Feeling spent?
Major League Baseball's winter meetings begin this week in Dallas, and the New York Yankees haven't yet thrown more than a Kyle Farnsworth piece of kindling on the hot stove they usually stoke non-stop because they haven't seen a player they truly want this offseason.
"This particular free-agent market is difficult," Yankees GM Brian Cashman told the Associated Press.
Difficult? How about, in light of the last few years, difficult to believe?
In the good old days, say, 2002 or 2004, the Yankees and their partners in the pocketbook, the Boston Red Sox, would unload bushels of cash on the best available talent. Last season, the Yankees had a payroll of $208.3 million. The 2004 Red Sox own the honor of highest payroll ($127.3 million) to ever win a World Series.
Now the Yankees may sit out this free-agent period, unable to find a suitable centerfielder, and the Sox may lose two-thirds of their colorful World Series-winning outfield. All while the New York Mets can't stop adding players.
The explanation for all of this could come from Sunday's New York Daily News, which reported the Yankees' baseball interests lost between $50 million and $85 million this year despite drawing more than four million fans and producing $337 million in revenue.
Now, since the Yankees also own the YES television network, the value of the franchise is up to an estimated $1 billion and a new opulent stadium is being constructed. A piddling $50 million loss can be erased with some simple accounting.
George Steinbrenner's operation is not going belly-up, no matter how much fans in Pittsburgh and Kansas City wish it were so. The Yankees are still the Yankees.
Still, it is curious to imagine that Steinbrenner's empire (no longer evil, just broke) has its limits. And maybe, so do the Red Sox.
Since winning the Series in 2000, the Yankees have spent over $1 billion in salaries and the revenue sharing tax that comes with spending like that, and they have won zero championships.
The team may not even have gotten into the black.
This is not to say baseball players are going to stop getting rich. Or even that salaries will drop. Hardly. Already almost a quarter billion has been laid on the feet of free agents. And with smaller market teams flush with some new revenue streams – satellite radio, Internet and the league sale of the Washington Nationals – there are more bidders at the auction.
But things may be a little different. The Yankees have committed to about $155 million in salary next year and aren't likely to go much higher. That's a lot and still No. 1 in the league by a fleet of Brinks trucks. But if that is what they break camp with, it is about $50 million less than a year ago.
That says something, if only that Steinbrenner isn't going to mock another team this winter the way he did the Red Sox when they couldn't come up with the extra millions needed to land Alex Rodriguez back in the winter of 2003-04.
And he shouldn't. The Yankees won a lot of offseason press conferences in recent years but not enough playoff series. All those big-name, big-contact signings played small in October.
Rodriguez has been a certifiable playoff disaster. Kevin Brown was just as bad in the postseason. Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield and, at times, Hideki Matsui and Jason Giambi haven't been much better.
Steinbrenner spent a billion on rotisserie numbers, completely forgetting he won four of five World Series with great talent but greater heart when it was mostly homegrown talent such as Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera.
As for the Red Sox, they smartly don't seem willing to bite on agent Scott Boras' latest bold demand – a seven-year deal for 32-year-old Johnny Damon. You can't blame Boras, though. The Sox are the same franchise that paid about $20 million per for his client Manny Ramirez.
Manny has merely averaged 40 home runs and 122 RBIs over the last five seasons. It is his bat that so protects David Ortiz that Big Papi darn near won the MVP award this season despite being a DH. Ostensibly, Ramirez has done his part, poor defense and flakey personality notwithstanding.
And yet the Red Sox don't seem to think he is worth the $57 million they still owe him. And they haven't for years.
The Sox are talking "value." This isn't a bad thing. But it may be a new thing.
That is why we may be ushering in a fresh era for baseball – one where payroll disparity, while not being eliminated, at least comes a little more in line.
If so, the story of the week out of Dallas may, for once, be about what some other teams (namely the Mets) are doing and not just what the Big Two are spending.
