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sycophantman

The Yankees are still wretched

March 17, 2010 at 12:38PM View BBCode

[url=http://nymag.com/tags/yankees%20countdown]This is a neat little encapsulation of why everyone hates the Yankees so much.[/url]

It's the utter self-absorption, really, that causes such a gag reflex in most people. The top 20 Yankees most important to the upcoming season? Really? I mean, you could expand that list to 25 and suggest that the whole team could be vital to your success this year.

Christ, can we finally get to a NFL like economic structure in baseball? Must we endure this forever?
tworoosters

March 17, 2010 at 02:54PM View BBCode

It's a blog in "New York Magazine".

Who cares except diehard Yankee fans, and haters ?
dirtdevil

March 17, 2010 at 03:05PM View BBCode

i wouldn't go so far to say i care. but it being brought to my attention it is kind of amusing in an 'our yankees are the centre of the world' kind of way. the top 20 most important players on a roster of 25 is pretty self-indulgent.
FuriousGiorge

March 17, 2010 at 03:20PM View BBCode

Sucks for the 5 dudes on the roster who didn't make the list.
tworoosters

March 17, 2010 at 03:22PM View BBCode

Personally I'm not a Yankees fan but I must say I admire an organization that commits its' resources to attempting to win rather than remaining mediocre, crying poor and then lining the owners pockets when the franchise eventually sells .
tm4559

March 17, 2010 at 03:23PM View BBCode

brett gardner?

*giggle*
tm4559

March 17, 2010 at 03:31PM View BBCode

Originally posted by tworoosters
Personally I'm not a Yankees fan but I must say I admire an organization that commits its' resources to attempting to win rather than remaining mediocre, crying poor and then lining the owners pockets when the franchise eventually sells .


and their luxury tax money helps the poorer clubs sign players to long term deals.
cowboymatt43

March 17, 2010 at 03:53PM View BBCode

If I was a Yankee fan I would like the series of blogposts, but I agree that saying that these are the 20 most important Yankees for the upcoming season is strange.

Many, if not most, teams have something similar on their websites or their hometown newspapers (or blogs)...but normally it is called "Player Bios" or "Position Breakdown" or something of that sort.
dirtdevil

March 17, 2010 at 04:00PM View BBCode

Originally posted by tm4559
Originally posted by tworoosters
Personally I'm not a Yankees fan but I must say I admire an organization that commits its' resources to attempting to win rather than remaining mediocre, crying poor and then lining the owners pockets when the franchise eventually sells .


and their luxury tax money helps the poorer clubs sign players to long term deals.

that's the theory, anyway.
tm4559

March 17, 2010 at 04:03PM View BBCode

it is more than a theory. it is actual, real money the yankees (and other teams of course) pay, and other teams collect. and they definitely use it to sign players. the orioles for instance. seattle (i guess). the marlins. the A's. whoever.

(i mean, they really have a salary cap, it is just all teams don't abide by it, they don't abide, they pay the tax. i don't think it's a perfect solution. the NFL thing i find kind of tedious, with all the talk all the time about cap room. who cares really?)

[Edited on 3-17-2010 by tm4559]
dirtdevil

March 17, 2010 at 04:28PM View BBCode

the money is real, yes. the signing players to long-term contracts? that's how it's supposed to work. but when it comes to true free agency (and not the buying out of a couple free agent years by overpaying for the arbiration years) players tend to look for two things: money and a chance to win. for the top players, one or both of those things are almost always more abundant in the big markets- yankees, red sox, dodgers, cubs, mets, whoever- regardless of the luxury tax. i mean you don't think one of the reasons that a guy like joe mauer hasn't resigned in minny is that he (and/or his agent) would like to see what kind of money the yankees are willing to throw around? the actual occurence of top players signing with teams who receive the tax money? very rare. and most of them are, like felix in seattle (although i have no idea if seattle is actually a tax receiver), resigning with their original clubs rather than moving to a new one. the actual occurence of the marlins signing one of those top free agent guys? nonexistent.
dirtdevil

March 17, 2010 at 04:30PM View BBCode

all which is not to say that the teams receiving the tax money aren't in a better position to sign guys than they were before. but even if those teams are willing to use that money for that purpose (which many are not) that doesn't mean they have any better chance to compete for players with the teams paying the tax.
jetpac

March 17, 2010 at 05:51PM View BBCode

Hmm, if this was on ESPN (not that far-fetched actually), I would see why you would have a problem. But it's NY magazine, and as a Yankees fan, it could be an interesting read. If they weren't in order, then it'd be completely worthless, but it doesn't seem like a problem as is.
BKCUBS13

March 17, 2010 at 06:05PM View BBCode

I still hate Boston more
tm4559

March 17, 2010 at 06:13PM View BBCode

Originally posted by dirtdevil
the money is real, yes. the signing players to long-term contracts? that's how it's supposed to work. but when it comes to true free agency (and not the buying out of a couple free agent years by overpaying for the arbiration years) players tend to look for two things: money and a chance to win. for the top players, one or both of those things are almost always more abundant in the big markets- yankees, red sox, dodgers, cubs, mets, whoever- regardless of the luxury tax. i mean you don't think one of the reasons that a guy like joe mauer hasn't resigned in minny is that he (and/or his agent) would like to see what kind of money the yankees are willing to throw around? the actual occurence of top players signing with teams who receive the tax money? very rare. and most of them are, like felix in seattle (although i have no idea if seattle is actually a tax receiver), resigning with their original clubs rather than moving to a new one. the actual occurence of the marlins signing one of those top free agent guys? nonexistent.


