Why Hating the Yankees Has Gotten a bit Harder (“It’s all about the GUARANTEED Benjamins baby!”)

With football over for now and labor talks about gear up post-combine, we shift focus over to baseball, as pitchers and catchers have already reported. Being a New England sports fan, I have had two fundamental truths instilled in me from an early age: 1) The Yankees suck and 2) In Bill we trust. Usually this time of year the weather feels a bit more like baseball season and less like the Winter Classic. (Bloody groundhog.) However, the impending labor dispute in football got me thinking about about money and how money should be split up, then, like all rational thoughts, my mind jumps to my distaste for the Yankees (it’s just weird, ok?). I was thinking about what the NFL union wants and what the owners are willing to concede. One thing the players on the union’s list is surely guaranteed contracts. I can see DeMaurice Smith walking into Roger Goodell’s office.

“ Hi Roger,” Smith says with a large grin.

“ Hey buddy,” Roger replies. “So, aside from stripping me of Caesar-like power to suspend players who can’t seem to stay out of trouble, what other suggestions might the union have?”

“Well, we have been thinking and…we would like to have guaranteed contracts like basketball and baseball.”

This is where the conversation takes a downright nasty turn. Guaranteed contracts are STUPID and Goodell knows this. How the baseball union pulled this over on folks way back in the day is beyond me; let’s examine the guaranteed contracts of a baseball and the NBA. For a good example of this, let’s take a journey back to the winter of 2004, after Carl Pavano pitched masterfully in the World Series, beating the Yankees. He began Tour de Carl, a non-stop booze cruise around different major league cities with owners and GMs wining and dining him for his services.  A few teams were interested but Uncle George opened up his wallet to young Carl and offered him a $39.95 million dollar contract over 4 years. Carl signed on the dotted line and became a Yankee. So on that day Carl knew that, unless he pulled a Dukes of Hazard and drove his car through a building killing small children and their pet rabbits (which, mind you, he almost did), he would receive $39.95 million dollars with out question over the next 4 years. (Kind of makes you want to be baseball player huh?)

Carl Pavano will always be known for setting a new "bust" standard in terms of baseball contracts.

Now, one thing I like about the NFL is that if you sign a large contract and two years into it you, well..suck, the team can cut you and take a cap hit (unless of course you are really dumb like the Raiders with the Jamarcus Russell experiment) and get you off the books to free up money cap space. The team is not on the hook for your entire salary; just your signing bonus, which is the only promised part of an NFL contract. So examine this from a real life perspective; you can get fired from your job and, like the rest of us Americans, your salary stops coming you keep your signing bonus and maybe have the option of collecting unemployment (which the NFL has). Not baseball. You can get traded but not fired. Carl, who spent basically the entire 2005 season on the DL and then the following year as well, pitched like Dice-K did after he got back from the baseball classic looking like the Pillsbury Dough Boy and still got paid his money. (Note:  nothing makes me happier than seeing the Yankees’ big spending ways backfire.)

Had Pavano been playing for a team like Cleveland or Seattle, a smaller market club whose wallet was not the size of what Bill Gates carries around in his right sock for emergency funds, they would have had close to $40 million locked up in a pitcher, which would make for a pretty devastating negative ROI. The problem is not that the Yankees can spend whatever they want because they play in the top market in the world and can afford to; it’s that, like any business, certain MLB teams have different levels of tolerating risk. Signing a big name guy is very risky you are investing a lot of money, whether you are the New York Yankees or the Oakland A’s. If memory serves, the Yankees still had Jason Giambi making big bucks, and other big money busts like Kevin Brown, who gave up a bomb the next year to Ortiz in game 7 in which the Red Sox pulled off a remarkable comeback against the Yankees (sorry, got carried away again).

So of course, while I hate the Yankees, the point is that they have a very high risk tolerance, even compared to other big market clubs like the Sox, Cubs, Angles, and Mets. They will take a run on guys and gamble for the big payoff. Last winter they knew even if the CC deal went bad they could still cover his salary and would only look like a bunch of asses to the media and fans. Believe me, I have looked at the numbers–medium and small market teams could have signed Pavano, Damon after he left Boston, or a number high-priced guys. Maybe not in the CC range, but definitely the next tier down.  The reason they didn’t is the same reason why we normal folk don’t play the $1,000 dollar/hands of blackjack like Michael Jordan. We would need to go to the bank, take out a loan, and pray it worked out in our favor. (I have seen this tried it doesn’t end well so I sympathize with certain major league ball teams.) Logically we can’t/shouldn’t, because if we lose we are for lack of term umm (insert six letter word here_____).

I know what some of you are saying– “The Yankees have so much money.” This is true, but the smaller teams have the ability to spend. For instance, do you know who had the highest profit margin of any major league baseball team in 2008? Go ahead guess… The Yankees were in the bottom. The Red Sox? Nope. The answer is the Florida Marlins. Which means that the Marlins run the team like a real business; they view spending high amounts of money on player salaries as an expense which could impact their bottom line. Teams like the Yanks, Sox, even Phils have lower profit margin because they put money back into the team for things like stadiums and players.

Sure, the Yankees are universally known as the Evil Empire to all of those outside of the NYC-area, but let's take a moment to acknowledge how awesome the Rage Against the Machine album by the same name was.

What does all this mean? Yes, the Yankees are still evil, but when small and mid-market teams complain to their fan bases saying “we can’t compete with the Evil Empire,” it isn’t exactly true. They could shell out the loot but just can’t handle the risk; they know if they go to the blackjack table and double down against the dealer and lose they are crippled until they can get the contract off the books. (Or until like some MIT youngsters come along that can count cards with Kate Bosworth.)

So keep hating the Yankees but maybe they can stomach risk better than your team. I despise the guaranteed contract– it has ruined competition in baseball, it’s the reason why the NBA has lost so much money, the reason the owners looked the other way during the steroid area, and the reason why DeMaurice Smith, if he were to ever utter those words in any negation with Roger Goodell, should be escorted politely from the building. But I do get it–players in any sport know they have a small window to make a ton of money and it’s the union’s job to make it happen. But just like us “normal people,” your salary or contract should be based on current and projected performance not just what you did in the past (unless you are Tom Brady of course).

Spring training is here. GO SOOOOOOOX. So “Here endith the lesson.” (Great Line from the Untouchables)