The Real Problem with the Yankees

I will eventually finish my detailed post about the problems with the Yankees receiving so much money, but a recent article in the Chronicle by Bruce Jenkins made me post this. Basically he makes the old tired argument that baseball doesn't need to stop the Yankees, look at how much they spent and yet it was the Rays in the World Series, then discusses the World Series since 2001. He notes, "Teams fail because of their own stupidity and ill-advised transactions, not because they're short on cash."

What he and others are missing is that this has nothing to do with competitiveness or success in the World Series, per se, but the long-term competitiveness and success of teams. Using simple economics, it's clear: when you have a team with resources up to 5 times more than other teams, they can overbid for the players they want, which raises the costs for similar players on the other teams.

Yankee Tax

That's what I would call the "Yankee Tax" on the rest of the MLB. I don't know exactly what that tax percentage is, but because the Yankees can pay more for their players, that raises the price for all other teams. And if the other teams are paying more for their top players, that means that they have less to pay other players and eventually be unable to keep a talent they would have otherwise been able to afford. That reduces the talent level for all other teams in terms of what they could have acquired had there not been a Yankee team bidding up the costs of players. That weakens other teams and make it easier for the Yankees to both make the playoffs and to get deeper into the playoffs as the talent level is lowered for other teams.

That the Yankees cannot win the World Series year in, year out, is due more to the playoff structure requiring two rounds of playoffs before reaching the World Series. The Yankees from 2001 to 2008 had the best record in the AL 4 times in 8 seasons, were 2nd in one, 3rd twice, and 4th once, out of 14 teams and was within 4 games of leading another 2 times. They would have been in the World Series 4 times had we still had the winner takes all that existed during the Yankees heyday from the Babe to the Mick. Because of the playoff system, even when they have the best team, the difference is so marginal that it is almost basically a coin flip whether they make it past the first round and two coin flips whether they make it to the World Series.

Counting from 1993, when their latest success streak begun, the Yankees have had the best record in the AL 7 times in 16 seasons, were 2nd in 3 seasons, 3rd in 4 seasons, 4th once and 5th once, out of 14 teams (12 teams in 1993) and was within 4 games of leading another 3 times. That would have been 7 times in the World Series in the last 16 seasons. They ended up getting in 6 times during that period. So random luck worked out during that period in allowing them to be in the World Series as many times as they would have had the playoffs not been created.

That is a pretty long streak of dominance, similar to what they did long along, just tempered for the times.