The Yankees, baseball and money

[BULBUS]

in 2008, the year they won they had the 12th highest payroll. in 2009, they went to 7th highest. in 2009, the difference between the yankees and phillies payrolls was $111 million. if $111 million doesn't put you over your competition then you're doing something seriously wrong. but you're right that when a team assembles a world series roster, payrolls increase and thats why most WS rosters don't stay intact for very long. the team wins and within a couple of years they're in a re-building phase again. unlike the yankees who can afford to retain a WS roster every single year.

I went back and looked, the Philles were 7th, but they were only about 2m away from being 5th. And the difference between payrolls was only 88M

[cjclong]

Kingammy, you vastly overestimate a players ability to force a club to pay the salary they wanted. If a player didn't sign and held out he had nowhere to go. The owners knew that a player was not going to sit out all year with no salary. The owners had the upper hand and kept the salaries low. Roger Kahn writes about Mickey Mantle being named the MVP in the World Series in the early 1950's and then going home to Commerce Oklahoma and working in the mines to agument his salary. Not the princely money you imply the Yankees were tossing around. Name ONE player on ANY team that held out and did not play during the year because of a salary dispute in the 20's , 30's 40's or 50's. If you find one there won't be many.The owners knew they would not make good their threats. If the Red Sox traded a player who threatened to hold out it wasn't becase they couldn't pay, it was because they didn't want to. The biggest hold out threat I ever heard was when when Koufax and Drysdade threatened to hold out in the early 60's and they wound up settling with the Dodgers, not the Yankees. No one accused the Yankees back before the 1970's of buying a championship because they didn't. All the owners kept the payrolls as low as they could which is why Cut Flood brought and won his suit. When the Yankees were beating the Dodgers and Giants in the 50's it wasn't because they couldn't match the Yankees payroll. They would have been about the same.

[kingjammy24]

And the difference between payrolls was only 88M

you are correct. i blame the circuitry in my calculator

"only" $88mm. about the amount to pay for 4 "game-changers" like rivera or sabathia. when the jays won the WS in 1992 their payroll was $49mm. the next team was oakland at $48mm. $1mm wouldn't have even bought 1 game-changer at the time. those types of players were making $3mm at the time.

anyway, this thread seems to be going in 2 different directions; the yankees of old and the yankees since free agency. i think those are 2 different discussions. i just wanted to clear up any notions that the yankees of old made it via "cheap players" and that their coincidentally league-leading payroll had nothing to do with their success. after all, if their league-leading payroll had nothing to do with their success, why on earth were they paying it? if they could've acheived the same success with far less money spent, then why didn't they? it's illogical.

rudy.

[staindsox]

Maybe a few went for cash, but its so few its not worth mentioning. The vast majority of the players came through scouting and signing or straight player for player trades.

That is absolutely false. I'm not sure you understand how minor league baseball operated back then. Teams did not not have minor league affiliates. They PURCHASED, WITH CASH, players to add to their major league roster. The Baltimore Orioles sold Babe Ruth to the Red Sox for cash and they sold Lefty Grove to the A's for cash. Most players going into the big leagues were purchased from minor league teams. Top prospects were always expensive. If Dunn wanted $100,000 for a team to purchase rights to Grove, only teams with a healthy pocket book could play that game. The farm system was even toyed with until well into the 1930s.

[staindsox]

Name ONE player on ANY team that held out and did not play during the year because of a salary dispute in the 20's , 30's 40's or 50's. payroll.

Hall of Famer Edd Roush...he only played for about the last 40 games of the season because of a contract dispute with the Reds (1922) and then held out all of 1930.

[suave1477]

You cannot spend that which you do not have!
Revenue sharing is the answer!

Your teams do have the money they just don't put it back into the team. Steinebrenner to get the ball rolling dipped into his own pockets and investors pockets to get start getting ahold of the big name stars. It's not like we had the most attendance and the money was there.

Here is a huge example
Stadiums with the most attendance from 1980 to 89

1980 Dodger Stadium 1981 Dodger Stadium 1982 Dodger Stadium 1983 1984 Dodger Stadium 1985 Dodger Stadium 1986 Dodger Stadium 1987 Dodger Std. 1988 Busch Stadium 1989 Shea Stadium 1989 Busch Stadium

So technically who was making the most money during the 80's???

