With Cole - like us, a lifelong Yankee fan - we have become faves to win the 2020 AL East, and with an ace who can lead us through October. Deal with it, pessimists. If you're thinking about coming into this website and whining, well, there's the door.
That said, we must brace ourselves for Hal's morning-after reversion into a dickering, money-grubbing Scrooge. He's not "Food Stamps" anymore. But he won't like paying the massive luxury taxes that are sure to come, and we should expect cost-cutting.
We needn't condone them: The Steinbrenners have more money than they can spend in the next three lifetimes, and to think of Hal squeezing a payroll is akin to fighting over nickel bottle deposits. But this is what he does: Fish gonna swim/ bird gonna fly / Hal gonna always say / "My, my, my!" So be it.
Keep in mind that, a) He'll be running the biggest payroll in baseball, b) He'll be paying huge luxury taxes and forfeiting draft picks, and c) He's never going to sell the team. (The Cole signing is his personal crossing of the Rubicon; he's in this for life.) For now - and I am choosing my words carefully - Hal has earned our grudging appreciation.
The last 10 dark years didn't just disappear. But if we can win a few rings and restore the Yankees to their late nineties greatness, make no mistake: This site could become a Hal's Pals hotbed. Amazing, eh? But I have always maintained that we at IT IS HIGH mourn a Yankee loss more than anywhere else on the web - and the flipside is that will celebrate Yankee successes in that same way. Let's hope for the latter.
But here's a sliver of morning-after reality. I direct your attention to a story by Ronald Blum of the Associated Press. (Yes, Virginia, there still is an Associated Press.) The Yankees last year finished second in payroll spending (at $226 million), behind the Redsocks (at $228 million.) The Cubs finished third, at $220 million. Cole adds another $36 million to the books. But lately, we've been whittling down the numbers.
Using cocktail napkin calculations: We dropped $10 million from CC's retirement, another $11 mill by letting Didi walk, and we'll save $7 mill when Dellin goes. (As he will.) Overall, with Cole on board, the 2020 payroll rises by about $8 million - give or take - though arbitration will inflate the numbers further. We will surely vault past Boston in payroll. We could be near $240 million, way over the taxing limit. So... the question is, what other cuts are coming?
Yesterday, lost in the Gerrit joy, the Yankees discarded the disappointing former hot starter prospect, Chance Adams. I believe they have a few days to trade Adams, maybe for some dirt league arms. Either way, they'll get next to nothing for a guy who could still evolve into a valuable lug nut. He's only 25. Hate to see him go, but... hey, you can only keep 40.
Next comes the seemingly inevitable trade of J.A. Happ, with a wide landscape of possibilities. If Hal simply wants to save money, they will trade Happ and prospects - maybe Clint Frazier? - seeking to ditch the entire $17 million contract. That would piss off Yankee fans, but virtually set the Yankees back to pre-Cole budget austerity.
My guess - which, of course, doesn't matter: They'll split the difference and pay off part of Happ's salary, so they don't look so much like chumps in the deal. If we add money, we can probably receive some other team's salary dump. That begs another question: What do we seek? A LH hitter? A glove SS? A bullpen arm? This is Cashman's job. He'll be at center stage for this.
Brace yourselves for a seemingly lopsided trade that sends Happ to an NL team, where he might pull a Sonny Gray, win 15 games and have us pulling out our hair. But let's face the reality: Hal just didn't change his ways overnight. He's still the penny-pincher, right? Unless... unless he stared into Gerrit Cole's Yankees-loving puppy eyes, saw the sign that said "Yankee fan forever"... and something happened? The Grinch's heart grew several sizes. Could Hal's wallet have done the same?
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15 comments:
DiDi got 14 million and Betances wants 10 million so a savings of 6 million. I have my doubts about both of those coming back from injury. Gardner should have not been resigned and let Tauchman play and Frazier the 4th because he is bad on defense. I see Tauchman ahead of Frazier at this point.
Adams has had his chance, and like you said you can't keep more than 40. Now someone else has to go when you make Garner official.
Fa-la-la-lala-lala!
I think I shorted you all a couple of la's.
Fuck you Hal.
Cicada Hal appears only once every 10 years to open his wallet. Next visit: 2029.
In between, he will cut costs in order to minimize the support his Big Signing will receive, thereby "proving" that big signings aren't worth the money.
Until 2029, then...adieu, Cicada Hal! And Merry Fuckmas to you.
And a Happy Yule Log Up Your New Year's Ass!
Everyone!!
I SAID EVERYFUCKIN'ONE, YA FUCKERS!!!
BIG OL' YULETIDE FUCK YOU HAL!!!!
