With
all the focus/jealousy from the baseball critics and other teams regarding the
Yankees persistent overspending on team payroll, there’s one thing most of them
have been missing as their target - the Yankees also don’t hesitate to spend on
scouts and lawyers! While it is known
that the Yankees have more in each category, no one really pays enough
attention to those somewhat intangible aspects of the Yankees’ success. I do and, as a Yankees’ fan, I love it!
As I’ve
mentioned in the past, it’s not easy to draft and/or sign successful young farm
system players such as Adam Warren, Dellin Betances, David Phelps, David
Robertson, John Ryan Murphy, etc., when you constantly win and get penalized
with low draft picks; however, the more expert minds you have collectively
scouting the world, the better chance you have to find that diamond in the
ruff. Additionally, the more lawyers you
have, the better chance you have to stay ahead of MLB’s potential strategies
involved with key things such as the upcoming expiring Collective Bargaining
Agreement (CBA) which anticipates more obstacles for heavy-spending teams such
as the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Rangers, etc.
With
that, the Yankees have been progressively adding many scouts to find more
talent that can potentially strengthen their farm system, particularly assigning
the bulk of the scouts to evaluate the international leagues, including Latin
America and Korea. Their team of lawyers
apparently believe that, once the Players Union/MLB CBA expires, drafting the amateur
free agents from those leagues will terminate and ultimately become a draft
pool, similar to the June draft process for selecting America’s young talent of
players. If so, an international draft
may develop into another queue selection - whereby the poor performing teams
get the first selections of these youthful potentials.
So, the
Yankees are planning to not only topple their free agent spending officially on
July 2nd, but trounce their competition. In the past, both the Cubs and Rangers have
slightly exceeded their spending, but no team has ever shattered the
limit! The CBA-determined “limited”
spend is somewhere near $2.2 million, but the Yankees are rumored to be
planning on obliterating that limit by spending at least $12 million collectively
on players - most of which they’ve already had gentlemen’s agreements with since
late last year - all enormous offers.
One of those players is this year’s most sought-after international free
agent - third baseman, Dermis Garcia (from the Dominican Republic). Other players they have been negotiating with
since last November include another third baseman, Nelson Gomez (Dominican); centerfielder,
Juan De Leon (Dominican); outfielder Jonathan Amundaray (Venezuelan); and three
shortstops - Chris Torres (switch-hitter Dominican), Diego Castillo
(Venezuelan), and Korean Hyo-Joon Park (Korean). It is believed that most of them have already
made an agreement with the Yankees and are just waiting to officially announce
their deals this Wednesday.
Most of
the aforementioned and, in general, most of the players from the international
league are typically 16 years old.
Hence, predetermining any of them as can’t-miss superstars at such an
early age and development in life is very difficult; but, like any other gamble
(and realistic mathematics) you can increase your chances by increasing the positive
odds.
Oh, and
by the way, the penalty for teams spending over their limit is two-fold:
Major
tax penalties
- The
Steinbrenners are, once again, showing extra spending is worthy as long as it
offers the opportunity to help develop/strengthen the Yankees.
Prohibited
from spending more than approximately $250,000 (for any player
during following year’s international free agents)
- Again,
the Yankees’ lawyers believe that the Yankees will be restricted anyway from
their predicted adjustments to the new CBA and their overabundance of the
Yankees’ scouts collectively believing that this year’s selections have more
potential than next year’s will.
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