Yankees intend to blow Sabathia away.

Gee, What a shocker.

CC Sabathia does not need the Yankees to flirt with him. He knows their intentions already. All things being equal, Sabathia wants to go home to California and play in the NL, where he can hit. But as a friend of Sabathia's said yesterday, "he is mature enough and realistic enough to know that the Yankees might not make it close. And if it is not close - no matter how much he likes the West Coast and likes hitting - he is not going to walk away from $25 million. This is not rocket science. It is about how much more the Yanks will spend than anybody else." One Yankee executive said, "we have to separate ourselves." Translation: They must divest Sabathia of his dreams of the Pacific and the batter's box by going to a financial region relatively quickly that no other franchise would even consider, especially in this plummeting economy. That means a bid north of the six years at $137.5 million the Mets bestowed last year on Johan Santana. My gut says six years at $150 million sounds about right to force league-wide surrender before the bidding really even gets