By SSTN Admin
February 2, 2021
***
This past Sunday, our Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Paul Semendinger, wrote an article titled simply $6,390,000,000.00 that highlighted some simple facts about the value of the Yankees’ empire as reported by Forbes Magazine.
The Yankees are the fifth most valuable sports franchise in the entire world. (The Red Sox rank just about the Yankees in fourth place.)
This article also noted that the Yankees’ value is more than double the combined values of the next two Major League franchises (The Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs).
Here are the numbers:
Yankees = $6,390,000,000
Dodgers = $3,390,000,000
Cubs = $2,880,000,000
(Dodgers + Cubs = $6,272,000,000)
One of our loyal readers, roadrider, made the following points in the comments that deserve a post of their own.
These perspectives are shared by many frustrated Yankees fans who see the Yankees employing a business model that does not prioritize building championships (which has always been the Yankees’ model).
Here are roadrider’s comments:
“Of course the Yankees can afford to spend big on free agents and top quality players.
Just this winter, the Yankees could have afforded to trade for Lindor and sign him to a huge Mookie-Betts like extension. They could have afforded to trade for Yu Darvish and take over the payments on his contract.
They could have afforded to sign Bryce Harper or Manny Machado a couple of years ago.
They simply choose not to because the bottom line has become more important than winning. That approach is endemic throughout baseball. This situation is like when George Steinbrenner refused to sign Jack Morris in the mid-eighties because he went along with other owners’ collusion plan instead of doing what was needed to compete.
Bryce Harper and Manny Machado are really good players either of whom would have improved the Yankees’ chances of winning a championship.
Harper could have easily been the left-handed power bat in the middle of the lineup that they lack. Would I have signed him to a 13-year contract? Hell, no. But I would have made him a shorter-term high AAV offer He probably would have turned it down but you never know unless you make the effort. The Yankees didn’t.
Same deal with Machado. The Yankees made a half-hearted effort with him for show purposes but never really engaged with him (and he went elsewhere).
That’s front-office malpractice.
No one, including the Yankees, knew that Urshela was going to have the kind of production he has over the past two years. Urshela was considered organizational depth at the time. Things may have worked out over the past two seasons but teams like the Yankees shouldn’t pass on a guy who’s on a HOF track to bet on a guy who was ticketed for AAA. Even Miguel Andujar should not have been a road block to signing Macahdo since Andujar’s best position is DH.
The Yankees have the financial resources to sign anyone or trade for anyone they want. The luxury tax and “budget” are artificial constraints that ownership puts into place because they want to maximize profit over winning. That’s their prerogative, but if that’s how they want to operate, then they should not expect the fans to have same emotional investment in the team and pay the outrageous prices for tickets, merchandise, concession, parking, cable subscriptions and the like that generates the revenue that ownership seems to take for granted.
For fans the objective is to put the best team on the field not o maximize $WAR.
Harper doesn’t need to play RF. He’s athletic enough to play LF in Yankee Stadium. And wouldn’t he have been nice to have around while Judge and Stanton were injured?
Any one of the guys I mentioned would have made the Yankees better and perhaps given them a championship in either 2019 or 2020.
Following those bad decisions, the Yankees” approach this off-season has been insulting to the fans and is just as likely to blow up in their face as succeed.”
