Masahiro Tanaka Signs With Yankees

Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal, who usually has a pretty good handle on reports like this, has the info on Masahiro Tanaka:

BREAKING: Tanaka to #Yankees, seven years, $155M, opt-out after fourth year.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 22, 2014

Presuming this is true -- and I don't have any reason to doubt Rosenthal -- that doesn't necessarily mean the Cubs got outbid. It simply means Tanaka chose the Yankees, for reasons we might or might not find out.

Now, the question is: What do the Cubs do with the money they had clearly earmarked for signing Tanaka? This could have been as much as $20 million a year, or perhaps even more, depending on how such a contract was structured. I'm going to think on this for a while, then write something up regarding my thoughts on this matter.

What I hope people don't say about this is: "The Ricketts are cheap." Because that's clearly not true -- they were in this process to win it, and didn't. But it wasn't because they weren't willing to spend the money.

More to come on the aftermath and what it means to the Cubs, later this morning.