The Penny Pinching NY Yankees - Final Off-season thoughts Part One

The Penny Pinching NY Yankees - Final Off-season thoughts

by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (2-25-13)

TODD:

Let's wrap up the MLB off-season with one final conversation about the NY Yankees. It was a rather uneventful winter for a team known to out bid and out maneuver its rivals. Something enormous has happened here and I want to touch on this development.  The NY Yankees are now the "thrifty" men in pinstripes.

It has been announced and essentially confirmed that the Yankees are going to cut salary for the 2014 season to get under the new luxury tax threshold. They signed multiple players this off-season for one year deals to accomplish this. They have also pinched pennies at starting positions as to not get tied down to anything long-term. Rumor has it, this will be a one year plan. After they get under the luxury tax, they will then immediately get back over it the following season, but pay a cheaper penalty because of the lack of multiple seasons over the tax.

At first, I looked on this development fondly. For too long have I been forced to explain my Yankees allegiance to people as they taunted me about payrolls and made excuses as for why the NY Yankees were always good. It was always the money, and never the team, despite the fact that other, highly bankrolled teams were having no where near the success.

Yet nevertheless, I was always looking forward to the time when some other team would trump the Yankees' payroll and make us "just another team who spends a lot." The time has finally arrived, but it is significantly less exciting than I was expecting. There are no young, hot prospects coming up to get lots of playing time this season; we are not cutting money at premium positions to give a young guy a chance and watch a new team develop. The NY Yankees are still old as mud but just richer for it. It is...unsatisfying. I pray the season will not be.

DAN:

For someone who prides himself on being anything but a traditional fan, you've been completely played by the opinions of other fans. We Yankees fans don't care why we win, how we win, or what other fans think of our winning. Just win baby.  And now you're unsatisfied that a change in perception isn't living up to the hype. That's because its a show, a game to rile up the rivals.  By all means let us be the "Penny pinching" NY Yankees.

Thrifty is a fun word, but considering how much the Yankees are paying people, they're not actually being thrifty. They ARE in fact pinching pennies, counting every single one to miss the luxury tax in 2014. Since they are just working to avoid the multi-year penalty, I dislike this development a bit less now. They can just spend again in 2015. In principal I'm happy our team is thinking bigger picture, but reality is not nearly as squeaky clean.

I HATE this stupid idea. It only makes business sense and does next to nothing to help the actual team on the field. Our beloved NY Yankees can afford to pay the luxury tax. Lowering or removing it entirely is admirable, but it can't be a one to three year plan. That is asinine and leads me to believe the team will most certainly be sold in 2014 as rumored. The only way this works is if you actually start acquiring young talent for your big money guys, doing so when said players are worth something and not riding the bench because of injury, ahem Alex Rodriquez and Curtis Granderson and more to come I'm sure since our team is old as hell.

I'm sad, not because the team is old and we are stuck with old guys, but because Brian Cashman has always had a plan. He's filled holes with the best of them and made the Yankees a playoff contender for 17 years now. This current situation reeks of no team plan, no long term solution and the looming reality of no championship parade.

[Part Two]