[kingjammy24]

"Roger Kahn writes about Mickey Mantle being named the MVP in the World Series in the early 1950's and then going home to Commerce Oklahoma and working in the mines to agument his salary. Not the princely money you imply the Yankees were tossing around.

i don't mean any offense but i'm starting to wonder if you're just making things up as you go along. mantle an "MVP in the World Series in the early 1950's"? not only did the "WS MVP" not even exist in the early 50s (it first began in 1955) but mantle never even won one in his entire career. mantle won his first regular-season mvps in 1956 and 1957. you know what he was making in 1957? $60,000. you know what the average salary in 1957 was? $5500. when you're making over 10 times the average salary, you're making a "princely sum". so ..no, there was never a time when mantle "won an MVP award and then went to work in the mines". if he did, surely it wasn't because he needed the money. from what i recall the last time mantle worked in the mines was shortly following his 1951 rookie season when he made $5k. by 1953 it more than tripled to over $17k. by only his 3rd season in the majors he was already making 3x the average salary in the country. by 1961, he was the highest paid player in baseball.

look, without getting into the intricacies of the 30s-50s yankees, i think most of the current criticism towards the yankees is clearly directed to their post 70s teams. "the steinbrenner" years. the only reason i brought the pre-70s teams up was simply to clear up your original statement that the implication that the yankees have long outspent other teams is wrong. it's not wrong. they have long outspent them. as well as your statement that they signed players cheaply. they did not. babe ruth was not cheap, dimaggio was not cheap, mantle was not cheap. at one point, all 3 were the highest paid player in the game.

without turning this into a dissertation on yankees history, simply ask yourself this: if payroll had nothing to do with their success, then why did the yankees have the highest payroll? just for the fun of paying the most?
that would make them pretty stupid wouldn't it? pay a ton of money when apparently it has no effect on success?

rudy.

[kingjammy24]

"Your teams do have the money they just don't put it back into the team."

i truly don't mean any offense but i think it would be great if yankees supporters would start dealing with facts. making things up isn't helping anyone. other teams do have roughly the same amount of money as the yankees? the closest team is $64mm away. the next team? $92mm away. it's not even close:

2008 Revenues
NYY $327mm
Red Sox $263mm
NYM $235mm
LAD $224mm
CHC $214mm
LAA $200mm
ATL $199mm
SFG $197mm
STL $194mm
PHI $192mm
SEA $194mm
HOU $193mm

Bottom 5
OAK $154mm
KCR $131mm
PIT $139mm
TBR $138mm
FLA $128mm

jason was addressing mark sutton's comment. mark's team is the orioles. the orioles revenue was $166mm. nyy revenue was $327mm. see mark, your team does have the money! only $166mm less than the yankees.

rudy.

[cjclong]

Rudy, I don't "make things up" (another word for that would be lie) but I probably did use the wrong term. Roger Kahn, who covered the New York teams for a newspaper for years wrote that early in Mantle's career after being a star in the World Series he went back to commerce and worked in the mines. You are probably right that he didn't use the term MVP and said star instead. The point is that very few players , even very good ones were making big salaries.
You also make it appear that only the Yankees could afford the top players. In the 50's Boston had Ted Williams, St Louis had Stan Musial, the Braves had Hank Aaron. the Giants had Willie Mays and even the Cubs had Ernie Banks. All of these players are HOF players in much the same league as Mantle and teams had no trouble keeping them as all but Mays, who played briefly at the end of his career for the Mets, played with the same team all their career. The Yankees were on virtually a level playing field with these teams and still dominated.
As far as Rivera, the Yankees developed him and then kept him. As far as every team in the playoffs this year, if they could have affirded to pay their closer the same as Rivera if they had wanted to. In Rivera's case the other teams had the money, the Yankees had the talent. And again, the Yankees didn't buy him as a free agent. If you are saying that Pittsburg or some other teams couldn't afford him, I agree. But if that is the test them every team that has won the World Series recently should be accused of "buying a championship" as Pittsburg probably couldn't have afforded their star players either.
Down the stretch Boston added Victor Martinez and Billy Wagner. The Angels added Kazmir. The Yankees , who had some weak areas, added no one. If Boston or the Angels had won people would not have said they "bought a championship." If you wouldn't say it about those teams you should not say it about the Yankees either.

[kingjammy24]

"You also make it appear that only the Yankees could afford the top players. In the 50's Boston had Ted Williams, St Louis had Stan Musial, the Braves had Hank Aaron. the Giants had Willie Mays and even the Cubs had Ernie Banks. All of these players are HOF players in much the same league as Mantle and teams had no trouble keeping them"

having 1 HOFer is not nearly the same as having 6+ as the '56 yankees did. the 1933 yankees had 10 HOFers. TEN. the 1928, 1931-32 yankees had 9 HOFers. my point was that noone can afford as many star players as the yankees.

"If Boston or the Angels had won people would not have said they "bought a championship."

because boston or the angels didn't spend nearly as much.

NYY - $201mm
Red Sox - $122mm
Angels - $113mm

again, nothing wrong with what the yankees do but the flip side is that their championships don't garner as much respect as those won by chicago, arizona, anaheim, florida, etc. and they never will. winning simply by spending more usually doesn't impress people.

rudy.