2025 Yankees Bang for the Buck!

Frozen Early January Thoughts by Cary Greene

January 7, 2026

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Since it’s cold outside and Yankees fans haven’t had much to be excited about so far this offseason - I thought it might be a great way to ring in the New Year by providing a nice, meaty article today for our readers to enjoy!

I hope and trust that each of you had a fine Holiday Season! You may be surprised by my viewpoints today, but don’t mistake me for a Yankees front office apologist. I’m going to deliver today’s message very objectively and I expect some fascinating comments to be made as a result of the conclusions I’m going to make today.

Before you read today’s piece, ask yourselves these questions: Is MLB alive and well, positioned for a thriving future, or is the game broken? Is the playing field level, or is it perfectly okay for big spending teams to stack their rosters in hopes of winning championships?

After the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires at the end of the 2026 season, one thing is fairly certain - Baseball will face its biggest challenge of this decade. There is a massive rift already forming between MLB Ownership and the Player’s Association. Key issues will revolve around a potential salary cap vs. player pay, revenue sharing fairness, service time manipulation, an international draft and rule-making control. A lockout is very likely if owners push hard for caps and revenue-sharing changes that limit big-market spending and this could potentially disrupt the 2027 season, leading to a work stoppage similar to what happened in 1994.

Baseball is coming to a crossroads and the future is very cloudy and dark. The timing of all of this couldn’t be worse. MLB showed strong growth in attendance, viewership and fan engagement since 2024. This has been due to rule changes like pitch clocks, making games faster and more exciting and star player performances (like Shohei Ohtani for example). New streaming options have also made the game more accessible to fans, including younger fans and previous attendance highs have been shattered. A protracted labor dispute could really put the clamps on all of the progress MLB has made recently. Changes are coming, but the good news is that we have one last season to enjoy the game as it currently is and as we look forward to that, I thought it would be interesting to look back and reflect on last season’s Yankees.

Regarding last season and very curiously, the Chairman and Managing General Partner of the New York Yankees - none other than Hal Steinbrenner - is on record for continuing to be very pleased with the job his General Manager Brian Cashman did. Hal seems to lead in a very opposite way than his late father George Steinbrenner did. Hal seems to make choices and then stick with the decisions, exercising patience, for a very long while. In fact, Hal even tolerates underperforming, losing and failing to win championships which are three things his father was extremely intolerant about. For Hal Steinbrenner, not rocking the boat and maintaining a fairly private profile while largely removed from the scenes during the season is preferable his father’s leadership style of raking in headlines fueled by temper tantrums and firings of anyone he deemed was doing a poor job. My, how times have changed since Hal took over the Yankees in 2008!

After spending $362 million in payroll last season (including luxury taxes), which ranked third in MLB behind the Dodgers $549 million and the Mets $399 million and after watching his team get bounced in the American League Division Series by the upstart Blue Jays, one question Hal should be taking very seriously is this: What Kind of Bang Did I Get for My Buck? Did the 2025 Yankees perform commensurately with the amount of money Hal spent to field the team?

This is a question that intrigues me so much every offseason that I can’t resist studying it. We know that the Yankees generate the second highest revenue in MLB, a whopping $728 million, and we also know that Hal only spent 49.7 percent ($362 million) of that money on his payroll and that includes the $61.8 million in Collective Bargaining Taxes that the Yankees had to pay. Imagine the pain of having to throw $62 million dollars out the window? This obviously wouldn’t sit too well with very many people, unless they literally have more money than they know what to do with.

Clearly, Hal Steinbrenner believes he can field a competitive team without having to toss large sums of money away. Ultimately, the Yankees ranked 11th in percent of total revenue spent on payroll. This means that while Hal can’t be viewed as a spendthrift by any means, he could have spent more, but it's just that he chose not to for obvious, CBT reasons.

Nobody can argue that Hal Steinbrenner didn’t spend big, because he did. The Yankees had the third highest payroll in the sport.

It’s just that the Dodgers, who generated the most revenue in MLB ($752 million), chose to spend $549 million (73 percent) of that revenue on payroll - including $169.4 million in CBT – OUCH! If that’s what it takes to win a championship in today’s game, then I have to wonder, is something very wrong with MLB?

