NEW YORK — On Nov. 20, 2008, Hal Steinbrenner was officially named Yankees general partner and the following year the team went to the World Series for the first time in six years, winning it for the first time in nine years. They did so with a major league-leading payroll of $201,441,289 which was nearly $70 million more than the second-highest payroll of the Mets.
Since then, the Yankees have consistently had the highest or second-highest payrolls in baseball but have not been to the World Series. After finishing third in 2013 with 85 wins and the fourth straight highest payroll in baseball, Steinbrenner made the statement that the Yankees shouldn’t have to have a $220 million payroll to win. He’s reiterated that a few times since, at the same time the Yankees repeatedly exceeded the luxury tax threshold from 2010-2017 and again in 2019 with no World Series to show for it.
This year their projected payroll according to FanGraphs is $246 million which, under the new Collective Balance Tax thresholds, will be about $16 million above the first threshold for which they will be taxed 20%. It is also perilously close to the second threshold of $250 million for which the tax goes up to 32%. Despite this, Steinbrenner found himself coming under some media and fan criticism for choosing not to address the Yankees’ primary need at shortstop through the free-agent market where five of the best shortstops in the game — Carlos Correa, Trevor Story, Marcus Semien, Corey Seager and Javy Baez — were all available, albeit for substantial nine-figure asking prices.
With two players already holding $300 million contracts in Gerrit Cole and Giancarlo Stanton, and another potential nine-figure contract looming in Aaron Judge, Steinbrenner and GM Brian Cashman made the collective decision to obtain their needed shortstop via a trade, and not throw a long-term roadblock in the way of their two top prospects, shortstops Anthony Volpe and Oswald Peraza.
But after the lockout ended, there were still two shortstops left on the board — Correa and Story — with seemingly dwindling options. Steinbrenner and Cashman held firm and acquired Isiah Kiner-Falefa in a trade with Minnesota, only to incur further media criticism when it was learned they were also taking on all of the remaining $50 million on Josh Donaldson’s contract in the trade. That, in turn, enabled the Twins to sign Correa for a three-year $105 million deal — one-third of what he was originally seeking.
But to believe the Yankees were somehow snookered by the Twins was to assume the Yankees actually wanted Correa — which they didn’t for a number of reasons. First, they were concerned about his back and the substantial amount of games he missed from 2017-2020. Second, his involvement as a central figure in the Astros cheating scandal which directly affected the Yankees was a factor. And lastly, the disparaging remarks he’d made about Derek Jeter. His close relationship with Alex Rodriguez also didn’t help.
But while Steinbrenner has continued to spend, he has also made the point that there needs to come a time when the Yankee player development system will produce enough of a young core of players (as it did in the early ‘90s with Bernie Williams, Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada) that over-the-threshold payrolls won’t be necessary. A major component to accomplish this is analytics, which critics claim Cashman has over-emphasized.
As last year in particular demonstrated, the Yankees are not a fundamentally sound team and they have also failed repeatedly in drafting and developing quality frontline starting pitchers. The 2021 Yankees made 50 outs on the bases, fifth-most in the majors, and they tied the Royals for the most outs at home with 22. At the same time, neither of their two latest top homegrown starting pitchers, Clarke Schmidt or Deivi Garcia, was able to secure a spot in the rotation. They unfortunately remain the top-rated starters in their system, which doesn’t bode well for Steinbrenner’s vision of developing his own starting pitching — generally one of the most expensive commodities in baseball (see: Cole) — to help keep future payrolls in line.
This is why it is almost imperative for Luis Severino to finally fulfill his great promise this year. For two sterling seasons, 2017-2018, Severino gave every indication of being that first, long-awaited dominant homegrown Yankee starting pitcher since Pettitte, but after signing a four-year/$40 million extension in 2019 he’s been nothing but hurt. Interestingly, the most successful starter to come out of the system last year — the 5-11 lefty Nestor Cortes — had twice previously been cast off by them because he didn’t fit the analytics mold of a 6-5 gas thrower.
Despite the embarrassment of last year, and the continuing rash of injuries to plague the Yankees over the last three seasons, Cashman chose to double down on the analytics this winter, hiring four new coaches — hitting coaches Dillon Lawson and Casey Dykes, first base coach Travis Chapman, and assistant pitching coach Desi Druschel — all of whom have strong analytic backgrounds. Other than Chapman (one at-bat), none of them ever played in the majors, not that that should necessarily matter.
What does matter is that Steinbrenner also has bought into analytics in a big way and remains fully supportive of Cashman despite the 12-year World Series drought and payrolls consistently first or second in baseball. Every team is now fully vested in analytics, none of them seemingly more so than the Yankees or the Rays in their own division. There is no doubt Steinbrenner has privately seethed at seeing the Rays, in his own Tampa backyard, finishing first in the AL East the past two seasons and ahead of the Yankees the last three years on a payroll of roughly one-third of theirs.
Clearly, the Rays have done a much better job with their analytics in evaluating and developing players while stressing the fundamentals of the game. For that reason, 2022 figures to be a pivotal season for Cashman. For $250 million, Steinbrenner has a right to expect deep-into-October baseball in the Bronx.
