This was in the conference room near his office, in the facility named for his father and on a fourth floor as much pictorial tribute to his dad as command post for the Yankees.
Hal Steinbrenner swiveled in a chair during the first week of October, two AL East rivals, the Rays and Red Sox a few hours away from playing a Division Series game on the other side of the Howard Frankland Bridge.
We talked for two hours and much of it was about the plans to get under the $189 million luxury-tax threshold for 2014 and how that had given the perception that he was more interested in money than winning — which meant he was nothing like his old man, whose mythology is that he would give his last nickel for one more victory.
Steinbrenner never lost his equilibrium. In fact, he even cited all the ways he was different from his dad. But, what remained the same, Hal insisted, was the last name. And he said — until proven otherwise — that should signify a certain way of doing baseball business. After all, he reminded, he was the one who authorized $400 million-plus be spent on A.J. Burnett, CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira after the Yanks missed the playoffs for the first time in 15 years in 2008.
“We have a pretty good history of taking found money, whether it is money that came off of payroll or something else, and putting it back in the club,” Hal said.
That was a message in October, shortly after the Yanks missed the playoffs for the second time in 20 years. A few days into December the message had become an emphatic statement delivered to an industry and a doubting fan base: Love it or hate it, complain that it is hurting the sport or building value for all, call it a stupid way to operate or the Yanks behaving as a behemoth should, this is what the Steinbrenners do. For in the offseason when they were supposed to be cutting back, the Yanks are now almost to a quarter of a billion dollars invested in Brian McCann and Jacoby Ellsbury. And they are not done.
They want Robinson Cano and Hiroki Kuroda back and — failing that — will spend to try to compensate for Cano’s lost offense and Kuroda’s missing innings. They are operating on two planes — free spending long-term while continuing to eyeball the $189 million counter next season. Despite the outlay to date, the plan still is to get under that figure.
“I still expect them to go under $189 million,” said one AL executive, whose team was interested in both McCann and Ellsbury. “One reason that Ellsbury was attractive to them is that they are paying him $153 million and that is his cost. In the past, you would have a 40 percent or 50 percent tax on top of that, and so $150 million was more like $210 million.”
Yes, keep that in mind, if the Yanks are under $189 million, they pay none of the surcharges next year that have become part of their existence — and the tax would reset to 17.5 percent the next year they go over. But this was about so much more than that. Such as:
1. By acting so quickly on large issues, Steinbrenner removed the “cheap” strategy from, particularly, Cano. Now, there cannot be a public disparagement from the Cano camp that the Yanks just don’t operate like they used to and don’t care about their fans. The signings of McCann and Ellsbury and the revelations of where they are willing to go for their second baseman (roughly $170 million for seven years) informs the fan base that if Cano leaves, it was to chase more money, but not because the Yanks were hanging dearly to theirs. Public relations in such affairs do matter — and the Yanks currently are winning this public relations battle.
2. The Yanks were horrified by their loss of attendance and TV ratings. They recognize that part of the overpay for these players is to recapture their fans’ passion. That it occurs at a time when the Giants, Jets, Knicks and Nets are disappointing fans who might be looking elsewhere for a reason for optimism, all the better.
3. Wasn’t this the offseason the Mets were spending and the Yankees weren’t?
4. The Yanks showed again they will not rebuild, but as one NL official said, “They really are not in position to rebuild. In a way, they had to go crazy financially.”
Translation: The Yanks have a poor farm system. They have few veterans to trade to upgrade the system quickly. And the rules that are part of the new collective bargaining agreement put caps on the draft and the signing of young international players, thus — unlike the old days — the Yanks cannot vastly overpay in those forums to try to speed up the process.
Nevertheless, with the signings of McCann and Ellsbury — both of whom were extended qualifying offers — the Yanks lost their first- and second-round picks next June. They were going to pick 18th, their lowest since 2005 and their second lowest since 1993. However, if Cano, Curtis Granderson or Hiroki Kuroda sign elsewhere, the Yanks will get sandwich picks between the first and second rounds.