As I recall, he was the last of our recent midlevel pitcher signings that went wrong. Your argument is ridiculous. Yes, we need help, but midlevel pitchers are best coming from your own system; and yes, the young guys flopped on us this year, but you have to switch to them at some point. Recent midlevel starters that have flopped in the AL East after pitching well in the NL are Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, Matt Clement, and Wade Miller. You did catch that, right? One of the pitchers you named as not being acceptable was a FA signing that did well in the NL the year before. Similar situation with Igawa. He lead Japan in strike outs twice. Doesn’t mean he can pitch in the AL East.
    Now, let’s get to Derek Lowe. He’s pitched very well for the last four years in Los Angeles, with an ERA each year under 4. Looks great. He’s only 35, and shouldn’t take a really long commitment like CC would, and probably not the kind of commitment that Burnett will require. However, he’s been pitching in the NL West. You know better. His two seasons in Boston, he was 30, and 31 years old. Right in the prime of his career, and he pitched full seasons with 33 starts each season. You want to know the real thing about it though? He had ERA’s of 4.47 and 5.42 respectively. His WHIP was 1.42 and 1.62. Again this was in the prime of his career, and he could no longer give you good production in the AL East. How do you really think he’s going to react to the AL East after spending four seasons in the weakest hitting division in baseball?
   Now, let’s get to WHY we want to to improve our pitching. Obviously, we want to get back into the postseason, but more than that, back into the World Series, right? Our most obvious competition is the Red Sox, and the Rays. Let’s look at the rotations that we are looking at trying to compete with.
Beckett
Lester
Matsuzaka
Wakefield
Buchholz

Kazmir
Shields
Garza
Jackson
Price/Sonnanstine

Now, what you’re suggesting, is that Derek Lowe would be able to help us match up with these rotations going forward. We haven’t seen the best of most of these pitchers from the Rays, nor the best from a couple of the Red Sox pitchers, so we don’t need to just catch up to what the rotations are now, we need to try to move past them. To this end, we NEED the young guys to develop into studs at some point. Hughes still projects to be a front line type starter. He even added a cutter this summer that adds another look for him. Kennedy still has the potential to become a decent mid rotation starter, whether with us, or somebody else. We have young studs in the low minors such as Betances and Brackman who could be ready in a couple of years, as well as the inevitable surprise prospects who learn a new pitch, change their mechanics, or otherwise boost their status. The idea of developing a farm system is so that you can stay out of the overpriced midmarket FA’s. Your proposal to sign Sabathia and Lowe doesn’t even leave room for Pettitte and Mussina if they both want to come back, let alone Hughes, who needs to get into that rotation permanently at some point in the near future.
  Say you do manage to sign Sabathia, he’s going to get at least a six, maybe seven year deal. So he’s locked in. Chamberlain should have five seasons after this under team control, and they’ve already decided that he’s in the rotation. Wang is under control for two more seasons, and there is no reason why they shouldn’t resign him given his youth, track record, and being a homegrown guy. That’s three guys that should be locked into the rotation for the next five seasons. If you sign Lowe, he’s going to get a deal around 4/60 because of his numbers over the last four seasons, and at least 3/45. So what you have is four guys locked in at four years in your rotation. Three of them should be pretty sure, as they will be plenty young. One guy who could be a problem. And then you would have the last spot for one of Hughes, Kennedy, Brackman, and Betances, as well as plenty of other prospects. Basically, you can reasonably expect that within a year or two of Lowe’s contract you can have at least equivalent production from two of their younger, and far cheaper pitchers.

stick to the plan. It will work.