One way they could do it is by hoping Teixeira has a good first half and then trade him for little talent in return for payroll relief.
Oh my god, that is one delicious slice of deep dish schadenfreude.OilCanMDS said:Rany Jazayerli wrote an article on the state of the Yankees for Grantland today. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/10150907/the-new-normal-new-york-yankees
It goes through the salary cap issue as well as the prospects of the team improving next season or in the near future. The picture he paints of the Yankees farm system and ability to offset the lack of talent in it through free agent signings is grim. I thought these two paragraphs were a good summary of the problems facing the Yankees lineup next season:
Minus A-Rod salary, the Yankees' current internal luxury-tax calculation is at ~$178M. Adding another SP will take 'em over $189M threshold.
crow216 said:Cano was a length thing and if I'm being totally honest, I think they just didn't love his personality as the face of this team. They didn't "let him go." They made a modest offer and were only beaten by one team.
Rudy Pemberton said:
Full no trade, making $22.5M per until 2016.
Who would want that contract? Boston, LAA, LAD, Texas, PHI all seem unlikely; pretty tough to see a match there.
Yanks will pay $28.1 mil in luxury tax on 2013 payroll, according to source. Only other team to pay is the Dodgers. Red Sox just missed.
jon abbey said:I can't find an updated article about Ichiro's effect on ticket sales (and of course it will be very hard to quantify), but here's one from mid-2012 when the trade happened (and there are lots in Seattle papers bemoaning the effect on the local economy after he was traded):
"The Yankees made the deal well aware of those ancillary benefits, having experienced them when Hideki Matsui played for New York from 2003 to 2009. A senior Yankee official said that the team is expecting to reap those rewards.
"I think we'll have a ticket boost, there'll be a merchandise boost, that Ichiro jersey will sell. There'll be boosts all over the place," the official said."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390443437504577547613166163308
jon abbey said:A few quibbles with that piece, but basically it's a nice summary of everything we've been saying here for the last couple of seasons.
Again, the $189M plan was OK when they first thought of it, but when pretty much all of their pitching prospects got hurt or flamed out in 2012, it needed to be scrapped then, before the 2012-2013 offseason. By sticking to it, they've screwed themselves even more than they'd be screwed otherwise, and now they are in a very ugly position for the foreseeable future with no easy way to break back through to being a legit contender.
HriniakPosterChild said:Yeah, like the M's pocket the retail markup for an item sold in their own team store.
But that's not a business that allows you to sit in a comfortable chair and collect profit off your own logo--you have to actually get the customer to walk into your store and take out his wallet before he leaves.
Sampo Gida said:
By my calculations they could be a contender by adding Drew, Tanaka (if posted) and a top bullpen arm (Benoit or Rodney are the only guys left). That puts them at a payroll at about 220 million w/o Arod for 100 games and 15 million tax, a savings of about 30 million on payroll and tax from last year. Easy.
They had the "one run victory" luck that the Orioles had a couple years ago. Of course Mo closing didn't hurt. Yeah, I enjoyed the article immensely. Until I got to the bottom and there was a listing of other recent articles by Rany Jazayerli including "Why The Cardinals Will Win The World Series". How did that work out for you there Rany?Rough Carrigan said:Oh my god, that is one delicious slice of deep dish schadenfreude.
The thing that struck me is that the yankees were outscored by 21 runs last season. I didn't realize that. Holy crap, they should have won 79 games not 85.
jon abbey said:
Right, in house Japanese tourists/ticket buyers, the same group I was talking about above. I've only been to a couple of games in recent seasons, but my casual observation is that there are quite a few of these there, many in the high-priced seats.
Rough Carrigan said:Oh my god, that is one delicious slice of deep dish schadenfreude.
The thing that struck me is that the yankees were outscored by 21 runs last season. I didn't realize that. Holy crap, they should have won 79 games not 85.
jon abbey said:
So the rotation then would be Tanaka, a 300 pound question mark in CC, a 39 year old question mark in Kuroda, Ivan Nova who looked great in the final 2/3 of the season but was bad enough before then to be sent to AAA, and one of Pineda/Phelps/etc.
I don't think that's a contending rotation, but I have very little faith in CC at this point (and not much more in Kuroda after he was terrible down the stretch), maybe I'm wrong.
Brickowski said:Well here's where some of the money went that might have been used to improve the Yankee farm system:
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/apnewsbreak-yankees-hit-28m-luxury-214412105--mlb.html
Maybe it's shortchanging Yankee fans (at least in the long run) by going over $189M, not under.
