There is a difference of thought between those who live in Cleveland and those in the rest of the country. The rest of the country apparently believes that there is no way that the Indians won't re-sign C.C. Sabathia. We that live in Cleveland know that there's about a .5% chance that they do re-sign him. If he is willing to take 4 years and $60 million, they'll re-sign him. If he wants a deal within $35 million of Santana (which he'd get on the open market) then they won't.
This is Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome all over again. They both said that they wanted to stay in Cleveland. They both left. C.C. says he wants to stay in Cleveland. He'll either be gone at the All-Star break in a trade, or he'll walk and the Indians will get nothing at the end of the year.
There's no way that they'll pay a single player 20-25% of their total payroll. There's too much risk for them to do that. The Yankees can afford to bite a $15-$20 million bullet and still have flexibility to sign other players. If C.C. were to injure himself and the Indians were on the hook for his salary, they'd have no ability to do anything about it. They couldn't afford to replace him with any meaningful impact player. That's truly the difference between a big market and a small market. Big markets can recover from mistakes (see Carl Pavano) and small market teams cannot.