Yankees Land A’s Sanderson for $4 Million : Baseball: The pitcher had agreed to salary arbitration with Oakland. His agent says he would have been happy to stay with the AL champions.

NEW YORK —  The Oakland Athletics traded Scott Sanderson to New York today after the pitcher agreed to a two-year contract with the Yankees worth more than $4 million.

Sanderson, a 34-year-old right-hander, became a free agent after the season and surprised the A’s on Dec. 19 when he agreed to salary arbitration, which is the equivalent of re-signing.

Oakland did not want to keep him, so it gave Sanderson a chance to work out a deal with the Yankees, who are desperate for starting pitchers. It is not known who the Yankees were trading to the A’s.

Sanderson was 17-11 last season with a 3.88 ERA. He is 115-100 in his career.

“Scott would have been perfectly happy to stay in Oakland and is disappointed he won’t be,” said Richard Moss, the pitcher’s agent. “(Oakland General Manager) Sandy Alderson had a theory that the batting order is so good that any pitcher can come in and win 17 games.”

Sanderson joins a staff that has a possible rotation of Pascual Perez (1-2 in 1990), Tim Leary (9-19) and Andy Hawkins (5-12). The Yankees still are trying to re-sign Mike Witt (5-9) and Dave LaPoint (7-10), who are new-look free agents, and thus free to sign with any team through Jan. 29. Witt has been talking with Toronto.