it something out of a kid’s dream. Yes: yes. A wild, improbable, ridiculous dream! Why did we become prematurely middle-aged cynical farts who fret about the stock market and pop Prilosec before eating pizza? NO! Today my hair is shiny. My abs are like my college abs. I could eat a barrelful of chili-cheese fries smothered in jalepenos and buffalo sauce and wash it down with cheap tequila and not feel even the slightest singe along my esophagus. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t even need coffee! i just bounded out of bed, tingling with La  Belle Victoire. (But i did have some coffee anyway, just in case.) Maybe October comebacks are what Ponce de Leon was looking for!

I’m watching the game—it’s just the bottom of the 4th now—and the Red Sox have coughed up yet another early lead to the Rays. Evan Longoria only hits home runs. So, too, B.J. Upton. Scott Kazmir has suddenly remembered how to pitch. Meanwhile, David Ortiz struck out on three pitches earlier and can’t hit the side of a barn. I think I heard some Fenway Faithful actually just boo him.

It’s pretty depressing. But here’s one thought: Daisuke Matsuzaka should win the Gold Glove. Seriously. We all know the Gold Glove for a pitcher is sort of a joke award, but he’s had two really spectacular (for a pitcher) plays tonight, and it’s not even that unusual—Dice-K always fields his position well.

Anyway, if the Red Sox can somehow pull this one out, I’ll be excited for them to head back to the Trop–where at least they played reasonably well in the first two games.

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I’ve been wanting to write about the playoffs, but I’m a little overstimulated by the prospect of a Phillies-Rays World Series. So I’m just going to throw some thoughts against the virtual wall and see what sticks.

• Last night, after the Rays emphatic victory over the Sox, Peter Gammons asked Tampa left fielder Carl Crawford how he felt about the win. And Crawford went through the usual scripted response, ending with something like, “and hopefully we can win one more and play in the World Series.” The look on his face when he said the words “World Series” was priceless — like he never said it out loud before. He was giggling.
• Inquirer columnist Bob Ford was wrong, and he’s not afraid to admit it. He says he shouldn’t have bashed Pat Gillick for signing Joe Blanton, Scott Eyre and Matt Stairs. Who’s going to be the next columnist to apologize? How about you, Jim Salisbury?
• Before this season started, whenever I would talk about the Rays’ loaded farm system, someone would remind me about Boston’s glut of young talent, most notably Jed Lowrie, Clay Buchholz and Jacoby Ellsbury, and about New York’s young guns Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, as well as Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera. But all of a sudden Buchholz is unable to pitch with men on base and Ellsbury’s a shadow of his 2007 playoff self, while Hughes and Kennedy are constantly hurt or getting shelled. Cano, for his part, got off to a terrible start in 2008 and didn’t improve defensively, while Cabrera got demoted. I’m not saying that Boston or New York should give up on any of these guys. But if you’re a Yankees or Red Sox fan, and you’re watching the Rays kick ass this week, it’s probably hard to feel excited about your team’s youth movement.
• Bad sign for the Dodgers: Scott Boras is already talking about Manny Ramirez’s free agent negotiations.