Interesting Read on the Most Loved, Most Hated Team---NYY

[Oklahawg]

Sports Blurb is a predominantly pay site that offers a free, daily email service. This is the offering for Thursday, April 21.

The Daily Blurb
Volume I, Number 352 - Thursday, April 21, 2005


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Something Old, Something New
By Steve Parsons
Howard Spira For MVP
I was pleased to see that George Steinbrenner made it through almost two weeks before getting on the back page ripping his team. Not of course that he doesn't have reason to do so.  The Yankees weak start (including games against division rivals) has been highlighted by uncharacteristic bullpen failures by the likes of Tom Gordon and Mariano Rivera.  Unreliable starting performances by each of their three marquee free agents, Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright and general bad play from everyone this side of Hideki Matsui. Let's hear a big show of support from all the non-Yankee fans out there......

<snicker>

I thought so. Don't get me wrong, I think The Boss is one of the best things for baseball. He is absolutely passionate about winning and takes defeats personally – that's good. With a few exceptions (see Irabu, Hideki), when he rips his players publicly, it's with complete faith that they have the ability to play like all-stars, rather than questioning their ability and character – and that's good. He has tremendous revenues and he puts that back into trying to make the team a winner – and that's good. He's taken the economic structures of baseball and used it to create extra revenues via dedicated cable networks, unique licensing agreements and marketing the brand positively – and that's good. He has a deep respect for the history of baseball and of the Yankee franchise and the organization imparts that to every player AND every visitor to the stadium – and that's good. He is deeply loyal to his players (if not always his employees) and tries to give people second chances and places within the organization – and that's good. He doesn't kvetch about finances (with one comical exception when he claimed poverty on $100 million in debt which turned out to be a loan taken out against the Yankees to pay the principal owners a bonus – including a reported $60 million to himself) and that's good.

In fact George is reportedly going to build a stadium and the Yankees are going to pay for it.  OK, OK...I couldn't type that with a straight face either. If the city pays for a stadium, you pay for it via taxes or tax abatements.  If the club pays for it, you pay for it through tickets and such (and the city costs of transit links and so forth). But George, the innovator was sitting there the other day writing out the $62 or 80 million checks for revenue sharing and/or 'luxury' taxes that he has to pay the league. And looked about to ask "do we have to do this?"  And Lo! An angel rose about him and proclaimed, "I bring you glad tidings of great cheer! There comes this day into the city of Gotham an exception, which is Yankee Stadium!" Evidently, Funds for stadiums can be deducted from revenue sharing and such. So George gets build a stadium with tons of new luxury suites (and 6000+ fewer seats) which will add to his bottom line and NOT be subject to all kinds of revenue calculations with the money he supposed to pay the league for the Alex Rodriguez signing. 

You've got to hand it to The Boss; he is NOT a dumb man about money. $800 million which George isn't 'paying' as much as deducting from revenue sharing.  Now the actual mechanics of this are not public and no announcement on the stadium has been made so I am sure this won't be quite this simple, but nonetheless, Beautiful!!

But George, all due respects George, is not so smart about...well...about baseball. Paul DePodesta was asked once about competing with a person like Steinbrenner for talent and he frankly said that a guy like Steinbrenner is terrific for the 'Moneyball' approach.  Because Moneyball is about exploiting market inefficiencies, there is nothing better for an efficient organization than a 600 pound gorilla that happens to be tremendously in-efficient.

Which brings us to the Yankees of today and those fine late 80's Yankee's squads that warmed the hearts of us Red Sox fans...not that we were much better, but at least we had some players then. George Steinbrenner led a group that purchased the Yankees from CBS in time for the 1973 season (I believe for less money than Bud Selig's group ponied up for the Seattle Pilots...although Bud himself came up with almost nothing) and enjoyed almost immediate success. The Yankees hadn't won World Championship since 1962 (the only team in baseball that can complain about such things), nor the American League since 1964.  By 1974 the Yankees were in second place in the AL and won back to back World Series' in 1977 and 1978. They had a couple of OK years, winning the AL in the strike-broken 1981, and then went towards the bottom of the league. This despite memorable infusions of money and "talent" including one Dave Winfield, the Hall of Famer hired to play the Reggie Jackson character in the Bronx Soap Opera.

By the time that 'other' team just down the Major Deegan (in New York fashion, Deegan was not actually a 'Major') across the Triboro and over in Flushing had won a World Series against the Sox and The Boss was livid enough to hire a small time thug named Howie Spira to 'investigate' Winfield in the hopes of...oh I don't know, doing something more idiotic and landing in court? Well, Winfield got sent to California, Spira got paid off and like a small time thug, proceeded to try to extort more money from George leading to Spira being convicted a few years later for his unwelcome attempt to insert himself on the Boss' payroll.  For this bit of skullduggery, George earned a lifetime ban in 1990 from operating the baseball team, which ban was lifted in 1993 after certain lawsuits (including one from Yankee's Vice President Leonard Kleinman) were settled.

At the time this seemed rather a dumb proceeding for a man otherwise so shrewd, but in the end, hiring Howie Spira may have been the smartest move George ever made. In 1990, the Yankees were led by the kindly, career Yankee Stump Merrill, promoted from years of service at the Columbus Triple-A club. Merrill was primarily a teacher and ill-suited by personality to deal with the craziness of the Bronx and the New York Press to say nothing of the horrendous team with Bob Geren, Steve Sax (at the end of his career), Alvaro Espinosa, Mel Hall, Steve Balboni, and a weak backed Donnie 'Baseball' Mattingly – stripped of any punch at the plate but still winning games with that remarkable glove at first. We don't even want to talk about the Dave Lapoint, Tim Leary, Andy Hawkins pitching staff. 

