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After years of bad deals, Yankees finally forced to come to their senses
- Updated: July 31, 2016
4:13 PM ET
ST.PETERSBURG, Fla. — Let it be recorded that July 31, 2016, is the date when the Yankees began to reap what they sowed nearly a decade earlier.
The seeds for the great sell-off — and the Yankees can call it whatever they like, but if it quacks like a duck, please pass the sauce a l’orange — were planted in December 2007, when someone in Yankees ownership (read: Hank Steinbrenner) decided to override the recommendation of GM Brian Cashman and reward Alex Rodriguez with a contract extension and a raise.
This is not to be interpreted as blaming A-Rod for the Yankees’ current plight; neither he nor his then-agent, Scott Boras, marched up to Hank’s office with a gun and a mask. The Yankees offered him the deal — an unprecedented $275 million in salary and another potential $30 million in home-run bonuses — and he would have been crazy not to take it. (And, crazy to walk away from it before every last dollar is paid.)
But the decision to make that deal, as well as the others that followed it — eight years, $180 million for Mark Teixeira; seven years, $161 million for CC Sabathia, with two more years and $50 million more tacked on in 2011; seven years, $155 million for Masahiro Tanaka; seven years, $153 million for Jacoby Ellsbury; five years, $85 million for Brian McCann; and four years, $52 million each for Brett Gardner and Chase Headley — ensured that this day would come, the day the Yankees would find themselves continuing to pay bills for goods and services that they had long stopped receiving.
The Yankees have paid Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez millions, long after their play on the field has justified it. And they’re not the only pinstriped parasites. Elsa/Getty Images
For all that money, the Yankees bought themselves one World Series title — and nearly a decade of disappointment and increasing mediocrity.
Hence the events of the past four years, in which this team has managed precisely one — one! — postseason game, which they lost, and the events of the past four months, in which an aging, overpaid and underperforming roster has struggled just to remain a .500 team, and the events of the past week, when the front office finally began to shed some of the relics of their past for what they hope will be the building blocks of their future.
As a result, …
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