One of the popular narratives out there in blogs and in the media is that all of this seems to indicate that Dodgers leadership is more committed to trying to win than Hal Steinbrenner is. Adding salt to the narrative this wound has caused in Hal Steinbrenner’s public perception is that Met’s owner Steve Cohen spent 90 percent ($400 million) of the $440 million in revenue that the Mets generated on his payroll.  Though the Mets failed to make the playoffs, no one can argue that Steve Cohen didn’t go all-in as he darn near spent almost all of the money his team made on fielding the best team could possibly muster.

Ten other MLB teams spent a higher percentage of the revenue they generated on their payrolls, but only two spent more in Luxury Taxes than the Yankees did and only seven MLB teams even paid Luxury Taxes, so it's probably fair to say that very few teams want to throw away vast amounts of the revenues they generate. Though Yankees fans clearly want Hal to dump even larger sums of profit away, what they’re missing is that besides (in order) the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, Phillies, Blue Jays, Phillies and Red Sox - no other MLB teams are operating like that. Like it or not folks, MLB is a business and for the overwhelming majority (23 of 30 teams), it’s not about how much money they spend, nor is it about what percent of their revenue they spend either.

What then do the majority of baseball teams prioritize? The answer is one very few fans are even aware of. The preponderance of MLB teams try to construct rosters that produce the best possible bang for the buck. What does this even look like? It’s a very simple strategy really, most teams try to get the most out of their draft picks, focusing on their talent development pipelines. They make shrewd trades, often shedding very talented players who are in or near their walk-year - as years of team control shrinks, most teams move desirable assets in order to restock their MiB pipelines.

Clearly the Yankees don’t operate remotely like most teams and this not only creates a very spoiled fan base that lusts for more and more and more - desiring star studded rosters while viewing prospects nonchalantly, seeing them mostly as nothing more than trade chips. Operationally speaking, the Yankees are in perpetual win now mode. Offseasons typically involve bringing in a few pricey free agents, sometimes while sacrificing draft picks. Because Hal Steinbrenner spends big but also has limits, Brian Cashman often cobbles together a group of star players with several lesser ones and then at the Trade Deadline, he often raids the Yankees farm system in order to make needed improvements designed to get the Yankees into the playoffs.

Concurrently, Hal Steinbrenner doesn’t believe that having such a high payroll is necessary for the Yankees to be successful. Fans tend to misinterpret Hal’s comments about high payrolls over $300 million being unsustainable and for good reason too, as we all know how much revenue the Yankees generate. From Hal’s perspective though, it only takes one glance around MLB’s landscape to see that other than the Dodgers, his Yankees and the Phillies, none of the other nine other teams that qualified for the postseason last year had a payroll over $300 million. In fact, these nine other teams sported an average payroll of $158 million.

Granted, in 2026 it looks like the Blue Jays will have a payroll of at least $305 million, so we can note that a fourth team will be spending big, but the Yankees payroll is right there with them and if they wind up making a big signing or two, the Yankees will likely have a commensurately higher payroll than the Jays will wind up having. What we have in this case is a smaller market team like the Jays trying to keep up with the Joneses, rather than a case of the Yankees operating like cheapskates.

Right now it may feel like the Yankees aren’t spending, but keep in mind that they already have, including arbitration, likely over $300 million on the books for 2026. Also recollect that Brian Cashman is on record for saying that none of the inventory the Yankees are interested in has come off the board yet. Granted, some players many Yankees fans wanted to see in pinstripes have come off the board though and for some fans who care a lot about the Yankees, it’s caused some definite fan-pain, as I call it. I’m particularly devastated that the Yankees didn’t outbid the Blue Jays for the services of Kazuma Okamoto and I’m also stumped as to why Cashman didn’t go hard after Tatsuya Imai. That said, Cashman clearly wasn’t interested enough to spend a significant sum on either player and as such, both went to rivals that have now improved their rosters.

Perhaps the presence of Ryan McMahon, whom Cashman traded for at the 2025 Deadline and who the Yankees have under control for two more seasons, blocked the very notion of bringing an offensive wrecking ball like Okamoto in as a free agent. While Okamoto and his projected .770+ OPS is a clear upgrade over that of McMahon’s projected .679 OPS, the Yankees are still on the hook for the $32 million owed to McMahon and it is Brian Cashman who owns the decision to acquire a player who is basically, short of eating a large part of his contract, is untradable. It’s also not beyond peradventure that the reason Cashman wasn’t in on Imai is that the Yankees already have a combined $90.25 million sunk into just three starting pitchers (Cole, Fried and Rodon). Perhaps the Yankees plan this offseason is to potentially trade for a starter, in order to avert spending big in their rotation.

