Sixty Feet, Six Inches

With housing prices plummeting, foreclosures rising, and nearly a $1 trillion bailout needed to stop the bleeding, who would believe that ownership of one particularly attractive property has never been more lucrative?  I’ll give you a clue: it is perhaps the most important and most fiercely contested piece of real estate in the history of mankind.

Alright, fine.  Israel and Hamas would probably put the Gaza Strip a notch ahead.  And on sleepless nights, even the middle of a small bed appears a greater battleground to a tired and uncomfortable couple.  But the ability to lay claim to the 17 inch wide strike zone hovering over home plate has always proved profitable.  Needless to say, the rent just went up… again.

While housing prices in the five boroughs have fallen 7.5% in the last twelve months, New York’s newest twin towers, CC Sabathia and Johan Santana, have each turned their abilities to own the strike zone into $23 million per year.  As home plate covers about 1 2/3 square feet in area, their dominance is priced at roughly $14 million per square foot.

So how solid is their claim on the deed? In the last 3 years, they have each thrown 687 innings giving us plenty of data to work with.  In that time, Sabathia and Santana have shown exceptional control, striking out 4.49 and 4.24 as many batters as they have walked, respectively.  This superior ability to focus on and conquer the strike zone puts them at first and second in the majors for pitchers with more than 120 innings per year.  Over that same span, Johan and Carsten Charles have allowed 1.07 and 1.14 batters to reach to reach base per inning, respectively.  Such denial of first base earned them the titles of stingiest and third stingiest in the majors.  Even more miserly were Santana and Sabathia’s willingnesses to let runners score, putting up ERA’s of 2.87 and 3.03, respectively - good enough for best and second best in the majors.

Neighbors in New York, the Yankees and Mets both move into their new homes in 2009.  And viewing both teams’ big signings as business decisions rather than baseball moves would easily be supported by the millions of fans and the revenue CC Sabathia and Johan Santana are likely to attract.  But, like rival front offices in Baltimore, Washington, and many other cities know all too well, profits suffer when winning percentage drops for too many years in a row.  So will the two simultaneously cheapest and most expensive pitchers live up to their contracts?  Will they win the big battles and help bring home the ultimate hardware?