While a recent report by comedian John Oliver has shown the Yankees to be as elitist as ever off the field, they were actually fairly conservative in their offseason strategy this year. Despite losing Greg Bird to offseason shoulder surgery and fielding a starting rotation that will strike fear in the heart of no one, the Yankees didn’t sign a single major league free agent.
In previous offseasons, the Yankees wouldn’t have felt comfortable starting the season with a lineup filled with aging and unreliable veterans and particular with a rotation that, for the moment, contains C.C. Sabathia. This year, however, they showed restraint, not getting into the bidding for big name free agents like David Price and Zach Greinke. Instead, they filled holes with trades, like the one that brought in Aaron Hicks from Minnesota. The only truly Yankee move was trading for Aroldis Chapman (albeit for a prospect package focusing on quantity rather than quality) to bolster their already impressive bullpen.
This is not to say that the Yankees are rebuilding or have changed to a small market strategy, but this restraint should be considered an overall positive. Contract escalations and adding Chapman raised the Yankees’ team payroll above $225 million this year, but at least they didn’t go any higher. They also didn’t surpass the Dodgers, who remain the highest spending team in baseball at about $250 million, down from $271.6 million last year.
As the league has begun to focus more on youth and speed with a premium on defense and fireballing relievers, it is harder for teams who have always relied on purchasing players rather than developing them to stay relevant. Last year, the Royals won the World Series with a mostly homegrown club while the Astros, Cubs, Mets, Cardinals, and Pirates all saw success with teams that were primarily developed internally.
The Yankees have the money to spend, but they may see this success and realize they not only could be saving a lot of money, but could actually have a better team by spending less. We will see the Yankees’ true colors soon enough as Sabathia’s $122 million deal ends after this season (he has a $5 million buyout for 2017), as do Mark Teixeira’s eight-year, $180 million and Carlos Beltran’s three year, $45 million contracts. With Chapman also hitting free agency after 2016 and Alex Rodriguez already announcing his retirement after the 2017 season, by 2018 the Yankees will have reduced their yearly payroll by more than $95 million (about as much as the entire Cleveland Indians roster is paid) compared to the current roster.
What the Yankees do with this financial freedom will be of utmost interest. There has already been some silly talk that they are biding their time, waiting for Bryce Harper to become a free agent in 2019, but as the ringless fingers of Harper’s Nationals and Mike Trout’s Angels show, there is a lot more to fielding a championship than having one of the top players in the league. All around baseball there are teams with a single superstar or two (like Chris Sale in Chicago, Felix Hernandez in Seattle, and Giancarlo Stanton in Miami to name three) that continually come up short. A more complete roster is necessary and the only way to really build one in today’s game is to do so internally.
This concept shouldn’t be foreign to New York either. The greatest Yankee teams since the 1960’s were almost completely developed internally, with stars like Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera leading the way. It was when they first started really trying to buy their way to a championship by adding players like Jason Giambi in 2002 that they failed. While they did win the World Series in 2009 with a largely bought team, in general, well rounded clubs have fared better without the large cost.
For the sake of bringing some fairness to the game of baseball, the Yankees either removing themselves from free agent discussions or at least tempering their wallets would be huge. At the moment, a team whose total payroll is under $100 million can’t even fathom signing any of the biggest names, leading to a compilation of stars in places like Chicago and Boston. Maybe, after years of increasing inflation in baseball contracts, the Yankees can finally be a positive force and help contract values decrease, or at least stagnate long enough for the rest of baseball to catch up.