Notably, the Yankees also chose to not spend big to address their bullpen needs. I had hoped that Cashman would sign Phil Maton who signed a two-year, $14.5 million deal with the Cubs instead and I was also very much in favor of not just pumping the brakes there. I also wanted to see Cashman aggressively sign closer Robert Suarez as well, but he fell off the board also, as he signed a three-year deal with the Braves for $45 million.

Some fans here on SSTN wanted the Yankees to sign Pete Fairbanks, who suffers from Raynaud’s syndrome and who has been steadily losing velocity for two years now - personally I can’t imagine how that would remotely be considered as an advisable move. Fairbanks wasn’t a fit for the Yankees.

I understand passing on the splashiest free agent reliever on the market as well, Edwin Diaz, who wound up going to the Dodgers on a 3-year $69 million deal, but to not add two studs to the bullpen for the price of one was a bit perplexing to me, given that to date - the Yankees are only set to spend only between $26 and $30 million on their 2026 bullpen. For a team like the Yankees, who have allocated roughly $102 million towards starting pitching. Are bullpens really so unimportant to a team's overall success that they should spend around 75% less on them than they spend on their rotations? The Dodgers are spending $54.2 million on their 2026 bullpen, that’s almost double what the Yankees are set to spend.

Perhaps Hal Steinbrenner’s faith in Brian Cashman is warranted, or is it conceivable that Hal is getting badly ripped off by Cashman in terms of the bang for the buck that Cashman’s roster will deliver. It is said that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. If history is the greatest teacher, then I believe I provide a fair answer to the question of whether or not Steinbrenner trust in Cashman is misplaced. Last year, the Yankees spent, as I mentioned above, $362 million in total payroll and subsequent CBT taxes. Cashman constructed a roster that made the playoffs, but only managed to win one three game series before getting convincingly bounced. 9 other teams made the playoffs and on average, they spent $204 million less than the Yankees did.

Looking down from 30,000 feet, it appears that the team that plays in the Bronx did not get very much bang for their buck in 2025 and for that matter, neither did the team that plays over in Queens. Is it fair to judge success based solely on postseason success? Though I’d love to see the Yankees win a championship soon, regular season results matter very much because without positive regular season results, few if any teams would qualify for the postseason.

When we look at a given player’s season, we evaluate them first and foremost on regular season results. Postseason results are absolutely secondary in this regard. For example, last season for the Yankees, Cody Bellinger recorded a .347 wOBA / 125 wRC+ / 4.9 fWAR FanGraphs stat line while putting up a .272/.334/.480/.813 OPS slash line. Everyone agrees he had a very good season right? Well, not so fast. He only performed to a .214/.258/.393/.651 OPS clip in the playoffs last season - meaning - he totally choked when it mattered most, but most Yankees fans desperately want him back and they’re willing to overlook that right?

Let’s agree then to evaluate Cashman’s roster in two ways then. Firstly, his roster failed to win a championship - but secondly and more importantly, did he construct a roster that gave Hal Steinbrenner genuine bang for the buck and lots of it? You may be surprised to learn that Cashman actually did a great job of maximizing the money Hal Steinbrenner chose to spend last season. How could this possibly be true?

Fangraphs has a pretty cool stat we refer to as fDollars - succinctly put it is fWAR converted into a dollar scale based on what a player would make in free agency, given their on-field performance that season. Last season, if Cashman constructed a positional portion of the roster that was overly bloated with aging, overpaid, underperforming players who did little more than block the Yankees hot, young prospects, then we might even see a behind the scenes owner like Hal Steinbrenner take issue.

This wasn’t the case though, Cashman amassed the positional part of the Yankees roster with flying colors. He spent roughly $142 million on it and according to Fangraphs, the players greatly outperformed the spend - to the tune of being worth a little over $288 million f-Dollars - meaning if the Yankees positional players were all free agents last season, that’s how much they were really worth! Aaron Judge alone made $40 million but he was worth double that!

I’ve created a new stat - I call it f-Value. I took each Yankees position player from 2025 and started with how much the Yankees paid them. Then, I subtracted their fDollars from the amount they were paid. Presto. f-Value was born. Yankees fans may be surprised to learn that the Yankees positional group produced $140.4 million in surplus value last season. 

