Hal "Bristles" At Being Called Cheap, Then Explains How Cheap He Plans To Be

He said that when baseball's new collective bargaining agreement comes out, he will try once again to pare the Yankees' payroll below the threshold to avoid paying the luxury tax, as he tried to do in 2013. But he pointed out that even though he had trimmed the payroll to $190 million -- the threshold was $189 million -- he scrapped it all to sign Masahiro Tanaka because, he felt, "we weren't good enough to win." 

...And while he said that the Yankees will no longer carry such a bloated payroll, he left little doubt that under similar circumstances, he would do the same thing again. "We have a lot of money coming off the payroll in the next two years...And we're going to put a lot of it back in. But that doesn't mean I need a $240 million payroll."

Really, you have to read the whole story. He doesn't seem like a bad guy. Just maybe not great at how he spends his money sometimes, and then that prevents him from spending more money on better opportunities. See? He's not cheap, he just reaches a threshold of extravagance and lives with the mistakes instead of throwing good money after bad for players who are actually good.

It all makes perfect sense.