In Major League Baseball, the one big-time United States sports league without a salary cap, it’s highly unusual for a team’s long-term payroll plan to become an item of public discussion. Even more so when that plan calls for a cut.
“Very interesting,” Red Sox president and CEO Larry Lucchino observed this past week at the MLB owners’ meetings, when asked about the Yankees’ stated intention to get their commitments below $189 million in time for the 2014 season. “We have a policy of not projecting or commenting on our payroll.”
But these are the Yankees, and this is the age of ultra-intense media scrutiny. So it makes sense that their vision — which still has a year to go before implementation, if it indeed winds up getting implemented — already has people inside and outside the baseball world talking.
Does it have them acting, though? Has the advancing age of the Yankees’ core roster and goal to stay under the luxury tax threshold compelled their American League East neighbors to pounce on this window of opportunity?
They said no. We say … well, we’re not convinced yet it’s “No.”
“When we have an opportunity, we spend [money],” Blue Jays president and CEO Paul Beeston said at the owners’ meetings. “That’s as simple as what happened this year. Our deal came through. It was with Miami. Then when [R.A.] Dickey became available, it all made sense to put it together.”
“It’s an intensely competitive division. We are certainly aware of what other clubs are doing,” Lucchino said. “We try to keep abreast of that. But every team is unique, and we have our own set of circumstances and operating principles. We try not to deviate too much from them.”
Tampa Bay principal owner Stuart Sternberg missed the meetings, but he wrote in an email, “We don’t spend any time whatsoever handicapping our opponents’ chances in any particular season. Frankly, we don’t have that luxury. … Our resources are our resources.”
Orioles general manager Dan Duquette sang a similar tune. In a telephone interview, Duquette said, “I think in Baltimore, we have to know who we are. … The operation of our ballclub using the resources of our market doesn’t really change if the competitors spend more or spend less.”
Of the Yankees’ four division mates, the one that has acted most aggressively this winter undoubtedly is the Blue Jays. Their massive trade with Miami brought back Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson and Jose Reyes. They gave two of their elite prospects to the Mets to land Dickey. And they even ponied up for notorious outfielder-webmaster Melky Cabrera.
Toronto general manager Alex Anthopoulos has spoken of “a three-to-five-year period” in which the team can seriously contend. And part of that thinking, according to a person familiar with the Blue Jays’ internal discussions, ties back into the Yankees’ apparent weakening, if not specifically their payroll slashing, as well as Boston’s last-place finish in 2012.
Speaking of the last-place Red Sox, they’re in no position to get cute over the Yankees’ dilemma. They have their own recent emotional scars to heal — the large contracts given to Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez, all of which backfired — that has prevented them from going at it too hard. Their signings of Ryan Dempster, Stephen Drew, Jonny Gomes and Shane Victorino and trade for Joel Hanrahan emit the whiff of a club trying to climb back into the race quickly but not at too high a price.
Baltimore? Its stunning 2012 success, replete with bullpen brilliance and extra-inning dominance, will be a difficult formula to replicate statistically, and the O’s recorded a very quiet Hot Stove season so far. Nevertheless, you don’t want to write off the savvy Duquette nor tireless manager Buck Showalter. They’re banking on being able to carry over their dramatic, season-ending sprint — 38-18 in the final 56 games and then 3-3 in the playoffs — into something meaningful.
“After we brought up [third baseman Manny] Machado and [outfielder Nate] McLouth [in August], we were one of the better teams in the league,” Duquette said. “That’s what we’re basically returning, that ballclub.”
That leaves the Rays, whom you probably want to watch closest of all. Their forced financial discipline, a result of playing in revenue-deficient Tropicana Field, has earned them the honor of being baseball’s best-run franchise. In the past five seasons, they’ve won 458 games to the Yankees’ 479, about four fewer victories per season, while spending about $140 million less per campaign.
“A 30 or 40 million dollar payroll difference [between two teams] is quite significant,” Sternberg wrote. “At that level, you are talking about two to three All-Star caliber players. You are suggesting that [a] $130 million [differential with the Yankees] instead of the ‘usual 150 to 170’ creates a window. Think about that for a moment.”
Oh, I’m thinking about it. I’m thinking the Rays will find a way to capitalize on that. They’ve clocked their characteristically intriguing offseason, getting a haul of talent from Kansas City in return for James Shields and Wade Davis while signing James Loney to play first base and acquiring Yunel Escobar as their shortstop — and extending franchise icon Evan Longoria through at least 2022.
No one else in the AL East will profess to viewing the Yankees as vulnerable.
“I think they’re a very formidable franchise. They do it on so many different levels,” Lucchino said. “To look at any one factor and say that signals a sea change, I think, would be a mistake. … Believe me, we don’t underestimate them.”
If no one underestimates the Yankees, though? For sure, everyone will be watching as they steer their ginormous cruise ship of a franchise into that $189 million port.