Derek Jeter’s agent, Casey Close, is currently asking the Yankees to agree to a new contract of either four or five years at $23 million to $24 million a year, according to a person in baseball who had been briefed on the matter.

The disclosure of what Close is seeking on behalf of Jeter, the 36-year-old Yankee captain and icon, comes just days after it was revealed that the Yankees are offering Jeter a three-year contract for $15 million a year.

That leaves a substantial gap between the sides in a contract standoff that has taken on a surprisingly tough edge and has left many Yankee fans confused and dismayed.



The person familiar with the bargaining, said the Yankees and Close have been frozen at their offers for the last week and that in recent days there had been little, if any, negotiating.

The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to jeopardize his access to sensitive information.

The talks have been awkward from the start because Jeter, having concluded a 10-year, $189 million deal, is now seeking a new contract just as he has started to show decline as a player. He hit .270 this past season, a drop of 64 points from 2009 and the only time in his 15 full seasons that he has hit below .290.

Those numbers are clearly troubling the Yankees. On Monday, Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman told The New York Times that the team was mindful of Jeter’s age and recent on-field performance and that any new deal had to reflect those concerns.

Close, in turn, has called the Yankees’ approach “baffling,’’ because it does not, from his point of view, reward Jeter sufficiently for all he has done for the Yankees and their championship tradition over the last decade and a half.

Still, the current offers — three years at $15 million a year by the Yankees and a maximum five years at $23 million to $24 million by Close — suggest an obvious compromise in which the two sides would settle at four years and, say, $19 million a year.

If they did agree on those numbers, it would actually represent a small, but symbolic, annual increase over Jeter’s last contract, which, at the behest of George Steinbrenner, was designed to average a sliver below $19 million a year.

A deal that paid $19 million a year would also allow Jeter to rationalize that he was not taking a pay cut, a point that was emphasized on Friday by one National League executive who has been watching the Jeter situation with interest. That executive said that established stars like Jeter typically found it difficult to take any kind of reduction of pay, even when they have already made enormous amounts of money.

Still, it is not clear that the Yankees will ultimately agree to a compromise that pays Jeter $19 million a year, regardless of the negative fallout a protracted standoff might produce. The Yankees know they are the ones with the leverage, because Jeter will not get offers from other teams to match what the Yankees are already willing to pay.

Meanwhile, the Jeter stalemate is creating a significant distraction for Cashman as baseball’s winter meetings approach and the Yankees try to lure the free-agent left-hander Cliff Lee from Texas to the Bronx with a multiyear deal that will dwarf what they are currently offering Jeter.