I'm dealing with the stress of the holidays really well this year!! :-D
Sorry I missed yesterday's bad decade thread.
So just some quick comments.
Ken of Brooklyn – Wow! While not my favorite kind of music I know enough about it to know good when I hear it. You guys are really good.
Bad decade: I’d just like to add “Our collective prostates” to the list. Can’t speak with knowledge about any of you but it seems like a reasonable guess.
Yankee Budget: This year it is high but they only have $136M on the books for 2021. As Jacoby, the final A-rod, Tanaka, Paxton and a number of other players come off the books.
Replacements will need to be signed (or re-signed) and then there's the arb stuff but there’s a lot of room to reset the tax.
Doug K.
@ Doug K, thank you thank you my friend!!!!!!!
“A billion metaphors unleashed against the skies”
Sounds like your endorsement of Duque’s prose style. (I like your band, too.)
Right Doug....the only chance for the Yankees to re-set next year on the luxury tax is for them to keep their younger guys and hope they continue their growth. That's why we can't trade Andujar for some retread. Look, ultimately he might only be fit as a DH. Hey, it wouldn't surprise me if he became another Edgar Martinez type of DH. Maybe that would make it easier to eat some more of Stanton's salary in order to move him (if there is any market for him at all). Perhaps there will also be a few more surprises down in AA or AAA coming up to help us out. Maybe Florial.
Win W....I also looked forward to the holidays for the Hess Toy Fuck. It was huge!
Wait, you weren't supposed put it in there...... park it overnight?
We are the keepers of the motherfucking flame, HAL.
I am in southern Virginia and heading south.
I will be here more once I have safely landed in the Royal State of Steinbrenner, where I plan to finish a couple of long writing projects I have been working on. We used to call such things "books," but I'll just call them "stuff."
El Duque:
Things cost money, Christmas Presents, Dry Cleaning, Movies, salad bars, dinner with his wife. Because of Cole, I had to stop calling him Cheapskate Hal." Hal does count his pennies and nickels.
People with a great deal of money are different from me. And probably you. This no doubt applies to Hal S.
Back in the 1980s, when I was the Editor of a trade magazine, I went to Texas to interview a prosperous old owner of a company in a not-so-glorious bidniz. I got in to my hotel at some time the night before via plane. He called my room that night and asked me if I could be ready to be picked up at 4:00am.
Of course I had to say yes.
This was unusual, to say the least. It meant: (a) No drinking the night before, (b) no meeting a female fellow traveler at the bar (which happened occasionally -- I was taller in those days), and (c) getting up at 3am to shower and arrange my interview notes/ideas so I might be lucid.
Turned out the guy -- owner of a BIG privately held garbage-collection company -- was regularly up at this hour of the morning. What he (routinely) did was drive to where he knew one of his commercial trash collection trucks would be -- just a bit away from the place, to avoid detection -- and turn his car's lights off.
Then he would watch his guys maneuver their truck (usually a front-end loader) at the site of a commercial customer with more than one dumpster. How fast did they work? Did they run into the equipment? Did they spill trash (i.e., miss the mark) -- ? And if they did spill it, did they jump out of the truck, grab their shovels, and correct the mistake? Etc.
I did this with him. We drove from place to place in the dark, ahead of several of his trucks, watching. He explained to me what he was doing, what he was trying to discover.
Included in his discussion was the inevitable: "My daddy taught me not to worry about the dollars. Keep an eye on the pennies, and they'll add up."
Years later, when technology had advanced, I was writing in another industry -- HVAC-related. I went to a convention where two owners discussed the new technology you could place in your trucks, to see what your workers were doing when dispatched (i.e., you could follow them around without actually following them around).
Guy A said: "I told my people I was installing this thing. A few of them resigned immediately."
Guy B said: "I didn't tell my people. One guy had a daily stop, probably 45 minutes each day, at the home of a married woman. Every day." That got a huge laugh from the crowd (made up of business owners like these 2 fellows)>
As a writer-editor-reporter-publisher type, I could not (and still can't!) see myself doing what Guy B and the Texan did. Yes, money is important, but if you own a mirror, you may occasionally have to look at yourself in it.
My conclusion: This kind of person (Hal S. included) could care less about mirrors, because when they look at them, they see nothing. The MFers are vampires!
A pain in the ass, Joe FOB, and while I personally have never succeeded in picking anybody up in a hotel bar—including myself, after face-planting following 7 gin gimlets—I feel your pain.
However, sounds like you got great copy. The worst are those sorts of people who have you arrive at something crazy early, then don't show up themselves—'Oh, I had a sudden meeting.' I hate those sorts of power games.
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