Cashman constructed a positional roster that basically played their pants off. They were collectively worth far more than what the Yankees paid them and if I were Hal Steinbrenner, I’d certainly be very pleased with this because it's very fair to say that Steinbrenner received a very good bang for his buck.

Below is the Yankees “Bang for the Buck” positional breakdown – all data used courtesy of FanGraphs and Sportrac.

Next week I’ll complete this fun project by looking at the 2025 Yankees Pitching Value vs. Contract, after which, we’ll have some more 2025 performance data to complete this assessment.

Assuming many of our writers and readers wanted the Yankees to sign certain players last offseason, like Juan Soto for example, you can use the above formula to determine if it would have been worth it for the Yankees to bring that player in, or in Soto’s case, back!

Coincidentally, Soto was not worth what he was paid by the Mets last season. The Mets paid $51 million, including Luxury Taxes. His performance was “only” worth $46.4 million, so his f-Value was surprisingly negative $4.6 million. Brian Cashman actually produced more Bang for Hal’s Buck by trading for Cody Bellinger. If we subtract Paul Goldschmid’s negative f-Value, there is still a net positional gain.

Sharpies, I’m referring to many of you here on SSTN, will quickly counter that Soto’s production was far better than Bellinger and Goldy combined right? But was it? It actually wasn’t folks. Soto was worth 5.7 f-WAR, whereas Belly was worth 4.9 and Goldy was worth 0.8, so Cashman’s two-for-one move offset the loss of Soto and it saved Hal Steinbrenner a lot of money which happened to be diverted into a pretty good pitcher named Max Fried.

In conclusion, I’ll leave each of you with this thought regarding today’s article. I know many long-time Yankees fans are stinging right now and don’t mistake me for a writer who doesn’t care about that. The Yankees fan in me is also feeling weary and lost. My point today is not to function as a Cashman apologist, but I do need to report the facts objectively because it may provide some comfort to Yankees fans that want another ticker tape parade to happen soon in Manhattan.

Not only did Yankees fans have to endure failing to win a World Series title in 2024, a feeling that the fan bases of 28 other MLB teams didn’t even have the privilege of feeling by the way, but the World Series drought continued in 2025 and the Yankees were convincingly beat up by the Blue Jays in the ALDS. Yankees fans had to face the reality that as constructed, the Yankees weren’t good enough and one of two things was true. Either the Yankees took a step back or the Blue Jays took a big step forward.

Now here we are and adding insult to injury, the Yankees haven’t made any significant moves as of the time of this article being written (January 6th). The Yankees have yet to do anything this offseason to show its fan base that the franchise takes winning the World Series as seriously as its fan base does.

It all boils down to this: Yankees fans expect championships and they’re growing frustrated by Hal Steinbrenner’s unwillingness to spend commensurately with a team like the Dodgers. That much is true. It is. However, let’s not all get lost in the weeds. Cashman is hitting the ball right down the middle of the fairway these days. He’s working within the budget that Hal Steinbrenner has set and he even has the ability to bring potential signings of significance to Hal for review and potential approval. If Hal is advised that the idea makes sense, he might pull the trigger, but in the meantime, Cashman is showing that he’ll likely give Hal Steinbrenner a roster that likely will again out perform the spend.

Make no mistake, Hal is looking around at all of the playoff teams and he sees how much more efficiently their organizations run. He knows that more can be done with less and he’s also content to see the Yankees make the playoffs as he knows that is step one. Unlike his father, Hal trusts the people he has in place to get the job done. They haven’t been able to break through yet, but they’ve been very close. Hal knows this.

Whether or not the roster Cashman creates will succeed in winning a World Series is up to the players he puts in the Yankees locker room - they have to motivate themselves. It’s not the manager’s job to motivate a team, but managers and coaches play a key role. They sculpt their teams in their own images. Teams respond to their managers by playing the way they are coached - teams execute the fundamentals and they play the way they practice. Managers set expectations and they give feedback. Performers are supposed to motivate themselves by showing up and playing the way they are coached to play. Hal knows that the Yankees have some opportunities, but he also knows they do a lot of things very well - and they do.

While it's true that the 2025 Yankees didn’t win a championship, I can see very clearly why Hal Steinbrenner thought Brian Cashman did a great job. Imagine if you ran a company and you exceeded operating costs by $140.4 million by year’s end, how would you feel? What if a few of your competitors beat your results though - how would you feel then? Would you fire your leadership team, or would you go back to the drawing board and make some tweaks?