What would you rather?
| Yankees win World Series and cut payroll to $150M for 2007. |  56 (37.33%) |
| Yankees don't win World Series and keep payroll at $200M+. | 94 (62.67%) |
Can I go with "Yankees lose World Series (in four games, at that), increase payroll to $500 million, Steinbrenner's cheques start bouncing, Derek Jeter is repossessed by the bank and Alex Rodriguez is sold to the Hiroshima Carp while the rest of the organization is sucked into a financial black hole"?
Just the idea of Jeets being re-possessed by the bank make the idea sound good to me.
But beating them with their stupid payroll as it is would be more satisfying, as would seeing them not win the big show. 150 is still a lot. Cut it to 50 million and see how clever Cashman looks at the trade deadline.
I can't vote in this poll. The first option sucks (and doesn't matter anyway given that their bottomless budget would become even more bottomless at the 2007 trade deadline). The second option is the same as the past 6 seasons, which also sucks as the Yankees would likely still finish ahead of the Jays given the payroll disparity, save for Yankee stadium being enveloped in one big staph infection.
Yankees don't win World Series and keep payroll at $200M+.
Because if you can't do it for 200 million, it ain't gonna happen. It would also make Steinbrenner so mad that he'd finally have his long awaited explosion and fire everyone he can without explanation or reason.
That or he croaks.
What I hope happens is they lose in game 5 of the first round via A-Rod making an error to allow the go-ahead run to score then A-Rod strikes out with the bases loaded to end the game. Hopefully that'll be enough to make them go nuts and trade him to anyone other than the Red Sox for a bag of balls. Then the Yanks can blow a fortune on a guy who really isn't any good but has 'character' and increase the odds of them coming in 2nd, 3rd, or even worse :)
The Yankees are spending ~200 million this year, but they're almost certain to not pick up Sheffield's 13 million dollar option, nor can I imagine that they'll pick up Mussina's 19.5 million dollar option (although they may resign him) That's 30 million dollars (or some portion of that) they have to play around with - aka spend on pitching, which was their weakness this year. Throw in a full year of Matsui and Abreu, plus Phillip Hughes, and presto.
Andres, they don't "have" the 30 million to spend on pitching. It's lost money - everyone who looks at the Yankees' financial situation (myself included) agrees that they are losing a ton of money each year, and it's rapidly eating into Steinbrenner's available wealth. The Yankees themselves agree; every year when the offseason begins they talk about the need to make extensive payroll cuts, they just haven't followed through.
But they simply have to stop at some point; I had really thought it would be last season but perhaps it will be this one.
I love Joanna's idea of the bank reposessing Derek Jeter, but it's funniest if you imagine them forcing him to play for the company softball team.
While the Sheffield and Mussina contracts may be off the books in 2007, scheduled salary increases for Posada, Abreu, Jeter, Giambi and Pavano (hee!) will mean that their payroll flexibility will be limited (as it was in the 2006 off-season).
Bruec, the Yankees spent 125 in 2002, 154 in 2003, 182 in 2004, 208 in 2005, and now 203 in 2006. See a trend?
They're clearing 30 million off their payroll with two players, one of whom is redundant anyway, plus a bunch of other guys deals are done as well. The only position player they might want or need would be a first baseman or another catcher, other than that they would probably spend any money on, I dont know, pitching.
They just broke 4 million fans for the second year in a row, they have their own cable network, and they're getting a new billion dollar stadium, of which they get to pay their portion through tax exempt bonds that New York City is raising. And the stadium is going to have a whole whack of luxury boxes. If they want to spend money, and Steinbrenner clearly does, they can.
Salary increases aside, I'd make a NFH bet that the Yankees spend at least 20 million dollars on signing pitchers this offseason.