The Issue is Not the Issue

...as we used to say in the 60s.

The issue isn't Dallas Keuchel, per se, for whom one can make a strong argument to sign or not to sign.

The issue is that Hal Steinbrenner seems to have set arbitrary limits on how much he is going to spend on any given transaction, no matter how close or how far the New York Yankees are from winning a championship.

Some, of course, find this hard to believe.  Instead, they have already bought into the latest, rancid disinformation campaign from the Kremlin-on-the-Hudson:

"We need to hang on to our money in order to re-sign Judge, or Sanchez, or Torres, or all of the above when they hit free agency."

This comes, of course, hot on the heels of how the Yankees could not sign this or that individual because we were saving our money for Bryce Harper, or Manny Machado, or maybe Pat Corbin, or was it Mike Trout?

Let's review for a moment.  According to something called "Investopedia," the Yankees were the second richest sports franchise IN THE WORLD as of 2017, valued at $3.7 billion and behind only the Dallas Cowboys.

https://www.investopedia.com/insights/most-valuable-sports-teams/

Forbes ranked the Yanks a little lower in 2018, at "only" fifth in the world, but worth $4 billion.  We can only guess what the team's estimated value is now, but it has generally ranked in the top five for many years now.

They are the only baseball team on the list, surrounded by football—US and everyone else's version.  And, of course, the New York Knicks—but don't get me started.

This shouldn't be too surprising, considering that the Yanks are the dominant team in what is far and away the largest metropolitan area, in the richest country in the world.  And not only do they have the most fans, they CHARGE us the most, or close to it, at the ballpark and for watching at home on TV.

To be sure, the Yanks have to share this market with another baseball team.  But since that club is really only a real estate scam disguised as a ballteam, it's not much of a rivalry.

And yet, despite this enormous wealth and unchallenged dominance, the Yankees have decided to limit their spending to the lowest percentage of revenues of any MLB team.

In other words, when it comes to spending—when it comes to trying to win—the Yanks are spending just like any other major-league team.  Or maybe less so.

But UNlike the fans of every other major-league team, we have to listen to the executives of ours pretend that they can't spend an extra $1.5 mill on the likes of Keuchel because, you know, that money might be needed when it comes time to sign Aaron Judge to his 7-year, $225-mill contract a few years from now—assuming, of course, that Judge has been brought off the DL by then.

Look, the Yankees, like pretty much every other major-league team, have always been run by a bunch of mean, ruthless SOBs.  But for most of their existence, they were the epitome of how capitalism is supposed to work, and so rarely does:  they tried to make money by putting the best product on the field, and delighting their customers.

Now, like so many of the corporate scammers in modern capitalism, the Yankees feel they have found an easier way to make money.  They may be right.  It just has little or nothing to do with winning.