By the time George returned, Gene 'Stick' Michael, and Buck Showalter had rebuilt the Yankees completely, refitted the farm system and set up the Yankee for their marvelous run. In 1993, the Yankees finished second in the American League East to the World Champion Blue Jays, who would go on to win their second championship that fall. And in the lock-out shortened 1994 the Yankees had the division well in hand when play was halted and in 1995 despite finishing behind the Red Sox, the Yankees made the playoffs in the new wild card format, and were ousted by a fine Seattle Mariners team in the first round in the 11th inning of the deciding game.

By now George was feeling that he could take more control of the franchise again and promptly fired one of the two architects of the rebuilding, Buck Showalter in favor of Joe Torre, a fine player in his day with a connection to New York and a decidedly mixed record as a manager. Torre was the perfect manager for the Yankees (and as much for handling Steinbrenner) and as we know led them to four championships in five years. But in the meantime, Michael was gently given a desk job to use the euphemism and George's pressure to acquire costly veterans increased and increased and increased.

But Howie Spira had freed the Yankees from those tendencies for three crucial years, where a group of talented and astute baseball guys were able to construct a team that could win, and win consistently and probably could have continued to win had The Boss let those people keep making the decisions. Instead...Irabu, Raul Mondesi, John Vander Wal, Denny Neagle and...Jaret Wright?

The Yankees remained competitive through the yearly infusion of free agent talent, but each year since 2000 falling a bit short and having less and less and less in the minors. I am not sorry for George; he's making plenty of money. I'm not sorry for Yankees fans – they get to the playoffs and the league championship every year. But this is a team headed to...Bucky Dent or maybe a final send around of Lou Pinella and a dog and pony show of bad veterans. The club is now one of the slowest in all of baseball, It is also one of the worst defensively despite Alex Rodriguez, the still-fine Tino Martinez, and the sometime spectacular but now step and a dive shortstop Derek Jeter. The pitching staff is old and ineffective.

If you play rotisserie baseball as I do, you will probably have noticed that people think there is a 'Yankee Effect' and that players who come to the Yankees will somehow receive this tremendous boost. I sometimes get the feeling that George believes this too.  Ergo, Jaret Wright, career ERA 5.09 and 14.21 Ratio (walks and hits per nine innings) is suddenly going to become something else. He had a nice year in a good pitcher's park last season with a 3.28 ERA but an 11.64 ratio. And walking about three and half a game. Note to Yankees, facing the designated hitter instead of the pitcher and in Fenway against Boston as opposed to the Mutts... err Mets ... in Shea, Camden Yards instead of Stade Olympique. Pretty low percentage play. Pavano? 4.21 and 12.54 career despite the good season last year. Pavano has the additional problem of a 5.63 strikeout rate per nine last year.  That's not bueno for the NL, it probably translates into about 4.75-5.00 when you get to the AL (those darned Designated Hitters again!) and that's at the margin of where pitchers generally collapse entirely.

Randy Johnson was predicted by many pundits not only to win the Cy Young this season, but also the MVP.  Surely on the mighty Yankees, Unit would win 25 or 30 games and surely 350-400 strikeouts are not only possible but LIKELY!!!!! Well, I like Johnson, but this never happens.  Mike Mussina never could quite get to 20 on Oriole teams of mixed ability and surely on the Yankees he would.....but no.  Denny Neagle was never actually any good but on the Bronx Bombers?  No. Kevin Brown? No. Jeff Weaver? No. In fact the last really good acquisition was Roger Clemens and he didn't improve. His record was worse for the two years after. David Cone?  You bet, but he was signed in 1995 when the baseball people were running the team. The Yankee effect just doesn't happen – and let's not even get into the hitters.

The problem here is not that the Yankees are spending their money inefficiently and that perhaps the Yankees will become another bloated payroll cellar-dwelling club with an increasingly strident Boss at the helm, but that...well to steal the phrase, when the Yankees sneeze, baseball gets a cold.  The financial arrangements that the Yankees have embarked upon – the YES network, the new park, the separate licensing agreements and partnerships in the UK and Japan have been tremendously good for baseball.  Through the Yankees new fans, global audiences and new sources of revenue have come to Baseball and a nice percentage of that has been distributed to teams in less lucrative markets. 

But in the aftermath of the Florida Marlins 1997 championship, we saw a possible misuse of these structures.  Wayne Huizenga, then-owner of the Marlins, separated the baseball club from much of its revenues by creating separate entities to run everything from concessions, parking, to broadcasts, just as the Yankees have done to a lesser extent. Whereas George has hitherto funneled much of the proceeds back into the club, Huizenga did not, and instantly stripped the team of salaries and sold it as the five-year loophole expired (Baseball teams are allowed to amortize and deduct from their taxes existing player salaries over the course of five years from the original purchase; the Marlins joined the League in 1993). But he did not sell the 'related party' entities that collected the revenues each of whom had a long term sweetheart deal with the club, originally signed by Huizenga, for Huizenga including a long term lease on the stadium itself, parking, concessions, broadcasts, in short everything profitable in the endeavor. New ownership gets a new five-year deduction and so the Marlins have been able to function, in fact winning another world championship, and eventually the contracts will come due and the team can reclaim some revenue....or the current owner can play the same shell game as Huizenga.

There is nothing keeping Steinbrenner, or whoever follows him as Yankees principal owner to follow the same path. If it occurs in a down year with tons of aging, underperforming veterans, will they continue to put this revenue into the club? Maybe.  But if not, we might see an epidemic of such maneuvers, and this would be a bad, bad thing.

As always, if you have questions or complaints, please write me.

Feedback can be sent to steveparsons@sportsblurb.com.

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