The Yankees have already stated that they will go over 189 million if needed to field a championship quality team, maybe they lie, but that's what they say. That does not mean signing Cano to crazy money. I think Yankee fans would support letting Cano walk at that asking price.
The Yankees have never been bothered by the luxury tax in the past, and while this years tax is 29 million at the 50% rate, their previous high was 25 million at 40%. Revenue potential is higher than ever, so there is no financial necessity to be under 189 million, and fielding a dog of a team will cost them revenues. If you assume a drop in attendance of 1 million, that's 50 million there, and double that at least for lost merchandise sales, concessions, ratings drop at YES etc. Obviously, it nice to be under 189 million to save on tax, salary and collect revenue sharing rebates but you need a competitive team to sustain revenues for these savings to do the bottom line any good.
As for the cost to field a competitive team in 2014. Look at the Red Sox. They have exactly 3 home grown players in the starting lineup this year, and 3 starting pitchers, The rest of the starting players on the team opening day were acquired via free agency except Salty who was acquired via trade for nothing much, many of the free agents were signed last offseason. There are a number of reasonably priced free agents this year who won't require 5 years or 100 million. Napoli, Cruz, Peralta, Drew, Feldman. Colon, Granderson, Pierzynski, Salty, etc who could fill holes and with Cano gone (asking 300 million is absurd and you can't wait till January to rebuild a team). Not saying who they should sign here, just that there are always guys who can give you league average or better for reasonable money . You don't have to chase the stars to build a team. Of course, there is an element of luck in the reasonably priced signings working out. Injuries and age related decline that exceeds projections are risks that exist for any signing.
One thing for sure though, any team with Wells and Ichiro in the lineup is doomed to fail. DFA these 2 washed up has-beens pronto. Obviously, the Yankees have to hope Teixeira, Soriano, Gardner and CC, Pineda, Nova are healthy and good next year, and Jeter has to move to 3B while Arod is out, and then fill some holes with reasonably priced free agents. Maybe they bring back Reynolds as insurance at 1B, 3B and DH depending on who else they pick up in free agency.
The bars pretty low for the playoffs, 90 W's, it does not take much to get there, they almost did it this year before running out of gas.
