TAMPA —To Ivan Nova, the upcoming season is largely about figuring out what went wrong a year ago and trying to get back to being the 16-game winner he was in 2011.
As difficult as that task may prove to be, Mark Newman’s may be even more daunting.
While the Yankees continue to talk about their desire — if not mandate — to get their payroll under $189 million by 2014 in order to avoid the luxury tax, the team’s senior vice president of baseball operations has to make sure there are enough suitable young players to make it happen.
“We understand what ownership’s objectives are,” Newman said inside his office at the team’s minor league complex yesterday. “But that hasn’t changed the way we scout and it hasn’t changed how we develop guys.”
But the new collective bargaining agreement did change how much teams could spend both on certain draft picks and on international players.
“We used to be able to spend as much as anybody on most picks and now we can’t, so we’re trying to find ways to adapt to that,” Newman said.
Newman has at least one way of accomplishing that.
“We’re going to have to find another Ivan Nova,” Newman said. “A guy you can sign for $80,000 and then becomes a player.”
Nova, though, is coming off a year in which he surrendered more than twice as many homers as he did during the previous season and was 3-6 with a 6.38 ERA in his final 13 starts.
The right-hander threw a bullpen session yesterday and expressed no doubt he would be included in the rotation, even though it would appear he will be battling David Phelps for a spot after failing to make the postseason roster last year.
“I’m going to be there,” said Nova, who has been working on his changeup. “It doesn’t even cross my mind that I’m going to be in the minor leagues. I’m going to be in the rotation. … They saw what I got. I had a bad year last year, but I had a good one before that.”
His performance this spring will likely determine his role.
“You’ve got to take some kind of positive,” Nova said of his regression in 2012. “You have to work on what you did wrong and put everything together.”
And there’s no doubt the Yankees need affordable players to produce if they are going to contend.
Austin Romine could be behind the plate soon, but the Yankees are looking further down the road with prospects including outfielders Slade Heathcott, Tyler Austin and Mason Williams, catcher Gary Sanchez and pitchers like Manny Banuelos, who is out for the season as he recovers from elbow surgery.
“We have to do what we do,” Newman said. “We can’t accelerate development because the game dictates that. The external stuff about payroll, I don’t think that has a lot of meaning to a guy like Heathcott.
“He’s really talented. He can run, throw, hit it over the fence and he plays like his hair’s on fire. He’s not thinking about payroll when he’s doing those things.”
Perhaps the most significant setback to the Yankees’ future came when Banuelos hurt his elbow and Dellin Betances lost his control on the mound.
“They potentially could have been factors in the majors this year,” Newman said. “That was a bump in the road. But you always have bumps in the road.”
Those bumps could be more costly these days, but they won’t impact Newman.
“We’ve always been trying to do the same thing,” he said. “And that’s developing championship-caliber players. We’re not working longer hours, but we know what our mission is. We have to find a way to win.”