One day last week the New York Yankees’ president, Randy Levine, acted uncharacteristically. He berated reporters who cover the team.
The subject was the Yankees’ position regarding the Aug. 1 trade deadline by which teams can trade players without first securing waivers on them. At this stage of the season, talk always arises about whether a team is a buyer or a seller. That is, has a team decided it is not a contender and will try to trade players or is a contender and will try to acquire players?
When Levine was asked that question at a news conference about a business development, he called it “nonsense.”
“When we decide to become sellers – if we decide to become sellers – or if we decide to become buyers, you’ll know about it,” he said. “But I guess the difference is most of you guys have never run anything and we have a lot of history here of knowing what we’re doing, a lot of confidence in our baseball operations people. So we’ll see what happens. All the rest of it right now is just noise.”
If the reporters’ legitimate questions are noise, Levine’s questionable comments are blather. Given the Yankees’ recent history, how could any intelligent executive or owner have confidence in their baseball operations people?
Brian Cashman is in his 19th season as general manager and has been incapable of using an asset that, until recently, no other team has had. He has been allowed to spend outrageous amounts of money, and he has squandered millions and millions of dollars.
All right, it’s not my money or yours. Why should I or we care how much money Cashman squanders? I suppose it’s the feeling of fairness in us. It’s also the incredulity. How can one man have so much money to spend and not be able to produce a consistent contender, if not winner?
The Yankees have spent a total of $679 million on their payrolls the previous three years, but they have reached the playoffs only once in that period, and then only for a cup of coffee, going down meekly in the American League wild-card game last season without scoring a run.
With Cashman’s $225 million payroll this year, the Yankees have shown no indication that they can attain a post-season perch. A contender? They’ve had trouble maintaining a .500 record. After two losses in San Diego they went into Sunday’s game with a 39-41 record.
I have long been fascinated and perplexed by how a team can spend so much money on players and fail to achieve what teams spending far less attain. Here, for example, is a comparison of last year’s Yankees with the World Series champion Kansas City Royals (all payroll figures in this column computed by Ron Blum of the Associated Press):
The Yankees, it would be fair to note, were not the only team that spent profligately and failed to get to the World Series. The Los Angeles Dodgers began last season with a $273 million payroll and ended it at $291 million, both all-time MLB highs.
The Dodgers, though, are relative newcomers to the game of extravagant spending on player payrolls. They began their inflationary practices when their new owners assumed control during the 2012 season.
By then the Yankees had exceeded the $200 million mark five times. But for three seasons now, the Dodgers have usurped the Yankees’ position at the peak of the money heap.
These are season-starting payrolls for the last three seasons (figures in millions):
The Dodgers, at least, have won division titles the last three seasons. They have encountered problems, though, advancing deep into in the post-season. In 2013 they beat Atlanta in the division series but lost to St. Louis in the league series. In 2014 they lost to St. Louis in the division series. Last year they lost the division series to the New York Mets in five games.
This season the Dodgers are in a better position than the Yankees to reach the playoffs. At the start of play Sunday, the Dodgers were five games behind San Francisco in the National League West but led the league’s wild-card standings.
“The post-season, as we’ve seen with many wild-card winners, is much more subject to breaks and luck than the season, which is a marathon,” said Stan Kasten, the Dodgers president. “We have won the division the last three years. We have accomplished that.”
And, he added, the Dodgers could accomplish more this season if they had more of their starting pitchers on the mound and fewer on the disabled list.
“I think we would be doing better with Kershaw, Anderson, Ryu, McCarthy, Wood and Montas,” Kasten said. “With these six starters we’d have a better chance. My point is the first thing is they’re not here. I don’t know anyone who would be in the thick of the race without their entire rotation.”
Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers’ No. 1 starter and maybe No. 1 in the majors, went on the disabled list last week, said to be out indefinitely with a mild herniated disc. Not all of the disabled pitchers would have been starting had they been healthy, but the Dodgers would be healthier.
The Yankees have no such pitching depth. They don’t have much depth at all because they have done a poor job of developing players. Renowned for the Core Four of Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada, the Yankees cannot claim credit for developing top major league prospects since.
Any team that has had the same general manager for 19 years and has not developed a strong minor league system has to be suspect. Cashman had the same development executive for 15 years and never saw the need to replace Mark Newman, who finally retired two years ago.
Newman owed his extended employment to Cashman. Cashman, who did not respond to telephone requests for an interview, owes his extended employment to Hal Steinbrenner, son of George, who is the Yankees’ managing partner.
The Steinbrenner son seems to be intent to run the Yankees 180 degrees from the way his father operated. If the elder Steinbrenner were alive and operating the team, he would have fired Cashman long ago. No Steinbrenner general manager survived if he didn’t produce a championship team in a period of a few years, if that long.
George had an itchy trigger finger; Hal has no trigger finger at all. When does Hal realize that Cashman is spending the Steinbrenner family money with no promise of a return of any kind?
The Yankees won the World Series in 2009. In six seasons since, they spent $1,330,000,000 – that’s one billion three-hundred-thirty-three million dollars – on their player payrolls. The six World Series champions paid a combined $822,000,000. The Yankees spent 62 percent more.
What was it Randy Levine said?
“…we have a lot of history here of knowing what we’re doing, a lot of confidence in our baseball operations people.”
Call it misplaced confidence.
RAIN, THEN YANKEES’ PAIN
Not that they’ll come so close, but should the Yankees fall one game short of making the playoffs, they will want to look back at this inning they played against the Texas Rangers last week following a rain delay of 3 hours and 35 minutes:
