Behold: The shame of the Yankees in one easy chart

Yankee annual revenues in dark blue;
Yankee annual team payrolls in light blue.

This scandalous chart - a graphic depiction of evil - has been making the rounds lately on Reddit. 

It compares annual Yankee franchise revenues (dark blue) to the team's payroll (light blue.) The revenue figures come from Forbes, the payroll numbers from Cots Baseball Contracts. These are not made-up numbers. Look, look, LOOK, DAMMIT... as revenue is skyrocketing, payroll is actually shrinking.  In one agonizing illustration, we are presented with the crushing reality of the modern New York Yankees: 

Our owner doesn't give a fuck about winning. 

Read it and weep... or better, seethe. As you can see, the Yankee ownership - which not all that long ago regularly directed 75 percent of team revenues toward player salaries - today allocates about 33 percent to the on-field hired servants. The rest lines the greasy, gold-threaded pockets of the Steinbrenner family/cartel. 

By the way, this chart ignores the 20 percent interest Hal Steinbrenner owns in the YES Network, which is believed to have a net worth greater than the Yankees. Hal is partnering with Sinclair Broadcasting (the Fox News of local TV) in an attempt to buy controlling interest in the network. The family's wealth, already boundless, just continues to grow. Remember that when you by an Aaron Judge fake jersey for $150.

This chart should make every Yankee fan vomit into a bucket, drive to Yankee Stadium, and pour the contents onto the turnstiles. This is an ownership model worthy of Vladimir Putin or some South American dictator, designed for no other purpose than to siphon money from the working class. Are the Steinbrenners going to live on an island? The Yankees gouge on everything they sell, from season tickets to paperweights, and yet the owner has the audacity to poor-mouth in public, telling us the team won't take part in free agent auctions, because the prices are too high. And the mainstream media, for the most part, recycles these well varnished turds without even a wince.

Since this came from Reddit, I want to give the author - "u/constant_gardner11"  -a few words.

Let’s say for the sake of debate, that the Yankees earned $630 million in revenue in 2018. It’s likely to be much higher than that, but let’s use that number. Here’s where their payroll would have been if they increased the percent of revenue spent on players. NYY payroll would be at $252 million at 40 percent, $315 million at 50 percent, and $378 million at 60 percent. You could add Harper ($30m AAV), Machado ($30m AAV), Corbin ($25m AAV), Robertson ($12m AAV), Britton ($12m AAV), and Lowrie ($12m AAV), for example, and stillspend less than 45 percent of revenue on player payroll.

Listen: Nobody is saying the Yankees should buy every free agent in captivity (and disregard their farm system, a counter-productive plan)... but as Boston chases its second straight world championship, this organization seems to think it can hoodwink the fans by claiming its cupboard is bare. That must not happen.

Okay, okay... we still don't know how this winter will progress. Maybe the Yankees are shrewdly lying in wait, preparing to pounce on - say - Bryce Harper or Manny Machado, or the cast of Glee. We'll see. But increasingly, such notions feel like wishful thinking. Sometimes, when everybody says it's raining, it's actually raining. More than ever, Food Stamps Hal must be held accountable for his spending policies. The question no longer can be, who's pitching tonight? Yankee fans everywhere need to start asking... Where is the money going?