Yankees' success this offseason depends on Hal Steinbrenner
Hal Steinbrenner, principal owner of the Yankees, talks with reporters during MLB baseball owners meetings, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2020, in Orlando, Fla. Credit: AP/John Raoux
LAS VEGAS -- A year ago, the Yankees didn’t throw cash at top-shelf free agents in positions of need - like Carlos Correa, Corey Seager or Freddie Freeman - because they supposedly were saving up cash for an Aaron Judge extension.
How’d that turn out?
Judge flatly rejected the Opening Day offer from the Yankees, who then spent the season having to make excuses for Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Josh Donaldson being on the roster.
Well, here they are again, only now with Judge a free agent and Hal Steinbrenner stuck in the same predicament he was last winter. Remember how the Yankees brazenly did nothing before the Dec. 1 lockout took effect, when 25 of the top 50 rushed to sign ahead of the shutdown, for a total payout of $1.7 billion?
It was a puzzling strategy then, and the Yankees definitely can’t be hiding behind budget restrictions now, even as Cashman tries to figure out how far above $300 million they’ll need to go for Judge. But the days of Judge being a convenient alibi are over. The Yankees played that card last offseason, and it wound up being a losing hand.
Which brings us to the Yankees’ current financial situation, after a full season without the slightest pandemic-spurred drags on revenue, and Cashman says he’s yet to receive a 2023 payroll budget from Steinbrenner. The GM is used to waiting. And he can add that to the list, as Cashman, like Judge, is himself a free agent and has been working without a contract since Halloween.
But with manager Aaron Boone getting Hal’s blessing to return, and Cashman functioning with the impunity of another Steinbrenner son, it’s up to the owner to flex the Yankees’ financial might in getting his franchise to end this 13-year World Series drought. We’re not exactly sure what the payroll should be, but here’s something that Steinbrenner should keep in mind before he opens his checkbook this winter.
The Mets -- you know, the team that plays 10 miles away on the other side of the RFK Bridge -- are going to be north of $300 million for the 2023 season, and perhaps significantly. Sharing a city with Steve Cohen and his estimated $17 billion fortune was going to be uncomfortable from the jump, and the Mets’ second-year owner ramped up that pressure by making Queens home to baseball’s highest payroll ($290M) last season.
For the record, Steinbrenner still came in third, laying out $265 million for a 99-win Yankees’ team that got swept by the Astros (payroll: $190M). Hal didn’t get enough bang for his buck this year, but during the glory days, the Bronx solution has always been to spend more. That starts with the budget that should be landing on Cashman’s desk in the near future.
“We’re having a lot of those discussions right now,” Cashman said Tuesday at the GM meetings. “Like any past year, he’s going to be committing a lot regardless. I don’t have a firm number just yet, but I also think we’ll get a lot more information over the course of the coming weeks from our free-agent engagements.”
To help put those discussions in context, I then asked Cashman if the restoration in revenue -- with the Yankees back to drawing 3.14 million again in attendance this season (third highest in MLB) -- suggested Hal would be more open to a shopping spree this winter.
“It’s not my area of expertise,” Cashman said. “I’m the director of spending. I have no idea how the other side of it works, to be honest. I’m not included in those conversations. I would kick that to [team president] Randy Levine.”
Steinbrenner isn’t cheap. But it’s just a matter of degrees -- the payroll in proportion to the team’s overall profit margin. Last March, during spring training, Hal mentioned the “partners, banks and bondholders” that he has to answer in explaining his approach to the Yankees’ payroll each season. That isn’t changing. But the price of winning in New York seems to be rising faster than inflation, and Steinbrenner needs to keep pace, if not with Cohen, then at least using his cash to finance a takedown of the Astros.
With Houston winning this asterisk-free title, Cashman can’t lean on the cheating excuse any longer. It was flimsy to begin with, and the Yankees still haven’t been getting any closer to catching them since the trash cans got put away.
“This year’s version was really special,” Cashman said. “Obviously, they had a great team. James Click and Dusty Baker did an amazing job of assembling, then deploying and managing them. Going into the postseason, they obviously were the best team in the American League and now the best team in the world ... I can only speak to this year’s team. The rest of it? I’m not going to go there. I’ll let you go there.”
We won’t be revisiting that part either. But the Yankees have some work to do this winter to get to where the Astros’ are, and much of that is going to rely on Steinbrenner’s checkbook.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
