The Yankees’ attempts to get under the $189 million luxury-tax threshold in 2014 came into better focus Friday as they completed contracts with all five of their arbitration-eligible players.
The Yanks reached agreement with Brett Gardner ($5.6 million), David Robertson ($5.21 million), Ivan Nova ($3.3 million), Shawn Kelley ($1.7675 million) and Francisco Cervelli ($700,000). That quintet cost $16.58 million and took the Yankees’ payroll – for luxury-tax purposes – to a drop over $170 million.
That covers 19 players, one of whom (Alex Rodriguez) is suspended and — barring an unlikely reversal victory in court — will not play this year.
So the Yankees have to incorporate seven players for a 25-man roster. That should be filled mainly with players making near minimum wage such as Preston Claiborne and David Phelps. But the Yanks want to sign Masahiro Tanaka, who would probably cost about $20 million annually and zoom the Yanks way beyond the $189 million level.
In addition, the Yankees have indicated a desire to bring in at least one veteran reliever to help Robertson late in the game with Mariano Rivera now retired.
Also, each team budgets roughly $5 million for in-season call-ups necessitated by injuries and/or poor performance.
Plus each team is charged roughly $11 million for benefits such as insurance and pension.
The Yanks could attempt to prune at the edges by seeing if they could trade as much of Ichiro Suzuki’s $6.5 million 2014 salary as possible, or possibly by using Gardner in a trade to land a starter, especially if they are unable to land Tanaka.