Source: New York Sun

By TIM MARCHMAN
January 15, 2007


With the off-season effectively over, it looks like the biggest Yankees story is the one about what didn't happen: The Yankees didn't sign anyone to a long-term deal.

Everyone appreciates that this is important; I'm not sure people realize, though, just how important it is. As much as it seems otherwise, the Yankees haven't been wildly outspending the rest of the American League for that long. As recently as 2002, their payroll was about $125 million, substantially higher than Boston's $108 million payroll, but not wildly so. It was in 2003 when the Yankees began to lose all restraint, as they spent $152 million compared to Texas's $103 million, the second-most in the AL. Last year, the Yankees spent around $195 million, $75 million more than Boston.

A great deal of this money, of course, may as well have been used as kindling. Players like Carl Pavano, Bernie Williams, Kevin Brown, Jeff Weaver, and so on have made sums out of all proportion to their contributions. The Yanks may have been spending $200 million a year, but a great deal of that has been used to cover up earlier mistakes, replacing players to whom expensive commitments have been made with equally expensive but only marginally better players. In a word, the payroll has been inefficient. The Bombers outspent the Red Sox by more than $200 million from 2004 through 2006, and for the money got 14 more wins and one fewer world championship.

This makes the team's refusal to add more long-term commitments very good news, a much bigger deal than the moves to get rid of Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield, and Jaret Wright, to whom the team only had short-term commitments. This is largely just a function of necessity — this wasn't a strong free agent market — but the Yankees are suddenly, on paper, in frighteningly good shape for the future.

As of right now, the Yankees have $66 million committed for the 2009 payroll, all of it earmarked for five players — Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui, and Kei Igawa. Robinson Cano, Chien-Ming Wang, and Melky Cabrera will all be eligible for arbitration, and the three of them will collectively make about half what they'd be worth on the open market, probably something like $20 million all told.

There are no obvious albatross contracts here. For the past few years, looking at future Yankees ledgers has shown preposterous sums owed to players unlikely to be worth their salaries. Those types of commitments, to players like Jason Giambi, will all be done with in the next two years. Matsui and Damon aren't likely to be star players in 2009, but they are likely to be perfectly solid players for their positions. Every other player to whom the Yankees have a commitment is likely to still be a star or making a relatively paltry sum in 2009.

So, this is all to the good, right? The Yankees will have a bunch of good and great players under contract and a sum equivalent to Boston's payroll left over to spend on the rest of the team, and will thus be a monster. This is the hope, but there are some reasons for concern.

The first is that the young players who are suddenly part of the Yankees' core pose an odd dilemma. Wang finished second in the Cy Young balloting, Cano third in the batting race, and Cabrera put up a .360 on-base average as a 21-year-old. With performances like that, you have to look at these players as very important parts of the team's future, but it's hard to tell how important they'll be, as there are reasons to think they're all illusions. Wang doesn't strike anyone out, Cano's value is extraordinarily dependent on hitting for a high average, and Cabrera hasn't hit for power yet, and may never do so. This makes it hard to plan around them. You can't just pencil in Wang for star performance, because if his one trick stops working, he won't be a star. Not having a firm idea of how good your players will be makes it hard to tell how good you need to rest of your players to be, and thus what sort of players you need to acquire. The Yankees, being so rich, are better situated than any other team to tolerate this sort of uncertainty, but it will still be something a problem over the next few years.

The second is that the Yankees have some players who are going to be very hard to replace. Giambi is a star player, but similar players are relatively easy to find. Closers capable of posting a sub-2.00 ERA for four years at a time, or catchers who hit like Jorge Posada, generally aren't available at any price.

The importance of these problems shouldn't be overstated — there are worse crises to deal with than the possibility that your second baseman may not actually be as good as Rod Carew. Also, the Yanks have some things going for them that haven't been mentioned here, like Phillip Hughes, who may be the best pitching prospect in baseball. Still, the mere fact that the Yankees are trimming the fat doesn't mean their problems are going to solve themselves. It just means it will be easier to deal with the remaining ones. Efficiency isn't good in its own right, any more than a balanced budget is good in its own right. In both cases, it's what you do with the money you're not wasting that counts. There are good reasons to be more optimistic about the Yankees' future now than at any time in the recent past, but optimism does not win championships.