The Yankees and the Pressure to be Relevant

Say you receive a fax from yourself from the future that tells you three things:

1. You should invest your entire savings in gold
2. Rap-Rock makes a comeback
3. New York will win the 2018 World Series

Which team is future you talking about? Mets or Yankees?

Sharing is hard. It’s hard on kids, it’s harder on their parents, and it’s hardest for sports teams. Two teams, one metropolis, you’d think they could coexist. But sports teams are as childish as, well, children. Raiders and Niners, Clippers and Lakers, Mets and Yankees. There’s a big brother and a little brother. The development of these franchises is both a product and effect of this distinction.

While little brothers may envy the giant shadows that big brothers cast, they are also provided cover under them. Periods of malaise, misbehavior, and dormancy go mostly unnoticed. Big brothers on the other hand live to appease an internal and external expectation to be the best, to have the most, and to maintain, above all else, relevance.

At some point or another, threat of losing this relevance plagues all big brother sports teams. Yes, the Lakers will always be Los Angeles’ basketball team. In recent seasons though, the Clippers have shed some of their baggage and begun to usurp some of the Lakers’ power over the city. And yes, the Yankees will forever be the kings of New York City. But after they missed the playoffs in 2013, for the first time since he took the GM position, Brian Cashman saw the Mets and their rotation of destiny as somewhat of a threat to the crown.

He watched Rivera and Pettitte join Posada in retirement, with Jeter not far behind. CC Sabathia was beginning to deteriorate, Cano was packing his bags, and A-Rod’s suspension was more of a blessing than a curse. The foundation of the franchise, nay, dynasty that he helped build and maintain was crumbling before his eyes.

So what did he do? He bought himself some fancy new toys — Tanaka, Ellsbury, McCann, and Beltrán. But this spending spree was different than those of the past. His splurge wasn’t about putting the Yankees over the top like 2008. He wasn’t acquiring or re-signing the best player in baseball like 2003 or 2007.

He spent money out of necessity. He felt the team slipping. The threat of irrelevance, falling ticket sales, and a stretch of mediocrity was lingering over his head. Other teams with fewer resources and a different mentality might have sacrificed a few wins over the short-term to reload the team for a brighter future, but the Yankees are not other teams.

So how did they get there? How did it come to a point where more than fighting for a World Series, the Yankees were fighting to maintain relevance and prevent collapse?

The Yankee Recipe

The Yankees have not had a losing season since 1992. Taking a giant step back in time, this whole run of success started with a little bit of luck. Drafting and signing four players that debuted all within a year of each other, and whose collective timeline on the Yankees looks like this, is not ordinary. Jeter, Pettitte, Posada, and Rivera are four all-timers.

6,138 total appearances for New York, 35 All-Star selections, 5 World Series, hopefully 3 Hall of Famers, the all time leader in saves, and the franchise leader in hits. However much you thought you appreciated them, think back, watch this again, cry, then appreciate them some more.

The Yankees knew they had stumbled onto a great young crop of talent and within the first five years with the core four, the team won four World Series titles. With Jeter, Posada, Pettitte, and Rivera in tow, the Yankees found a repeatable recipe for success that they have not changed since the turn of the century.

Yankees WAR Leaders for players that made their debut with the team since 2000

The Cardinals recent success is an example of a team that is great and has a self-replenishing farm system that maintains excellence. But since 2000, the most successful Yankees to pass through the farm apart from Cano were Brett Gardner, Phil Hughes, and David Robertson. The organization has been some combination of bad and uninterested at developing prospects, willing to deal any prospect for major league talent.

Player acquisition is prioritized over player development.  Whether through trades, free agent signings, or bidding on foreign players, the Yankees focused all of their efforts on acquiring the best (and highest priced) talent they could find.

Collecting talent, no matter the price, was an organizational mantra and by no means was it the wrong mantra.  Acquisitions like A-Rod, Sabathia, Matsui, and countless others formed the basis for their perennial contention and postponed mediocrity much longer than expected. But those signings also saddled the team with long contracts for aging players. And after nearly fifteen years of trading away prospects and failing to develop talent from within, fans should not be surprised that the club lacks internal options to replace Jeter, Rivera, Posada, and Pettitte.

Call and Response

I’ve always assumed Scrooge McDuck was a Yankees fan, for no other reason than their shared love of money. But while Scrooge was partial to swimming in his riches, the Yankees enjoyed spending theirs.

Back in 2001, the Yankees had a payroll of $112M. This was the highest in the league, but only about $3M more than the Red Sox and Dodgers. Over the following four years, the Yankees payroll shot up like a 12-year-old hitting puberty. Their payroll jumped 86%, cracking the $200M mark for the first time in 2005.

Around the rest of the league, payrolls grew a moderate 12% during that same four year stretch. In 2005, the disparity between the Yankees and everyone else hit its high water mark: the Yankees were spending $85M more than any other team and three times more than the average team.

Data compiled from The Baseball Cube. Payroll of teams on opening day of each year.

Since 2005, the payroll has plateaued, hovering right around $200M through present day. Instead of continued linear growth, the Yankees payroll hit a natural limit (much like a logarithmic model).  This occurred for a few reasons.

Internally, spending exorbitant amounts of money became ill-advised. Luxury taxes began forcing the Yankees to pay additional premiums on their already expensive free agents. They publicly set a goal to get under the $189M in 2014 to avoid becoming a four time offender and paying an extra 50 cents on every dollar over that number. A limited number of roster spots and a dwindling pool of free agents each year force the Yankees to balance need and talent. As a result, they tend to splurge every couple years — think the 2008-2009 or 2013-2014 offseasons.

Externally, teams around the league adapted to the Yankees way of doing business. Front offices went to school, becoming smarter, a problem for the Yankees. The invasion of analytics and business-minded personnel managers allow teams to achieve success in more cost-effective ways.

Organizations like the Rays, Pirates, and A’s have shown that being smart is as important as being rich. That being said, more teams last year had a payroll over $100M than under. With more wealth than ever before, teams are able to re-sign their home-grown players before they hit free agency. The free agency pool as a result is more dilute, and a talent-acquisition focused team like the Yankees has less talent to acquire.

With smarter teams, fewer top-tier free agents, and more money around the rest of the league, its no wonder that Brian Cashman broke out his Visa Black Card last offseason.

So What Now?

For most teams, success is cyclical; periods of greatness are followed by mediocrity and vice versa. With combination of luck, great players, and unlimited resources, the Yankees have postponed the inevitable downswing longer than most teams could fathom.

While they are on their way down right now, the same forces that kept them great for so long will most likely cushion their fall. The Yankees will probably hover right around 80 wins over the next few years before some of their crippling contracts come off the books (I’m looking at you A-Ro…oh you’re already looking at yourself). Fans may believe in Headley, McCann, Beltrán, and others, but they will likely serve as expensive stopgaps during this transitional period for the team.

Brian Cashman has a tall task ahead of him. Whether he wants to admit it or not, the focus of the next few years will be on the rebuilding process; they need to identify the players that can usher in the next great era of Yankees baseball. But for a team that feels irrelevance is unacceptable, complete roster overhaul is a non-option.

Maintaining popularity in the present while focusing on the future is a tight-rope walk. This past offseason was a step in the right direction; the team signed short-term contracts and shifted the focus inward. With a few more offseasons like this, a little bit of patience and luck, the Yankees will be right back in the spotlight before you know it.

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