MLB

Yankees, Red Sox brass snipe at each other

TAMPA — Just two days into full-squad spring training workouts, the sparks already are flying between the Yankees and the defending World Series champion Red Sox.

Friday, Red Sox president and CEO Larry Lucchino took several swipes at the Yankees’ big spending ways that helped lure center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury from Fenway Park to The Bronx with a seven-year $153 million deal.

Later in the day, Yankees president Randy Levine responded to Lucchino, who years ago referred to the Bombers as the “Evil Empire.’’

“I feel bad for Larry. He continuously sees ghosts and is spooked by the Yankees,” Levine said. “I guess I can understand why, since two years ago he and Bobby Valentine’s plan led to a last-place finish.

“[General manager] Ben Cherington and the Red Sox did a great job last year, but I think Cash [Brian Cashman] and Joe [Girardi] will have our guys more than ready to compete with a great Red Sox team for a world championship this year.’’

Lucchino insisted the Yankees and Red Sox shouldn’t be considered as having the same business models.

“We’re very different animals,” Lucchino told the Boston Herald. “I’m proud of that difference. I always cringe when people lump us together. Other baseball teams sometimes do that. They are still, this year at least, relying heavily on their inimitable old-fashioned Yankees style of high-priced, long-term free agents. And, uh, I can’t say that I wish them well, but I think that we’ve taken a different approach.

“If you compare what we did last year in the offseason to what they did this year, there’s quite a contrast there. But I’ll quickly say we do keep open the prospect of having, signing a long-term deal with a free agent, paying a sizable amount of money to attract a star in his prime. We haven’t ruled that out. There’s just a rebuttable presumption against doing that, but you can rebut it. The circumstances can allow for you to go ahead and do it.

“The Yankees do it more often, it seems to me that they do it more often as a matter of course. And for us, it would be more the exception than the rule.”

When asked about Ellsbury, Lucchino said the Red Sox didn’t re-sign him despite their desire to because they wanted to stick to their fiscal principles.

“The proposal they made to him was obviously very appealing to him,” Lucchino said, “and sometimes you have to say goodbye to people you’d like to keep here because the appeal of the economics are so great.”