Maybe the New York Yankees will surprise everyone this year and pull a few rabbits out of Hal Steinbrenner’s hat, show a slight-of-hand dexterity that is too farfetched to contemplate, engage in a dazzling display of legerdemain that would exceed anything Houdini ever did.

Don’t bet on it.

If George Steinbrenner could return to earth briefly, he would banish son Hal to the Steinbrenner woodshed, or at least to the family horse farm in Ocala, Fla., to join older brother Hank, who has always been more comfortable around horses than baseball players.

If there was anything the elder Steinbrenner established in his years as the Yankees’ owner, it was spare no expense in his attempt to win. Now son Hal is establishing a new principle: spare no step to avoid paying tax on what historically for the Yankees has been an inflated payroll.

The new Steinbrenner boss has apparently decided he is tired of paying a payroll tax, which takes effect when a team exceeds the stipulated payroll threshold. The Yankees always exceed the threshold and therefore always pay the tax. But the elder Steinbrenner always accepted that as part of the cost of doing business.

Young Hal apparently believes the Yankees can do their business without incurring that cost. He also has seen the Yankees spend enough to trigger the tax without winning the World Series.

By adhering to Hal’s edict, however, the Yankees are demonstrating another cost of doing business, this one a far more negative cost than mere money.

General manager Brian Cashman has been so intent on reducing the payroll that he has left the Yankees short of productive players and has weakened the team’s bench, which has long been a strength that other teams can’t match.

Hal has instructed Cashman to lower the payroll to where it would not exceed $189 million for the 2014 season. That’s the magic number because that is the luxury tax threshold for that year. If the Yankees do not exceed that level next year, they will owe no tax for 2014. Then, even if they triggered the tax in 2015, their tax rate would be 17.5 percent instead of 50 percent.

The Yankees’ economic strategy, however, strikes me as foolish—penny wise, pound foolish foolish.

They don’t have to have a $215 million payroll, as they have had at the close of each of the last six seasons, but they seem to be most comfortable with the majors’ highest payroll.

In addition, they don’t seem to function well without that status. Maybe they can blame this winter’s shortcomings on their unaccustomed status to a reined-in payroll, or simply general manager Brian Cashman needing a period of adjustment. But Cashman has earned no honors for his effort this off-season.

Cashman, in his 16^th year as general manager, is well liked and highly regarded among his peers on other teams, but he has not been playing on a level field and I have long wondered how he would fare if he were.

Other general managers resent the Yankees’ financial ability to overcome a major injury, and now Cashman is learning what it’s like not to be able to easily.

He made quite a spectacle of himself earlier this week when he was scrambling to find replacements for the injured Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixeira. I would not be surprised if a few general managers surreptitiously applauded the way Ron Guidry did in his glove when Reggie Jackson hit a home run upon his return to Yankee Stadium.

Cashman had no interest in discussing the payroll issue when I asked him about it Tuesday.

“I’m not going to comment on payroll stuff,” he said by telephone from Tampa, where is stuck in a wheelchair recovering from the broken leg he suffered parachuting. “That story is old for me. We talked about it as a goal we’re trying to achieve, but it’s not a mandate.”

The payroll story, however, is not old. The Granderson and Teixeira injuries have made it new again or at least renewed it. It will not go away no matter how Cashman feels about it. The Yankees have made it the story of their season. Win or lose, playoffs or not, the payroll is what fans and other teams will talk about.

Cashman, of course, had no way of knowing that his slugging first baseman and center fielder would incur disabling injuries, joining Alex Rodriguez as a sidelined third of the starting lineup. But by letting free agents Russell Martin, Nick Swisher, Raul Ibanez and Eric Chavez leave without trying to sign them, Cashman left himself short on the roster and definitely in bench strength.

A person familiar with the Yankees’ off-season plans said and Cashman confirmed that the decision not to sign those free agents was not linked to the plan to reduce payroll. They were said to be baseball decisions. What kind of baseball decision is it to decide to play without a catcher?

Fifty years ago, when the Mets selected catcher Hobie Landrith first in the expansion draft, Casey Stengel was asked why pick Landrith, and he explained, “”You gotta have a catcher or you’re gonna have a lot of passed balls.”

Well, the Yankees just might have a lot of passed balls this year.

Cashman said he made Martin a three-year offer last March for more than the $17 million he got from Pittsburgh for two years. “I don’t think he expected to have the year he did,” Cashman said.

The general manager didn’t say what the offer totaled, but it sounded as if it was for only slightly more than Martin got from the Pirates for two years, perhaps $18 million.

Cashman, however, didn’t say that he went back to Martin when he became eligible for free agency so the Yankees are left without a front-line catcher.

There was another element in the Yankees’ threshold strategy. The current labor agreement, which is in its second year, has a new wrinkle called a market disqualification refund as part of the revenue-sharing plan. This is a plan that would benefit the Yankees if they didn’t exceed the threshold.

Rob Manfred, the clubs’ labor expert, put the plan into English.

“Teams like Washington and Toronto,” he said, using the Nationals and Blue Jays as examples, “would be entitled to revenue sharing payments under the plan, but because those teams are disqualified” – because of market size – “they don’t get money.”

That would leave money in the revenue-sharing pot. Instead of letting it languish there, baseball will distribute it to teams that funded the pool. The Yankees have always contributed the most money to the fund so they would naturally expect to get back the most substantial amount. How much would be determined by what remains in the fund.

“First call on those available funds are payrolls under the threshold,” Manfred emphasized.

The Yankees initially thought that they might gain $40 million to $50 million from a combination of revenue-sharing rebate and savings on luxury tax, but they have since downgraded that potential amount significantly.

As one baseball official pointed out, “Every strategy has its risks,” but the Yankees’ threshold strategy seems to pose greater risks for them than most might.

For a tax savings of $11 million on a $211 million payroll, the Yankees are willing to squander their chances of getting to the World Series. Yes, they could make it on a $189 million payroll, but they can’t expect to because unlike teams like Oakland and Tampa Bay, their front office hasn’t shown the ability to win with a lower payroll.

The failure to protect their bench or reconstruct it and their unwillingness to spend to add free agents have put the Yankees in a position unfamiliar to them and their fans. The worst part of the plan is it has to run two years, this and next, to achieve the Yankees’ quest for a taxless season.

For Cashman, the story might be old; for players and fans, it will be new every day.