retaining their own, good players, is exactly what is all about (markakis in baltimore for example), in florida it will be hanley ramriez, in seattle it's Felix, in Washington it is money for a big signing bonus for strasberg (and more down the line, bryce harper) and the 20 million they gave dunn last season (and the more in the chest they will use to try to sign him to a new deal), and money they will give zimmerman, the list goes on and on. mauer will sign with the twins, and it will be because the twins have the money to spend. it comes from the luxury tax. when the red sox or the yankees or the mets or whoever sign victor martinez, and all those other big, slick free agents next season, still more luxury tax money there for the smaller market clubs to use to keep the players they drafted with those awesome tanky picks.


it isn't all that rare, and the more of that money there is out there, the more money these promising young players will get to spend some (extra, after when they would normally be heading off to the yankees or whoever) time with the clubs that drafted them and need them when they grow up. it isn't even just free agent money. when the yankees give jeter 20 million a year, more luxury tax money. let them spend. the building clubs have better players than that, and the luxury tax money gives them money to pay them. the big money clubs are subsidizing salaries all over th league.
FuriousGiorge

March 17, 2010 at 07:58PM View BBCode

You're taking a point which has some good merits (that big-revenue clubs do, in fact, subsidize the smaller-revenue clubs with the luxury tax) and stretching it well beyond its breaking point, where you're actually implying that the big-revenue clubs are doing anything more than the bare minimum on the revenue sharing front. They aren't.
tm4559

March 17, 2010 at 08:17PM View BBCode

no, i didn't mean to imply that. i wasn't saying they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. the league makes them pay it, and the league distibutes it out. did not mean to imply they were doing anything out of the ordinary. they pay what they are required to pay (that is how it works, i think). why would they pay out more? this is amercia.

(i mean the yankees. after they do this extension with jeter, look at the money they are going to be on the hook for to 40+year old players with just jeter and rodriguez toward the end. it is no wonder they gave all that money to sabathia and teixera. they freaking need them, and need them bad.)
FuriousGiorge

March 17, 2010 at 08:29PM View BBCode

It's not a matter of whether or not the Yankees are or are not doing something altruistic. I don't expect teams to act in anything but their own self-interest. But the point is that the Yankees need the Royals and the Nationals and all the other shitty teams that they out-earn every year. Inasmuch as they do any revenue sharing at all, it's in their own self-interest, even if they don't recognize it, and it's really in their (and the league's) long-term self-interest to do more than they do now. I'm not in the Chicken Little, baseball is going to collapse under its own weight camp, because I think the perpetual suckiness of a lot of teams is due as much to their bad moves as it is to their lack of resources, but it's clear that the way things are set up now create a system that is, if not broken, at least deeply bent. Sports leagues have to act in a socialistic way, because the teams aren't simply direct market competitors - having all teams be reasonably competitive is in everyone's best interest. In the short term I'm sure it's fun for the Yankees to crush the Royals and steal their best players, but it's not in their long-term interest.

(I have bored you all, and I am sorry.)
tm4559

March 17, 2010 at 08:48PM View BBCode

all those are good points.

the thing about this stuff, (the way MLB does it as opposed to the NFL) is, its good for the players. in the NFL, the league can run this stuff through, because the players have to take what they get. in MLB, the players get what is good for them, i guess because they have a better union. the small market clubs bear the pain i reckon.
FuriousGiorge

March 17, 2010 at 09:11PM View BBCode

The NFLPA is a crap union and the MLBPA is a very good union, but that isn't the difference between the financial structure of the two leagues. Nowadays, labor relations battles are between big revenue and small revenue clubs, where the desires of the big boys coincides pretty closely with the demands of the union. The difference between the two leagues is the fundamental structure of their TV contracts, where the NFL has a centralized one that generates a huge percentage of their revenue and lends itself to being equally distributed, and MLB has a very small centralized contract that doesn't distribute a lot of revenue, so the teams that make a lot of money do so with their local TV deals. Teams should be incentivized to maximize those deals, but they should also be sharing a decent-sized chunk of that money in a common pot (since no one would watch YES to see the Yankees play an intersquad match) but they don't.

[Edited on 3-17-2010 by FuriousGiorge]
tm4559

March 17, 2010 at 09:14PM View BBCode

ok
FuriousGiorge

March 17, 2010 at 09:17PM View BBCode

(Yeah, again, sorry. It's pretty cotdamned boring, I know.)
dirtdevil

March 17, 2010 at 09:51PM View BBCode

it's a good point, really, but yeah, not the most exciting.
FuriousGiorge

March 17, 2010 at 09:56PM View BBCode

I will go back to posting nothing but pictures of asses without comment.
Tyles

March 17, 2010 at 10:03PM View BBCode

So what were you guys talking about? Sorry, I was too busy sawing logs here at my desk trying to read through the Tollin Chronicles.

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