LAS VEGAS — The Baseball Winter Meetings woke up this morning to its final full day of activity with — well actual activity.

At midnight Las Vegas time, The New York Post reported that CC Sabathia, the biggest  name and biggest pitcher on this free-agent market, agreed to terms with the New York Yankees. Joel Sherman, the writer who broke the Khalil Greene trade, broke the news at the Post’s Web site – “CC SABATHIA PICKS YANKEES” — and other reports have followed, pegging the deal at seven years, $160 million. The question now posed to the rest of baseball is does Sabathia’s decision trigger the market, do things pick up in a final-day, whirlwind spring here in Vegas.

“It’s an unusually slow developing winter meetings, and I assume some of that has to do with the economy,” Washington Nationals president Stan Kasten told me yesterday. “Or it may be just be the pace that the top free agents are taking. I don’t know which. … I don’t know why it is that everything sort of waits for the big names, the Sabathia or Mark Teixeira deals. It’s not like the second-tier or third-tier free agents are really going to have their prices set by those deals. I’ve never thought so. But that’s how it goes.”

The Yankees reportedly remain in the market for more pitching, having also pursued A.J. Burnett and Derek Lowe. Sabathia’s signing could now intensify the courtship of those other players, just as the New York Mets pending-physical deal with Francisco Rodriguez is expected to loosen up the closer market. (The Cardinals, much like the late-season wishes of manager Tony La Russa, did put in a bid for Rodriguez, according to colleague Joe Strauss in this morning’s paper.)

Geography was supposed to play a large part in Sabathia’s decision, as the California native reportedly waited for San Francisco and the Los Angeles Dodgers to enter into the mix.

There were three face-to-face meetings with Yankees brass before he reportedly agreed.

“It’s a big decision for CC and his family and where they are going to go, and you kind of expect it to take time,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said Tuesday. “I think when you’re on the management side you want it to be happening as quick as possible. But going through it as a player, I took my time because it was a big decision.

“You know you think sometimes once one guy goes things start to fall into place and maybe when one guy goes, they don thave the offers from that team any more and it starts to take shape,” Girardi continued. “I’m not sure who is going to be the first big name to go, but I think once someone goes, you’ll see it maybe pick up a little bit.”

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