Some team is going to pay many tens of millions of dollars (perhaps $75M) just to buy the right to negotiate with Darvish. Then they’ll pay more tens of millions to sign him. That team might very well be the Yankees. They will have multiple needs this coming offseason, but I have to think that starting pitching will be at the top of their list. Mussina and Pettitte won’t last much longer. Hughes and Kennedy are question marks. They still don’t know if they want Joba to be a starter or the heir apparent to Mariano Rivera. So they need a starter. They lost out on Dice-K and I’m sure that still stings (they took Kei Igawa as a consolation prize and we all know how well that turned out). So if the Yankees shell out the mega-bucks for Darvish, that will somewhat dampen their desire to overspend on the #2 need: a firstbaseman. I still think they’ll get Teixeira, but hopefully they won’t wildly overspend. The size of Teixeira’s contract will have an affect on the market rate of guys like Dunn and Burrell. If the Yankees go crazy on Darvish and less so on Teixeira, perhaps that increases the chances that the Royals will be able to afford Dunn or Burrell.