In the last 48 hours, the Yankees have signed Brian Roberts to a $2 million dollar, one-year contract to be their starting second baseman. They have signed left-handed reliever Matt Thornton - most recently seen being left off of the Red Sox postseason roster - to a two-year, $7 million dollar deal. And Rany Jazayerli, one of the best baseball analysts alive, wrote a fantastic piece over at Grantland about the Yankees problems and the lack of a coming correction.
In his piece, which is quite long but deserves the full treatment, there were two passages that I found especially telling.
Cano was worth 7.6 Wins Above Replacement in 2013. McCann, Beltran, and Ellsbury were worth 10.4 bWAR combined. Losing Cano wipes out most of the gains made by signing the other three players, and while Cano will make $24 million in Seattle next year, the Yankees will pay the other three $53 million
The culprit in the Yankees' downfall is mundane, but real: They're simply not talented enough to contend. Talent was something the Yankees could always buy in the past, but no one's selling it anymore. With few ways to acquire that ability, it looks like the Yankees will be living unhappily — if not ever after, then certainly for a lot longer than their front office and fans are prepared to stomach.
Talent. That makes it sound so simple - but the piece overlooks the major point. Yes, it's less easy now to buy talent, but there is still talent available. The Yankees just don't have any of it. Why is that? Because they are failures at identifying talent. They can't draft. They don't sign international free agents of any quality. They don't get contributing scrap-heap pickups. They've been building their team, for 10 years, almost exclusively on paying top dollar for other teams free agents.
While a Red Sox vs. Yankees comparison may seem overwrought, it reflects an important point of how these teams have been built. A note about terms: "Blockbuster Free Agent" is anyone signed to an AAV of $20 million. "Big Free Agent" is anyone between $10 million. "Mid-level" is over $2 milliong. Bargains are less than that. I've taken all the players projected to be at least 1.0 WAR players from Fangraphs "STEAMER" projection. It's not perfect, but I'm not looking for a perfect projection, just to illustrate a point.
| Name | WAR | How acquired |
|---|---|---|
| CC Sabathia | 3.9 | Blockbuster Free Agent Signing |
| Jacoby Ellsbury | 3.7 | Blockbuster Free Agent Signing |
| Hiroki Kuroda | 3.5 | Big Free Agent Signing |
| Brian McCann | 3.3 | Big Free Agent Signing |
| Ivan Nova | 3.1 | Rule 5 Draft |
| David Phelps | 2.1 | Drafted 2008 |
| Mark Teixeira | 2.0 | Blockbuster Free Agent Signing |
| Brett Gardner | 2.0 | Drafted 2005 |
| Carlos Beltran | 1.8 | Big Free Agent Signing |
| David Robertson | 1.4 | Drafted 2006 |
| Derek Jeter | 1.4 | Drafted 1992 |
| Alex Rodriguez | 1.2 | Blockbuster Free Agent Signing |
| Kelly Johnson | 1.1 | Bargain signing |
| Name | WAR | How acquired |
|---|---|---|
| Dustin Pedroia | 3.9 | Drafted 2004 |
| Jon Lester | 3.5 | Drafted 2002 |
| John Lackey | 3.4 | Big Free Agent Signing |
| Xander Bogaerts | 3.0 | International Signing |
| Shane Victorino | 2.6 | Big Free Agent Signing |
| David Ortiz | 2.4 | Mid-level Free Agent Signing |
| Will Middlebrooks | 2.4 | Drafted 2007 |
| Clay Buchholz | 2.4 | Drafted 2005 |
| Jake Peavy | 2.4 | Trade |
| Felix Doubront | 2.4 | International Signing |
| Jackie Bradley | 2.1 | Drafted 2011 |
| Mike Napoli | 2.1 | Mid-level Free Agent Signing |
| Koji Uehara | 2.1 | Mid-level Free Agent Signing |
| A.J. Pierzynski | 1.3 | Mid-level Free Agent Signing |
| Daniel Nava | 1.2 | Undrafted free agent |
| Jonny Gomes | 1.1 | Mid-level Free Agent Signing |
| Junichi Tazawa | 1.1 | International Signing |
| Brandon Workman | 1.0 | Drafted 2010 |
| Ryan Dempster | 1.0 | Big Free Agent Signing |
The first thing that stands out is how many more good players the Red Sox have than the Yankees. The second, though, is the varied ways the Red Sox acquired their talent. Some were drafted over a decade ago, others quite recently. There are international signings, mid-level free agents, everything. The Yankees? Their top four players were all major signings. Ivan Nova was the one "find" in the group. They have three chosen in the draft in the last ten years. Let's resort the list, filtering out all of the Big and Blockbuster free agents, and players drafted 10 years ago (note - this works quite well, since it eliminates both Jeter and Lester, who were chosen by previous regimes).
| Name | WAR | How acquired |
|---|---|---|
| Dustin Pedroia | 3.9 | Drafted 2004 |
| Ivan Nova | 3.1 | Rule 5 Draft |
| Xander Bogaerts | 3 | International Signing |
| Clay Buchholz | 2.4 | Drafted 2005 |
| Will Middlebrooks | 2.4 | Drafted 2007 |
| Felix Doubront | 2.4 | International Signing |
| David Ortiz | 2.4 | Mid-level Free Agent Signing |
| Jake Peavy | 2.4 | Trade |
| David Phelps | 2.1 | Drafted 2008 |
| Jackie Bradley | 2.1 | Drafted 2011 |
| Mike Napoli | 2.1 | Mid-level Free Agent Signing |
| Koji Uehara | 2.1 | Mid-level Free Agent Signing |
| Brett Gardner | 2 | Drafted 2005 |
| David Robertson | 1.4 | Drafted 2006 |
| A.J. Pierzynski | 1.3 | Mid-level Free Agent Signing |
| Daniel Nava | 1.2 | Undrafted free agent |
| Kelly Johnson | 1.1 | Bargain signing |
| Junichi Tazawa | 1.1 | International Signing |
| Jonny Gomes | 1.1 | Mid-level Free Agent Signing |
| Brandon Workman | 1 | Drafted 2010 |
There is a lot more red there than blue, including seven of the eight best players.
The Yankee problems are often attributed to the Steinbrenners or the nature of sports in New York or Alex Rodriguez's ego or other such things, but the only good players they can identify are the ones that the league has already identified as good. It doesn't take any skill at all to figure out spending more money than every other team on the best players.
Note: As Jazayerli points out, this offseason they failed even at that - they replaced their best player with a series of inferior expensive ones. The combination of Ellsbury, McCann, and Beltran will probably produce more than Cano, but they are being paid more than twice as much, and do it while taking roughly 2.5 times as many at bats.
Instead of filling additional spots with minimum cost youngsters or flawed players looking for a shot, it seems Cashman's go-to player is simply old guys that aren't nearly as good as they used to be. In the last year and a half he's brought in Vernon Wells, Ichiro Suzuki, Travis Hafner, Alfonso Soriano, and now Brian Roberts. He's like Montgomery Burns, who tries to fill his company softball team with ringers, but only knows of players from the previous century. I'm waiting for the Yankee equivalent of Waylon Smithers to inform him that "your right-fielder has been dead for a hundred and thirty years."
The general managers job is talent identification. He doesn't do all of it himself, but he puts the team in place that does. Cashman's team has failed. The Yankees are bad not just because the economics of baseball have changed, but because their general manager can't identify good players.
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