One AL executive called it a “do-over,” another “a baseball blessing” and an NL official simply said “it was a [bleeping] miracle.”
The Red Sox received it. The Yankees need it.
The Red Sox are one win shy of a World Series title, and it is impossible not to connect the dots from their August 2012 trade with the Dodgers – their “[bleeping] miracle” – to Wednesday night, when they will try to win their third title since 2004.
The Red Sox traded roughly a quarter of a billion dollars worth of contracts they no longer wanted — those of Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Nick Punto — to the Dodgers. That provided a financial reset that enabled them to restructure their roster in such a way that would have otherwise been impossible given their plans to stay under the 2013 $178 million luxury-tax threshold.
The Yankees need Fredric Horowitz to be their Dodgers. They need the arbitrator to uphold, at minimum, 150 of the 211-game suspension levied by Bud Selig against Alex Rodriguez. The Yanks are planning to get under the $189 million luxury-tax threshold next season. Can they do that with A-Rod on the dockets? Sure. But it would hamstring them in addressing their myriad other problems, especially if they still intend to sign Robinson Cano long-term.
The most likely rulings by Horowitz are to reduce the penalty to 50 games, cut it to 150 games, make it all of next season or honor the full 211. Anything but the 50 games would be a great help for the Yanks. If you don’t think it will, then why was Buck Showalter so outraged – before being gagged by MLB – about the Yanks’ ability to reset their financial picture if the suspension goes through?
The Orioles manager understood it would more easily allow the Yanks to slide under the threshold in 2014 while remaining contenders, plus receive the game-changing future financial benefits for doing so.
For luxury-tax purposes, A-Rod costs the Yanks $27.5 million per year. If Rodriguez’s penalty is reduced to, say, 50 games, that would become about $18.5 million for 2014. Now, it is possible — considering the bad blood and the legal possibilities between franchise and player — the Yankees could simply cut Rodriguez. But, remember, playing or released, A-Rod is still owed $62 million from 2015-17 — unless the Yanks can find a legal pathway out of the remainder of his pact, which is unlikely.
If they keep Rodriguez, the Yanks actually must budget an additional $6 million on top of his 2014 salary. That is the contractually mandated bonus he would receive for hitting six more homers and reaching 660, the total hit by Willie Mays. So, if A-Rod gets 50 games, the $18.5 million really becomes $24.5 million in the Yankees’ minds.
Add that to the approximately $67.5 million owed their currently signed players — mainly, CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira – and the Yankees would be at $92 million. The roughly $11 million each club is charged for items such as insurance and pension gets it to $103 million. Arbitration-year salaries for Brett Gardner and David Robertson take it to about $113 million. Tack on Cano, at, say, $23 million and it is $136 million. Allocate the standard-ish $5 million for minor league call-ups during a season and it is $141 million.
The Yanks still would have maneuverability toward $189 million, but not nearly enough to complete their wish list of Masahiro Tanaka, Hiroki Kuroda, Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann and general depth. Subtract A-Rod and the math gets better for the Yanks. And their beacon is their Rival.
For luxury-tax purposes and just for 2013, the Red Sox removed about $60 million by trading Crawford, Gonzalez, Beckett and Punto. Boston GM Ben Cherington said the club was in the midst of formulating how to build a contender with those players before the Dodgers’ bold new ownership served as guardian angel on Aug. 25, 2012.
But when I asked if his team would be in the World Series under that formulation, Cherington said, “That is one of those hypotheticals that is hard to answer.”
But know multiple members of this front office put the possibility at “no prayer.”
With a chance to reset, Boston eschewed the kind of megadeals it had with Crawford and Gonzalez and prioritized depth of roster and character. The Red Sox reinvested almost exactly the $60 million-ish they removed in base salary for seven free agents (Ryan Dempster, Shane Victorino, Stephen Drew, Jonny Gomes, Mike Napoli, Koji Uehara and David Ross) plus one trade acquisition (Joel Hanrahan).
The consensus from Red Sox officials was had they not made the big deal with Los Angeles, Boston still probably would have made the Hanrahan trade (a bomb because he needed early-season Tommy John surgery and will be a free agent after the World Series) and signed Ross because of a need for a backup catcher and probably inked Gomes to replace the righty bat of Cody Ross, who left in free agency.
The rest was either a firm “no” or “doubtful.” No Dempster because Beckett would be there. No Victorino because of Crawford. No Napoli because of Gonzalez. And with the worries about exceeding the threshold, Red Sox officials say they likely would have gone with Jose Iglesias at short rather than Drew, which would have had the subsequent impact of no trade for Jake Peavy, because Iglesias was the price. Also, probably no Uehara because the marginal dollars – if spent at all – likely would have gone for starting pitching depth, which was not as much of a priority because Boston, as part of the package back from the Dodgers, received Allen Webster.
The other result of the trade, according to team insiders, is the removal of guys who had to play no matter what — notably Crawford, who struggled with the intensity of Boston — allowed manager John Farrell to play whom he thought would help the Red Sox win. Thus, if Gomes had to start against a righty (breaking the platoon) or David Ross had to start over Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Farrell had a roster more flexible in talent to do so and less inflexible in terms of accepting such moves.
“Could we have been good without the trade?” Cherington said. “I know it would have looked a lot different.”
And no two franchises should better understand the impact one trade could have than the Red Sox and Yankees. After all, the Red Sox will try Wednesday night in Game 6 against the Cardinals to secure their first World Series at Fenway Park since Sept. 11, 1918.
Babe Ruth played left field as a defensive replacement in the Game 6 clincher after winning two games as a pitcher earlier in the Series, helping Boston to its fourth title in seven years. Fifteen months later, Ruth was sold to the Yankees, who became a dynasty.
The Red Sox waited 86 years for another title, reached, coincidentally, in the aftermath of having A-Rod slip through their grasp to the Yankees.