What calculations are those? I'm familiar with models like Marcels, ZiPS and PECOTA. What's your model?Sampo Gida said:
By my calculations they could be a contender by adding Drew, Tanaka (if posted) and a top bullpen arm (Benoit or Rodney are the only guys left). That puts them at a payroll at about 220 million w/o Arod for 100 games and 15 million tax, a savings of about 30 million on payroll and tax from last year. Easy.
jon abbey said:The Red Sox had great reinforcements from the minors, Bogaerts and Middlebrooks and Iglesias to trade for Peavy. The Yankees have close to nothing.
EvilEmpire said:What calculations are those? I'm familiar with models like Marcels, ZiPS and PECOTA. What's your model?
glennhoffmania said:Did you read the article that talks about how they were really a below .500 team that had a decent amount of luck? They weren't simply a few tweaks away from the playoffs, and that's before they lost Cano, Pettitte and Rivera.
First and foremost, what makes you think that you will get full seasons of Jeter, Tex, Ellsbury, and McCann? All of these players have significant injury histories. Not to mention Jeter and Tex are well past their prime. I had to explain this to a buddy of mine who claimed that my mentioning of the thin pitching and horrendous infield depth was me harping on the "worst case scenario". It's actually the best case scenario, the scenario closer to reality is that Vernon Wells and Brendan Ryan get 400 at bats while Nuno and Warren combine for 35 starts due to the age of the Yankees roster.Sampo Gida said:we have the additions of a full year of Jeter (1.5 WAR), Tex (2 WAR), Ellsbury (3.8 WAR), Beltran (1.8 WAR), Johnson (1.1 WAR) and McCann (3.7 WAR) is a 1 win upgrade despite the losses (or in some case because of the loss) of Rivera (1.5 WAR), Cano (5.2 WAR), Pettitte (3.2 WAR), Hughes (1.4 WAR), Logan (0.5), Stewart {0.2 WAR) , Overbay (0.0) , Ichiro (reduced PT-0.5) and Joba (0.2). Moving Gardner to LF and Soriano to DH should give them an estimated 4 win upgrade (2 W in LF defense and 2 W in DH production from last year).
Also adding Drew (2 WAR ), Tanaka (4-5 WAR per various pundits) and Rodney (0.7 WAR ) gives the team a 7-8 win upgrade over the myriad replacement options available. Good for 92-93 W plus/minus.
mauidano said:They had the "one run victory" luck that the Orioles had a couple years ago. Of course Mo closing didn't hurt. Yeah, I enjoyed the article immensely. Until I got to the bottom and there was a listing of other recent articles by Rany Jazayerli including "Why The Cardinals Will Win The World Series". How did that work out for you there Rany?
jon abbey said:
Jon Heyman @JonHeymanCBS3m
Yanks last couple signings suggest serious intention to get below $189M. a surprise arod arb win would hurt.
Anyway, add the guys under contract to the arbitration eligibles to the possible bonuses to the “other” and you get $212.995M. The 15 guys on the 40-man roster — there are 41 players listed above because the Beltran deal is not official yet, but they will have to make a move to accommodate him once the deal is final — but not on the active 25-man roster are usually estimated at $2-5M, so let’s use the high end and go with $5M. Now we’re up to $217.995M. The Bombers opened this past season at $228.1M and ended it at $236.2M, in case you’re wondering.
Obviously, the Yankees are not getting under the threshold without A-Rod getting suspended for all of next season. Not unless they trade Teixeira and Ichiro or something. Subtract out Alex’s salary and homer bonus and we’re down to $184.495M. Basically $4.5M under the luxury tax.
k-factory said:
Yeah I don't get what Heyman is talking about here.
Cot's has them at 177 but that's not accounting for the arb costs and benefits.
These guys cited from an article on fangraphs did the math and found:
That's from Dec 10th before the 2 announced moves yesterday. Add the 5.5 from Roberts and Thornton and you are now over 189 even if A-Rod is suspended for the year.
I have to believe they are going all in on Tanaka. Makes very little sense to just barely trip over the limit with the 1 and 2 year dreck they've been signing and not give themselves a shot for 90+ wins with that payroll.
Obviously their management has not been stellar but it would be criminally stupid to not add a big piece for the rotation at this point.
