Agent goes to bat for Jeter

Wednesday Derek Jeter's agent had his say.

Briefly.

A day after managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said in two radio interviews that "we're running a business here" in regard to how far the Yankees would be willing to go in re-signing the shortstop, Jeter's agent responded.

"While it is not our intent to negotiate the terms of Derek's free-agent contract in a public forum,'' Casey Close told AOL FanHouse, "we do agree with Hal's and [GM Brian Cashman's] recent comments that this contract is about business and winning championships. Clearly, baseball is a business, and Derek's impact on the sport's most valuable franchise cannot be overstated. Moreover, no athlete embodies the spirit of a champion more than Derek Jeter.''

On Tuesday Steinbrenner, in interviews on 1050 ESPN and WFAN, intimated a blank check wouldn't be handed to Jeter and warned fans that negotiations might have some obstacles.

"There's always the possibility that things could get messy," Steinbrenner said on 1050 ESPN. "I know our fans are very emotional and that's what we love about them. But I have to try and do my job on behalf of the partnership and our partners and everybody else involved with the organization, and Hank and I need to take a level head and realize that, just as I said, we're running a business here."

Steinbrenner oversaw organizational meetings that ended Tuesday in Tampa, and team meetings continued Wednesday in the Bronx among Cashman, his baseball operations staff and scouts looking over free agents and players possibly available via trades.

Steinbrenner said the Yankees' first priorities this offseason were re-signing Jeter and Mariano Rivera and then the rest of the free-agent class.

The Rangers' Cliff Lee, a free agent for the first time, is the Yankees' primary target and they can begin courting him at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, when clubs lose exclusive negotiating rights with their own free agents.

That is a change invoked this season. The window for teams to exclusively talk to their free agents is now five days, down from 15.

In the Rangers clubhouse after his loss in Game 5 of the World Series, after the final wave of media had departed, Lee was asked if his hope was for as quick a resolution as possible to his free agency.

"I really don't know," Lee told Newsday. "This is my first time to do [free agency] so I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how aggressively teams get and how fast things work. I'll play it out and see how it works out. It's hard to know."

This much is certain regarding Lee: The Yankees will be plenty aggressive.