Sabathia staying is big win for Yankees

How best to describe CC Sabathia's Halloween decision to stay with the Yankees?

Like a Tootsie Pop or a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, the reaction is layered. Call it a win within a loss within a win.

To break it down:

1. It's a WIN, on the surface, because the Yankees' offseason just got about 1,000 times easier. Constructing a 2012 championship team without Sabathia would have greatly challenged newly extended general manager Brian Cashman. It's much easier to just pencil in Sabathia and move forward.

The Yankees still can dabble in the C.J. Wilson free-agency market, if only to annoy other teams, but they have very little incentive to actually sign him now to what figures to be a contract in A.J. Burnett financial territory.

They can submit a bid for Yu Darvish if the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters indeed post the righthander; the bet here is that Texas will go higher.

To be sure, the Yankees' work isn't done. It won't be easy to replicate the 2011 production they received from Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia, even if Garcia returns. Yet moving forward without Sabathia, or even dealing with him as an unrestricted free agent, would have represented a wholly different (and more difficult) plan of attack.

2. It's a LOSS, in the big picture, because when Sabathia signed his original seven-year deal (with the opt-out after three years) in December 2008, the baseball gods fired an imaginary starter's gun, presenting these stakes:

The Yankees had three years to make Sabathia unessential and Sabathia had three years to make himself indispensable. Sabathia won that race.

Phil Hughes is only slightly less of an enigma now than he was three years ago. Joba Chamberlain is a reliever on the mend from Tommy John surgery. Burnett takes the ball every fifth day, and his reliability stops there.

To be fair, the Yankees' pitching landscape isn't dire. Ivan Nova enjoyed a breakthrough 2011, and Manny Banuelos and Dellin Betances climbed closer to the big leagues. But Cashman said the Yankees were "desperate" three years ago when they committed seven years to the then 28-year-old lefty, and now they've given Sabathia, 31, an extra year or two (on top of the four they had left) at a time when his weight is an increasing concern.

Sabathia, for what it's worth, acknowledged in the Yankees' conference call Monday night that he needs to do a better job of conditioning. Of course, he said the same thing last spring training, when he showed up looking slim, and proceeded to balloon by the playoffs.

3. It's a WIN, ultimately, because Sabathia could have made this much more painful. He could've pushed for a guaranteed sixth year and seventh year and used the open market to do so. And he just might have succeeded.

That he didn't is a tribute to Sabathia and his wife, Amber, who lived up to the loving words that they had professed about the Yankees, the New York area and their New Jersey home, where they moved full-time before Sabathia even threw a pinstriped pitch.

"We love it here," the pitcher said Monday. "This is our house. This is our home. We continue to grow here and be part of the community."

Now it's back to a disciplined winter for Sabathia and back to work for Cashman. This wasn't a great day for Yankees fans. For sure, however, it could've been much worse.