{"id":1628,"date":"2008-12-24T13:00:16","date_gmt":"2008-12-24T13:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=1628"},"modified":"2010-04-02T15:34:19","modified_gmt":"2010-04-02T14:34:19","slug":"yankees-spend-spend-then-spend-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=1628","title":{"rendered":"Yankees spend, spend then spend again"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wasn’t going to post anything else today after my ‘awards’ piece, but the news<\/a> that the Yankees have agreed an eight-year\/$180m contract with Mark Teixeira has compelled me to get back in front of my keyboard.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

No doubt my experience mirrored that of many baseball fans when waking up to the news this morning: logging on to MLB.com, seeing the headline ‘Yanks land Teixeira with eight-year deal’ and muttering a common two-word phrase in which the second word is ‘me’ and the first word begins with ‘f’.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Oh yes, the Yanks have done it again!\u00c2\u00a0 After giving Sabathia $161m and Burnett $82.5m, the Steinbrenners have fumbled around under the cushions of their sofa and found another $180m of change to add another free agent to their collection.\u00c2\u00a0 As befits the stereotype of an impatient New Yorker, Yankee fans haven’t had to wait until Christmas day before receiving a bundle of wonderful presents, although next year’s amateur player draft could be a greater test of endurance.\u00c2\u00a0 It looks like<\/a> they won’t get to select a player until the fourth round thanks to all of the draft picks they will lose.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

That’s a price the Yankees will be more than willing to pay.\u00c2\u00a0 In fairness to them, if you are going to lose draft picks and spend a lot of money, you might as well do so by acquiring the best players available.\u00c2\u00a0 Giving multi-year deals to pitchers is always a risk (one that can’t be completely avoided), but signing CC Sabathia for $161m makes a lot more sense than giving Barry Zito $126m, or even inking mediocrities like Carlos Silva to four-year deals worth $48m.\u00c2\u00a0 Although the Burnett deal has the potential to turn into a disaster due to his injury record, if he can keep on the mound then he makes the Yankees’ rotation a fearsome group.<\/p>\n

Just as Sabathia and Burnett represented two of the top pitching talents available, Mark Teixeira was undoubtedly the premium bat on the free agent market.\u00c2\u00a0 He has proved to be a consistent run producer and also an excellent fielder at first base and there’s no doubt the Yanks have got a quality player for their money.<\/p>\n

Maybe there is some hope for depressed baseball fans fearing that the signing of the first baseman has made it inevitable that the Yankee’s will sweep their way to success. The Braves traded for Teixeira at the end of July ’07 to turn a play-off hopeful into a play-off participant.\u00c2\u00a0 Result: they didn’t even win the NL wild card, never mind the NL East division. The Angels traded for Teixeira at the end of July ’08 to turn a play-off team into a World Series champ.\u00c2\u00a0 Result: L.A. fell at the first hurdle in October.\u00c2\u00a0 So, perhaps Tex isn’t quite the impact player we have been led to believe?\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

No, I haven’t been able to convince myself that’s the case either.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Yankee fans are ecstatic, everyone else is busy bemoaning the unfairness of it all.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though it is true that the Bronx Bombers have seen a lot money coming off the payroll this winter, that doesn’t diminish the impact of committing themselves to spending $423.5m on just three players.<\/p>\n

Take my A’s as an example.\u00c2\u00a0 Last year, our opening day payroll<\/a> for the 25-man roster was a shade under $48m.\u00c2\u00a0 Even when you disregard their signing bonuses, the Yankees’ three new players will earn $54m combined in 2009.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

So is the signing of Teixeira yet another symptom of everything that is wrong with the game?\u00c2\u00a0 Not as far as I’m concerned.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like it or not, the Yankees generate a huge amount of revenue and they are entitled to spend it as they wish (and you have to grudgingly admire the fact that they choose to spend that money on trying to win rather than lining the owner’s pockets).\u00c2\u00a0 The Yankees also generate revenue for the other teams to enjoy, indirectly by increasing the value of the overall TV contracts and directly by shelling out ‘luxury tax’ ($26.9m<\/a> for 2008).<\/p>\n

More than anything, the Yankees’ prolific spending should be the source of great entertainment.\u00c2\u00a0 The potentially great team the Yankees will be fielding gives everyone else a target to aim for.\u00c2\u00a0 They are firmly cast as the pantomime villain and a convincing bad guy makes any show all the more exciting.\u00c2\u00a0 Fans of the other twenty-nine teams will be gritting their teeth today, saying to themselves: ‘I hope we get a chance to knock those bloody Yankees down a peg or two’.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

These signings (and there may be more to come) have made the Yankees a formidable contender for the World Series and they could well go on and win it all.\u00c2\u00a0 However, anyone who knows anything about sports (and particularly MLB) knows that there are never any certainties.\u00c2\u00a0 If the Yankees end the year parading the World Series trophy, I’m sure their massive wealth will be at the forefront of my mind.\u00c2\u00a0 But that same level of spending will also make it all the more enjoyable for a team that is able to beat them.<\/p>\n

Oh, I can see it now.\u00c2\u00a0 Game seven of the ALCS, the scores are tied in the ninth inning and the A’s complete a glorious comeback against all the odds, one that makes David versus Goliath look like an even contest, to book their place in the Fall Classic.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe with Jason Giambi sliding into home plate for the winning run just to exorcise the ghost of his brother’s base-running antics of 2001?<\/p>\n

Bud Selig likes to talk about parity, but nothing is more boring than everyone being the same.\u00c2\u00a0 Watching the Yankees and their expensive free agents battling against the youthful Rays, with a payroll of probably not much more than a quarter of their rival’s, will be compelling entertainment in 2009.<\/p>\n

And the main reason it will be so compelling is that while the glamour free agents and the $200m+ payroll will make the Yankees a very tough team to beat, that same situation didn’t stop the Rays from coming out on top last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wasn’t going to post anything else today after my ‘awards’ piece, but the news that the Yankees have agreed an eight-year\/$180m contract with Mark Teixeira has compelled me to get back in front of my keyboard.\u00c2\u00a0 No doubt my experience mirrored that of many baseball fans when waking up to the news this morning: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-1628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1628"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7287,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions\/7287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}