Johnny Damon

After this season the Yankees will have some decisions to make about their outfield. Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui are both free agents. The top outfielder free agents will be Jason Bay and Matt Holliday. Knowing that the Yankees will have a hole to fill and the fact that Bay has fit in so well in Boston probably means the Red Sox get Bay wrapped up (they CANNOT let Bay go to the Yankees). That leaves Holliday as the top free agent but the problem there is the fact that maybe Holliday is not as good as his Coors Field inflated numbers would indicate. He has yet to hit a home run this season and I predicted that he'd be exposed this year.

Today the Yankees have Damon, Melky Cabrera and Nick Swisher as the starting outfield with Brett Gardner poised as the CF of the future and Xavier Nady as the corner insurance plan. Hideki Matsui is basically just a DH at this point and I don't see them re-signing Godzilla.

I guess the Yankees could live with an outfield of Cabrera, Gardner and Swisher but I think the Yankees will start to realize that Johnny Damon is more important to their plans than most people realize. My prediction is that Damon eventually gets a two-year extension from the Yankees and finishes his career having played more games in pinstripes than in any other uniform.