The “Evil Empire” still exists in MLB, it just relocated from the Bronx to Los Angeles.
While the Los Angeles Dodgers continue to outspend every other team in Major League Baseball by a wide margin, New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner didn’t make it sound like his club would be matching them anytime soon.
“It’s difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kind of things that they’re doing,” Steinbrenner told the YES Network’s Meredith Marakovits on “Yankees Hot Stove,” which aired Tuesday night.
If losing out on Soto wasn’t enough of a hit to the reputation of the Bronx being the Mecca of baseball, the evil empire, then that quote by Yankees owner sure felt like the final dagger.
After beating the Yankees in the World Series last October, the Dodgers have MLB’s biggest projected luxury tax payroll at $376.4 million. The Philadelphia Phillies sit second at $307.8 million and the Yankees third at $302.9 million.
The Dodgers have committed nearly a half-billion in guaranteed dollars to players this offseason, second only to the New York Mets, who signed Juan Soto to a historic 15-year, $765 million deal.
“Now, we’ll see if it pays off,” Steinbrenner said. “They still have to have a season relatively injury-free for it to work out for them, and it’s a long season, as you know, and once you get to the postseason, anything can happen. We’ve seen that time and time again. We’ll see who’s there at the end.”
This winter, the Dodgers made the following big-money signings: Lefty starting pitcher Blake Snell, five years, $182 million; lefty reliever Tanner Scott, four years, $72 million; outfielder Teoscar Hernández, three years, $66 million; righty reliever Blake Treinen, two years, $22 million; outfielder Michael Conforto, one year, $17 million; and infielder Hyeseong Kim, three years, $12.5 million. They also landed Japanese free-agent starting pitcher Roki Sasaki, the most coveted international prospect of the winter.
The Yankees, however, haven’t been idle. After losing Soto, they signed starting pitcher Max Fried to an eight-year, $218 million deal and gave first baseman Paul Goldschmidt a one-year, $15 million contract. They also made a pair of headline-stealing trades, acquiring outfielder/first baseman Cody Bellinger from the Chicago Cubs and Devin Williams, perhaps the best closer in the game, from the Milwaukee Brewers.
Steinbrenner added that he personally will have a chip on his shoulder heading into the 2025 season after the Yankees’ World Series loss.
“We’re way better than we showed in that last series,” he said. “We’re going to be better defensively this time around, if we make it. I believe, if we make it, we’ll get the job done. But we’ve got to play our best game when you’re playing a team like the Dodgers. It’s like playing the Kansas City Chiefs. You can’t make mistakes. You can’t give them outs. You can’t give them runs. You’ve got to play your best game. We didn’t do that. I think that makes us even more hungry to get there again this year.”
But clearly that chip on his shoulder isn’t heavy enough to force him to dip further into his wallet to solidify his teams chances of getting back on top the world of baseball.
The Yankees currently have a massive hole within their infield. Just like they’ve had a hole in LF since Gardner departed years ago. For a team who’s motto in championship or bust, they can’t head into a 5th consecutive season where we look at their roster with a sizable gap in it.
Teams who are serious about winning, like the Dodgers, are not heading into their championship aspiration season with broken down DJ LeMahieu, utility Oswaldo Cabrera and unproven Oswaldo Cabrera as their 3B options.
I get it, the Cohen tax is a real irritant and reason to pause spending time to time. But they’re not stiff enough penalties to enforce it as if it is a salary cap and not simply a tax.
The Yankees just made the World Series for the first time in 15 seasons. A rare lengthy drought based on Yankees standards. But they lost so that drought continues.
This is not the time to adhere to penalties, this is when you go all in. Judge and Cole’s prime will close before you know it. Stanton will retire soon. The window is right now so act with some urgency.
The Dodgers won it all and reacted by improving any small weakness they had, and then doubled and tripled down on making their strengths even stronger.
That is what the Evil Empire Yankees used to do. It is how they used to build dynasties and became the Mecca in the first place.
But today they’re operating as a franchise with restrictions. Playing 2nd, 3rd and at times 4th fiddle to the likes of the Dodgers, Mets and Phillies when it comes to spending.
These aren’t our fathers Yankees we grew up loving, simply put because Hal isn’t his father.
