In the wake of the shocking signing of Cliff Lee by the Phillies, the focus now has to turn on what the Yankees failed to do and what they have as a plan B. One thing is for sure, there aren’t too many years in which the Yankees fail to grab any of the Top 5-10 free agents on the market. Wherever George Steinbrenner is right now, he must be steaming from ear to ear and looking for a way to vent his frustration at Billy Martin one more time.
The Yankees under George would just never fail in the off-season. The franchise set the bar every single year for spending and because of that, it allowed them to win championships and become the grandiose franchise in all of professional sports. How would he react to an off-season that has seen the Yankees sign Mariano Rivera, an over-the-hill version of Derek Jeter and a slumping former All-Star catcher in Russell Martin?
Clearly, he would be fuming mad. Then add in the fact that the rival Boston Red Sox have picked up All-Star outfielder Carl Crawford and All-Star first baseman Adrian Gonzalez and you would have an owner ready to fire even the custodial engineers. The idea of being closer to spending with the Jays, Rays and Orioles than the Red Sox would be a complete insult.
So, what is Plan B for this team? Well, trying to grab a high-priced big-splash type of free agent is out of the question now, so the Yankees will have to do something that 20-25 other teams are used to doing. That’s working with second-tier free agents and trying to find the gem in the rough or the outcast that still has something left in the tank.
But it’s just not the Yankee way. Much like I wouldn’t want to see Donald Trump owning second-tier casinos off the strip in Vegas or heaven forbid in Reno, I don’t want to see the Yankees hunting for bargains on the free agent market. The Yankees have put themselves in a position to always be looking for that thousand-dollar suit and not rummaging through the bargain bin to find two suits that look good for 200 bucks in the 2-for-1 sale.
With the torch being passed to a younger breed of Steinbrenner, there’s a case that can be made that the younger generation is more worried about the bottom line and responsible spending as opposed to the father figure that was willing to take risks in spending recklessly and adhering to one of the principle rules of business, “you have to spend money to make money.”
Even if I’m off-based in my theory about the younger generation of Steinbrenner, the fact remains that the Yankees are just never in this kind of position. We’re not even into 2011 yet on the calendar and we can already deem the off-season for the Yankees a complete failure.