Some Sunday-morning thoughts about baseball and the Yankees.
Disclaimer: While no one on the planet enjoys bashing the Yankees more than I do, the following isn't intended to serve as a criticism of George and Co. Well, at least mostly not. The same argument would apply if the Red Sox, the Dodgers, or the Jays were the team with the largest payroll.
Those of you who follow soccer know that most European leagues feature two or three star teams that are head and shoulders above the others in terms of results, expenses, and ambitions. Players from other teams tend to gravitate to these teams because they have a greater chance of winning, which only increases as players continue to gravitate to them. When a team becomes entrenched as successful, they don't even need to offer more money to sign the best players; often, the best players will even offer a discount to play there, since it's more fun to win than lose.
In baseball, no team has attempted this strategy in the free-agent era until now. The Yankees and the Red Sox both seem to have entirely given up on the idea of developing home-grown stars. The Yankees, in particular, have become a team of hired guns. Let's go around the Yankee diamond:
1B – Jason Giambi: expensive free agent (backed up by cheapo free agents Tony Clark and John Olerud)
2B – Miguel Cairo and Enrique Wilson: cheapo free agents, I think
SS – Derek Jeter: home-grown player re-signed to expensive free-agent contract
3B – A-Rod: expensive player acquired in trade
LF – Hideki Matsui: expensive free agent
CF – Bernie Williams: home-grown player re-signed to expensive free-agent contract (backed up by Kenny Lofton, moderately expensive free agent)
RF – Gary Sheffield: expensive free agent
C – Jorge Posada: home-grown player re-signed to expensive free-agent contract
As you can see, with the exception of second base, all the positions are manned by players signed for big bucks. (Steinbrenner is probably on the phone at least twice a day to Brian Cashman, asking him why the heck there isn't a name player at second, such as Alomar.) Three of the starters were homegrown, but had to be re-signed to huge contracts (the type of contracts that KC, for example, can't afford). The pitchers aren't any cheaper:
SP – Kevin Brown: expensive free agent
SP – Mike Mussina: expensive free agent
SP – Javier Vazquez: expensive player acquired in trade
SP – Jon Lieber: reasonably cheap free agent (I think)
SP – Esteban Loaiza: acquired in trade for expensive free agent
RP – Mariano Rivera: home-grown player re-signed to expensive free-agent contract
RP – Paul Quantrill: free agent
RP – Tom Gordon: free agent
RP – Tanyon Sturtze: just seeing if you're paying attention
For those of you keeping score at home, that's a total of 11 major and 7 minor free agents, plus Tanyon Sturtze. Most teams can't afford more than one or two major free agents.
What I'm wondering is this: can the Yankees keep this up? Most baseball watchers believe in the "success cycle" model of baseball team development. Eventually, the high salaries of expensive veterans outstrip the revenues coming in from ticket sales, merchandising, etc.; as the players age, the team eventually sinks under its own weight and is forced to rebuild, often from scratch. The Cleveland Indians are the classic example of this. But the Yankees appear to be trying to eliminate the success cycle: as one player ages, they just open their wallets again and haul in another one. (Out with Lofton; in with, presumably, Carlos Beltran.) Because they keep winning, they keep drawing fans, who keep bringing in revenue, and so on and so on.
And a new trend is starting to emerge: many players are starting to limit their free-agent options to two or three clubs, or are trying to demand to be traded to a team such as the Yankees. Roger Clemens did this a few years ago, and apparently Randy Johnson wasn't moved at the trade deadline because he insisted that it was the Yankees or nobody. If a team such as the Yankees continues to make the postseason on a regular basis, there may come a day where a player such as Johnson would be willing to grant the Yankees a discount to get a chance to play for a winning team. At that point, I contend, the economics and structure of the game would change.
One final point, slightly related: I claim that the norm in American League history is for the Yankees to win everything. There were the Ruth/Gehrig Yankees, the McCarthy/DiMaggio Yankees, the Stengel-era Yankees, the Bronx Zoo Yankees, and the George's Wallet Yankees. The only times the Yankees haven't won were (a) the 1964-75 CBS era, in which the Yankees were too cheap to spend, and (b) the Mattingly-era Yankees, in which Steinbrenner was too much of a loose cannon for the Yankees to contend.
Thoughts? Comments? Are the Jays doomed to third place (at best) forever?
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20040808105451999