With a 2010 salary of $11.5 million, Javier Vazquez qualified as a major disappointment this last season with the Yankees. However, the free agent didn’t have to wait too long to find a new home, as the 34-year-old righty starting pitcher has signed a one-year contract with the Marlins.

The contract will be worth $7 million, and comes with a full no-trade clause. It also has a built-in clause that the Marlins can’t offer Vazquez arbitration after the year, which will help to make him more desirable next winter. Vazquez is signing with Florida in large part so he can re-establish some of the value he lost with New York.

– Jeff Sullivan, SBNation.com.

OK, a couple of interesting things here. For one, I was hoping the Mets might make a run at Vazquez. Just based on the back of his baseball card alone he looks like a solid candidate to bounce back — last season was his first real clunker in years, plus he’s perpetually healthy. Also, pitching in the National League East — and in a pitcher’s park — would likely help him.

As Eric Simon pointed out, though, Vazquez’s average fastball velocity took a pretty steep hit last season, falling from 91.1 MPH in 2009 to 88.7. That’s a bit unnerving.

If Vazquez returns to anywhere near his 2009 form — or even his less-spectacular 2008 form — he should be worth way beyond the $7 million the Marlins will pay him. Pitchers that can reliably throw over 200 decent innings do not grow on trees.

But that he cost so much should be at least marginally interesting to Mets fans, since starting pitching seems like the team’s most obvious place for an upgrade this offseason. The innings-eater types — Vazquez, Jon Garland, Ted Lilly, Jake Westbrook, Hiroki Kuroda — have been flying off the shelves this offseason, and not exactly at discount prices.

If the reports about the Mets’ very-limited payroll flexibility are true, then it seems entirely possible they’ll be priced out of the mid-level starting pitcher market and enter 2011 without another reliable starter on the staff. By my count, the only non-Cliff Lee free agent starters who have proven capable of racking up lots of innings over the past few years are Carl Pavano, Kevin Millwood, Dave Bush and Braden Looper.

None of those options is particularly inspiring, for a variety of reasons. (Of course, for the same reasons, none besides Pavano seems likely to command that much money.) Perhaps one slips through the cracks and is available at a big discount later in the winter, but at this point, none seems like a big enough upgrade over Pat Misch and Dillon Gee to be worth paying him nearly all of the Mets’ offseason resources.

Right now, it appears as if the Mets’ best option will be to pick up a couple of upside guys coming off injuries. Joe Janish put together a good list of candidates at Mets Today over the weekend. At first look, lefties Jeremy Bonderman and Chris Capuano seem like decent options, though obviously the cost and the Mets’ scouting assessments are paramount.

The other part of Vazquez’s contract that’s of interest to Mets fans — and all fans, really — is the no-arbitration clause. That was presumably included so that if Vazquez does bounce back and becomes a Type A free agent next offseason, whatever team signs him next will not be forced to surrender a first-round pick to the Marlins. Carlos Beltran’s contract includes the same clause.

It stands to reason that the clause is a byproduct of the league-wide emphasis on the draft, and if that type of contract becomes a trend it will ultimately benefit a big-market club like the Mets. Since the Mets are likely to be big spenders again in the not-too-distant future, they will stand to gain from being able to pursue free agents without risking first-round draft picks.