• It was pointed out to me that the Red Sox actually have the 4th highest payroll in baseball, behind the Yankees, Mets and Cubs, and only slightly ahead of the Tigers and Angels. Interesting, as I’d thought the Sox still had a substantial lead over all non-Yankee teams. (Of course, the Sox might be able to spend considerably more than that and just didn’t in 2009.)
• I don’t think anyone complains about the game being rigged in the Mets’ favor because it’s not. Even though they, like the Yankees, play in New York City, the Yankees’ effective market size (fan base, TV revenue, etc.) is much larger than the Mets’, for various reasons. (I suspect that fundamentally the reason is that the Yankees didn’t leave New York like the Dodgers and Giants did, and the Mets have been unable to entirely absorb the fan bases of the two NL teams. Secondarily, of course, the Yankees have been a wildly successful since the Mets have arrived; even their years in the wilderness have been punctuated by great success in the 70s and 90s.)
• A spin-off discussion which I deliberately decided not to go into here is the Yankees’ 2009 roster, and some of their missteps in recent years that Subrata alluded to. The Yankees’ regular line-up had 4 hitters age 35 or older, plus ARod at 33, and their pitchers included 37-year-old Andy Pettitte, and oft-injured AJ Burnett (both of whom were good but hardly dominant). The Yankees got resurgent years from Posada (age 37), Jeter (35), Damon (35), Swisher (28) and Matsui (35), plus what may be Cano’s career year, and a better-than-usual year from Melky Cabrera, and they were a very healthy team considering their age. Were the Yankees lucky? Did they just know something about these players? Some of both, I’d guess. However, if their aging players resume their declines in 2010, and with the thin free agent markets in the coming years, the Yankees may find the going harder.
• Posnanski’s post that I refer to originally deals in some depth with the fact that MLB has rigged the playoffs so the best and most efficient team doesn’t win every year. It is, of course, the “anything can happen in a short series” phenomenon.
• Overall I think the Yankees are not as well-run as organization as the Red Sox or Rays (maybe not even the Angels). They’re near the top, though (I can’t think of anyone else I’d put ahead of them), and their money helps compensate for what their front office lacks in skills. And of course it therefore helped a lot that they were able to sign 3 of the best free agents in recent years prior to 2009.

“[...]but I don’t believe that the economic advantage created that spike[...]”

Maybe not, but it might create the next one. For example, their economic advantage lets them sign international players – marketing the Yankees worldwide gives you an in, and you can pay more than enough to get the guys you really want. It lets them pick up players who slide in the draft as well (although only one per round, and other teams can do the same thing). It lets them pay scouts whatever it takes. It might be impractical, but the Yankees could hire one scout for every high school in the country, assign them to that school and have a good head start on figuring out who the next Jeter might be. They might not even notice the cost.

I haven’t been able to come up with an answer that I think would work, and is fair. I don’t believe that the Yankees market would notice another team or two being dropped into New York – for example, would moving the Royals to New York make any difference at all if the Royals were run the way they are today?

Also, it’s not clear to me how much of the current Yankees success is sustainable, in this sense: 95-96-97 was the end of the development of Rivera-Jeter-Posada, and pretty much no matter how you count it, that’s more than NYs fair share of the current crop of HOF candidates. Now, without a doubt, the economic advantage has allowed the Yankees to keep all three of those players (pop quiz: who is the best Yankee farm product that has NOT played the bulk of his career in NY?) but I don’t believe that the economic advantage created that spike (evidence: it doesn’t appear to have been sustained?)

In other words, the Yankees finally being smart about not buying second best talent is coincident with an usual crop of home grown players. What does baseball look like when that stops being true? How do the lessons of Atlanta and Tampa Bay apply?

(One thing I often wonder is why no one complains about the game being rigged in the Mets favor. I suspect that it’s because a) ownership doesn’t have the 40 years of compounded growth and hence the same ability to exploit their market b) they haven’t leveraged their revenue as efficiently as the Yankees have c) they don’t have the Yankees history, being an expansion team, and hence can’t market themselves as well.)

That being said, the resources spent on a baseball team are whatever the ownership is willing to pay. Ownership can dip into their own pockets if they wish and spend more for players, but they didn’t get to be billionaires by doing that sort of thing. Most owners will (wisely) spend up to the point at which the franchise is still making an operating profit *and* continuing to grow the franchise’s value. Some will stop short of that. Expecting otherwise is well, doomed to disappointment if nothing else. (I don’t know if there’s a modern owner willing to spend past the operating profit point and be content with the immense growth in franchise values, even for the Royals and Pirates of the world.) The Yankee revenue stream makes that point staggeringly high for their ownership, and their franchise growth makes it possible to spend well beyond that if they choose to do so.

One frightening thought I’ve occasionally had is that the Yankees might be even more successful than they are if they largely eschewed the free agent market (*cough* Kei Igawa *cough* Carl Pavano *cough*) and instead plowed even more money into scouting and player development (which to a certain extent, they have; they identified the top two free agents in a rich class last year and went all out to get them). The Yankees cannot buy the best players from other teams due to the Finley Rule, but the same isn’t true of those teams’ other assets. I wonder what MLB would do if the Yankees identified the 50 top scouts in baseball and offered all of them a 100% raise and scads of perks? (Could they do anything? Probably not, given that Loria’s actions during the purchase of the Marlins went unanswered.) That would be a frightening leverage of insignificant costs into a potentially huge improvement in their talent acquisition. Or if the Yankees opened a player development academy staffed by the best native talent in twenty countries worldwide – including Japan? Again, an expenditure that’s insignificant to the Yankees, but impractical for other teams.