Whats going to kill them is that even though a lot comes off the books in 2015 (again looking at that Cot's spreadsheet), there are gaping holes to be filled and unless MLB raises the LT threshold significantly and inflation is suspended or deflates, this thread will be reprised this time next year.
BCsMightyJoeYoung said:
I think I take the opposite view. If they were planning on blowing past 189 why sign drek like Roberts and Thornton? Why did they let Cano go without a fight? Why not sign Choo or Infante?
You have to have a plan about these things .. if the Tea Leaves give you the impression that Arod will be suspended for enough of the year to have a realistic shot then you go cheap. Otherwise you spend what you have to spend to be competitive. They have obviously (to me anyways) done the former.
k-factory said:Whats going to kill them is that even though a lot comes off the books in 2015 (again looking at that Cot's spreadsheet), there are gaping holes to be filled and unless MLB raises the LT threshold significantly and inflation is suspended or deflates, this thread will be reprised this time next year.
http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/yankees/post/_/id/67999/whats-the-holdup-with-beltranI called GM Brian Cashman this morning to ask what was up and was somewhat surprised by his response: "There are terms to do, physicals to take, items to be worked out when you do a contract ... There's no scoop here. Nothing's falling apart. I don't have time to deal with stupid questions like this."
Funny, I never implied, or thought, that anything was "falling apart," just was looking for a heads-up as to when the next rollout press conference might be. If that was a stupid question, I plead guilty. But the GM's response seemed just a tad, well, over the top. Seems as if it would have been just as easy to say, "No biggie, we're just working out some details but it's going to get done."
That would have settled the matter. The way he responded only unsettled it, at least in my mind.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/10-degrees--shin-soo-choo-remains-the-riddle-of-the-free-agent-market-165809610.htmlSuperagent Scott Boras does some of his finest work in the latter stages of free agency. And in the case of Shin-Soo Choo, he faces yet another challenge in a career built on slaying them: find Choo a contract for the $140 million the New York Yankees offered him even after they signed Jacoby Ellsbury.
RedOctober3829 said:They could have seen something in his physical that raises red flags similar to what the Red Sox saw with Mike Napoli. Nevertheless, the more days that go by without him at a press conference the more questions will be asked.
The 40-man issue makes perfect sense. They are probably trying to actually keep Wells around as he doesn't cost them anything and are trying to trade Ichiro to the highest bidder so to speak. But yes the issue may be choosing which OF to get rid of.jon abbey said:The Beltran thing I'd think is just NY taking their time clearing a 40 man spot, at least that's my guess. The Choo thing is fascinating/crazy and I guess proves that NY is actually going to go over $189M? Who knows anymore.
Edit: crosspost with nattysez, there also might be an issue in waiving Vernon Wells as they really need to do.
RedOctober3829 said:hey are probably trying to actually keep Wells around as he doesn't cost them anything
That seems like a lot of unsupportable assumptions and rosy projections in my opinion. For example, you're assuming (I think) that Kuroda will repeat his almost 4 win performance. Last year Ellsbury was worth 2.6 more wins than Gardner yet you're saying his addition is worth 3.8 wins and then still counting Gardner's additional value in LF, even though Steamer only has him at 1.8 wins for the year. McCann wasn't worth 3.7 wins the last two years. Where do these two wins from Drew come from if you're giving Jeter a full year? And you seem to be assuming good health for everyone including Jeter, Beltran, Teixeira, and the rest of the old guys.
In my opinion, even if they add Drew and Tanaka they are not a playoff team.
I don't disagree with this, but a big wild card no one has really mentioned is Sabathia. He averaged 5.7 bWAR from 08-12 and then was worth just 0.3 last year even though he made 32 starts. I know his velocity is down and he seems cooked, but so did Jon Lester.glennhoffmania said:That seems like a lot of unsupportable assumptions and rosy projections in my opinion. For example, you're assuming (I think) that Kuroda will repeat his almost 4 win performance. Last year Ellsbury was worth 2.6 more wins than Gardner yet you're saying his addition is worth 3.8 wins and then still counting Gardner's additional value in LF, even though Steamer only has him at 1.8 wins for the year. McCann wasn't worth 3.7 wins the last two years. Where do these two wins from Drew come from if you're giving Jeter a full year? And you seem to be assuming good health for everyone including Jeter, Beltran, Teixeira, and the rest of the old guys.
In my opinion, even if they add Drew and Tanaka they are not a playoff team.