It’s funny, something the most obvious things just sit there for weeks and weeks, perhaps so obvious that you don’t even notice them until someone else comes along and actually looks around.
Is The Yankees’ Budget Going To Cost Them?
The Yankees won last season with a bunch of questionable starting pitchers. And they seem to think they can do it again.
For me, it's like that with FanGraphs' Alex Remington and the New York Yankees.
Does it really make sense for the New York Yankees to enter the 2012 season with one ace and four question marks? I don't think so. But it didn't really occur to me, until reading Remington's piece yesterday, just how big a risk they're taking, going into the season with a rotation that includes Phil Hughes, Ivan Nova, A.J. Burnett, Freddy Garcia, and no apparent backup plan.
Remington:
The Yankees might be predicting that Manny Banuelos will be ready to take over as soon as one of them falters — and that another cheap, one-year contract would simply serve to block him. But this is a remarkably peculiar hill to die on. Like George Steinbrenner’s famously misguided penny pinching — in 1989, he pulled many of his scouts off the road to save money on their travel, despite spending millions on stupid free agents even then — Hal Steinbrenner’s Yankees have chosen a weird place to economize. If they truly wanted to save money, they could stop giving massively above-market retirement extensions for Yankee icons in their late 30s, or stop Randy Levine from overpaying relievers.
I’m not sure how fair those last bits are. They seem to have stopped handing out those retirement extensions (if only because they’ve run out of players to give them to). And Randy Levine hasn’t overpaid any relievers this winter. Really, the Yankees do seem truly interested in saving money, which they’re accomplishing by not spending money.
Of course the interesting question is why they’re so interested in saving money. Why do the Steinbrothers really care whether they make $212 million this year, or $198 million? I really have no idea. Seems like either figure would be plenty enough to fill the Steinchildrens’ college funds.
Like I said, I have no idea. Someday we’ll know. But if the Yankees do fail to reach the playoffs -- which now strikes me as a distinct possibility -- one of the biggest mysteries of 2012 will be why this franchise suddenly began to operate within a budget that actually kept them from doing things they wanted to do.
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