…Former Philadelphia Philles front office man Mike Arbuckle who quit after Ruben Amaro Jr was named GM has been hired by the Kansas City Royals. He’s signs on to be a adviser to scouting a player development. [Yahoo]

…The New York Mets have hired Luis Alicea to be thier first base coach. He will be replacing Ken Oberkfell who held down those duties for a time last season. Alicea spent the last two seasons doing the same job for the Boston Red Sox.[Yahoo]

…It looks like the Seattle Mariners are getting closer to finding their next Skipper. New General Manager Jack Zduriencik that’s it’s unlikely that he’ll add more candidates to his now short list.[Tacoma News Tribune]

“There may be second interviews for a guy or two we talked to this week, but I may be satisfied through the weekend and the conversations I’ll have by telephone with all of them,” Zduriencik said.

“I vetted them all before the interviews began and was happy with the seven guys we brought in. I’m going to call each of them in the next couple of days, and my discussions with these gentlemen will determine what I do next.”

…Well you can pretty much bet on that Jake Peavy wont be heading to the Atlanta Braves. General Manager Frank Wren has had enough, and has decided to move on when both teams couldn’t come to an agreement. [ESPN]

“We had our last discussion with San Diego yesterday [Thursday] and let them know that if the final names we were discussing wouldn’t get it done, we would move on to other opportunities, other possibilities,” Wren said Friday, according to FoxSports.com.

…ESPN is reporting that the Los Angeles Dodgers have pulled their offer off the table regarding Manny Ramirez. The Dodgers had offered Manny a 2 year $45 million dollar contract with a option for a third year. The offer expired on Friday when they lost their exclusive negotiation rights. But that doesn’t mean they wont continue to negotiate with Manny and his agent Scott Boras. [ESPN]

“We still have an interest in him,” general manager Ned Colletti said. “This doesn’t mean we won’t continue discussions. They just can’t accept that offer flat-out. It’s like any other free-agent negotiation now. We’ll have conversations and sometimes you’re able to sign the player and sometimes you’re not.

…Chicago White Sox outfielder Carlos Quentin has started light hitting and isn’t reporting any problems with his surgically repaired wrist, the one he broke at the beginning of September that derailed what might have been an MVP season. [ESPN]

“Just kind of going through the normal routine in the offseason where I’ve just gotten back into hitting and I really haven’t felt much of it during the swing,” Quentin said Friday during a conference call.

…So what do you do when you win the World Series? Raise ticket prices, that’s what. Most tickets will increase $2 to $3 in 2009. Premium seats will go up $6 to $50, and season ticket prices will range from $1,300 to $4,100. [ESPN]

…There’s more than just Jake Peavy drama in San Diego. How about Trevor Hoffman? He seems a tad miffed at the way the Padres (Kevin Towers and Company) went about giving him basically a “take it or leave it offer” and now it seems Hoffman is set to test the free agent market for the first time since 1993 when he signed with the Padres. [ESPN]

“I was blindsided by this, I really was,” said Hoffman, who joined the team in 1993.

…Major League Baseball made a play this week to get Baseball back into the Olympics for 2016. Commissioner Bud Selig said there will be a effort to send Baseballs best players to the Olympics, which is exactly what the International Olympic Committee is looking for. [MLB]

“The 2016 Olympics will have the best representation of professional players in Olympic history,” said Selig, whose current contract as Commissioner ends in 2012, when he’s 78 years old.

If you remember both Softball and Baseball were voted out of the Olympics in 2005.

For some time now the Yankees, have been baseball’s 500 pound gorilla. But maybe, just maybe having felt the sting of having missed the playoffs and preparing to move into the newest Yankee Stadium and all the additional money that will come rolling in they are about to become a 1,000 pound gorilla?

Last year the Yankees spent over $209 million on player salaries that is $70 million more than the second highest spending team, the Detroit Tigers. Just to put that in some sort of perspective, (yeah right, perspective) that $70 million difference is more than the total payrolls of 11 other MLB teams.

And if there was any doubt that the Yankees despite all the financial hardships that the economy is going through weren’t going to spend like the preverbal drunken sailor all that went out the window with their offering $140 million to C.C. Sabathia.

There was all kind of talk that Sabathia wasn’t that keen on going to New York that he wanted to stay in the NL. SHUT UP! Show me the money!

And don’t expect the gravy train to stop there as Yankees co-chairman Hammerin’ Hank Steinbrenner confirmed that proposals will be forthcoming for pitchers A.J. Burnett and Derek Lowe and lest we forget first baseman Mark Teixeira.Can it be good for baseball that one team can throw economic caution to the wind and literally out bid any team for any player? Just how much bigger can the Yankee payroll get? Well, how high is up?

In 2009 inside those beautiful new digs of Yankee Stadium lounging about in the spacious new clubhouse complete with underground hot tub on any given night you’ll be able to find a collection of players so rich they could probably buy their hometowns. Those same hometowns that players always profess that they want to play close to but never due because some team in another state on another coast offers more money.

Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street proudly proclaimed that ‘greed was good.’ Hank Steinbrenner, Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi are sure happy ball players take that to heart.

It’s hard even to call this “news,” since everyone expected the Yanks to break the bank with a deal to the hottest free agent pitcher on the market, CC Sabathia. The only question was how much would they offer him?

ESPN reported earlier tonight that the Yankees put their big money where their big Steinbrenner-dynasty mouth is, officially tendering a 6-year deal worth about $140 million, the highest multi-year contract ever offered to a pitcher in baseball history.

He would join Johan Santana, Mike Hampton, Barry Zito and Kevin Brown as the only pitchers ever offered a deal over $100 million.

Not really great company: three of those guys were major-league busts, and Santana’s 2008 was merely really, really good. And none of those pitchers weighed 250 pounds and threw almost 500 regular-season innings in the two seasons before they signed their deals.

Kevin Brown actually matched CC with 494 IP in 1997 and 1998—he followed this with 252 IP in 1999, the first year of his deal, and would only crack 200 IP two more times in the rest of his career. And Brown was in far better shape than CC has ever been.

Though nobody believes that any other teams will match the Yankees’ munificence, will CC accept their offer? He loves to hit, and might prefer the NL. Or he might not want the harsh spotlight of the Big Apple. Still, it’s hard to turn down the mystique of the pinstripes, or all that cash, and CC will be hard-pressed to explain turning down a lesser offer.

But rest easy, Yankees fans. Even if they don’t land the big CC, Hank Steinbrenner has already announced his intention to go after AJ Burnett and Derek Lowe, the pitchers that BDD writers ranked #2 and #5, respectively, in this year’s market.

Plenty of other overpaid fish in the sea.