Do Not Be Worried About Stanton's Contract

Here we see Mr. Stanton looking up at his salary.

Professional athletes get a lot of flak over how much money they make. You've no doubt heard something along the lines of "it's ridiculous that so-and-so makes that much money". What those people fail to realize (or choose to ignore) is that professional sports rakes in billions of dollars, and that money is going to end up in somebody's pocket. Would you rather the owners take the majority of that money, while the guys people pay that money to see do all the work?

It's the exact opposite of the situation in college sports, where so many people are up in arms over the fact that while Ohio State University football is worth $1.5 billion the players see none of that. Well, you can say they get some of that through tuition and food per diems, but you get my point. Besides, I don't want to touch that subject with Daniel's finger. Heck, I'm probably going to regret bringing it up in the first place.

The point I wanted to make there is that pro athletes make the money, and people are pissed. But when college athletes don't get that money, people are still pissed. 

Talk about hypocrisy.

And that's not the only place where so many people lose perspective when it comes to the salaries of professional athletes. Back when Giancarlo Stanton signed that 13 year extension with the Marlins I heard so many people talk about the fact that Florida would be on the hook for $32 million in 2025 (assuming he didn't opt out, or... you know... get traded), when Giancarlo is 35 years old and has likely taken a step or two back.

On the surface that sounds like it could hurt. Even on a team like the Yankees, who have one of the highest payrolls in the league (I like not having to say they have the highest), you're talking about more than 15% of your team payroll for one player. But for a team like Miami, whose payroll is a little over $95 million, that player salary is crippling.

So what do the Yankees do if Stanton doesn't opt out, and they are on the hook for $96 million for his ages 35-37 seasons (he has a club option for another $25 million in 2028, with a $10 million buyout)? Well... nothing.

Am I being so nonchalant about this because it's not my money?

Well... sort of, yes. But the biggest reason I don't worry about that is because of inflation. In 2011 the highest paid player, Alex Rodriguez, made $32 million. The highest paid player this season, Clayton Kershaw, will make $35.5 million. That's an increase of about 11%.

So it's possible that the highest paid player in 2025 could be making over $39 million. That's why when people say Bryce Harper, and possibly Manny Machado, could make $40 million a year on their next contract, you shouldn't say they're out of their minds.

So going back to Stanton's $32 million, that means there's a chance he could be making 20% less than the highest paid player in 2025. To put that in perspective, Jason Heyward's salary of just under $28.2 million is about 20% less than Kershaw's. And that's for a guy that's been a below average hitter for the past two plus years. But you don't hear about how his contract is crippling the Chicago Cubs, are you?

Hell, back in February, Jon Heyman wrote that the Cubs have one of the best chances to sign Bryce Harper this offseason. There's all the proof you need that the Cubs will not be hampered by that Jason Heyward contract.

And neither will the Yankees when it comes to Giancarlo's deal.

I can't say with certainty whether or not I want Stanton to opt-out after the 2020 season. Chances are I will be hoping he does, because at that point he will be 30 years old and I can't imagine being okay with the Yankees signing a 30 year old to a seven year contract. But either way I'm not going to predict doom for the team based on what happens there. If the farm system is unable to produce like they are now, then I may be a bit worried. But I'm going to keep the faith.

Judge & Stanton Gladly Pay the Power Bill…

Photo Credit: The Canadian Press via AP (Frank Gunn)

Yanks use the Big Bats to finish Road Trip on winning note…

It’s been a very eventful week in the Yankees Universe.  The Yankees completed a two-game sweep of the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario and finished the latest road trip with a 5-1 record. Tommy Kahnle now plays for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, Jordan Montgomery undergoes the knife today for his Tommy John surgery, and a number of young, talented prospects potentially begin their journeys to Pinstripes.

Seriously, MLB should option the Baltimore Orioles (19-41) to the International League and call up the RailRiders to replace them in the AL East. The RailRiders are loaded with Major League talent.

It’s been a great road trip (outside of the loss in the second game of Monday’s double-header in Detroit) and last night’s game was incredible. Sonny Gray, wow!  THIS is clearly the guy we’ve been looking for and NEED for an extended October run.  Sonny may not have gotten the win but he was as critical to the win as he has ever been while representing the Yankees. If he had given up just one run last night, the Yankees lose. I am so glad that Masahiro Tanaka was not on the mound as he would have given up at least his obligatory home run to send the Yankees home with a loss. Sonny’s final line was better than any starting pitcher who picked up a win on Wednesday. Eight innings, 99 pitches, two hits, no runs, a couple of walks, and eight strikeouts. The closest winning pitcher was Baltimore’s Dylan Bundy who blanked the New York Mets on three hits over seven innings, but c’mon, he was pitching to the Mets. Nice job, Sonny. Now if you can repeat this performance in Yankee Stadium, life will be good.

I am grateful for Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton for their game-winning home runs in the 13^th inning, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that the Sucks! Award goes to Gary Sanchez. He looked pitiful at the plate.  I was so mad when he swung at a pitch well below the strike zone to end the 11^th inning with Giancarlo Stanton stranded at third. All we needed was a measly single and Gary chases a stupid pitch.  For the game, El Gary was 1-for-6 with two strikeouts. The ground rule double he hit in the top of the 4^th inning allowed him to barely keep his batting average above .200. Aaron Boone keeps saying that Sanchez is close. I hope so because I sure didn’t see that guy last night. 

As for Judge, his two-run homer in the 13^th inning off Blue Jays reliever Joe Biagini made me about as happy as the kid prominently featured in the TV telecast, dancing in the upper deck of Rogers Centre while holding a handwritten “All Rise” sign. 

There was no doubt Judge’s shot was gone, but Stanton’s homer surprised me. He walloped the ball like only Aaron Judge can do and it looked like a line drive to left that might drop in for a single except the ball never dropped. It was a laser shot into the left field stands. It goes to show you that when Stanton does get hot, American League pitchers will be running for cover. 

Unfortunately, despite the win, the Yankees were unable to make up any ground on the Boston Red Sox. The Sox, winners of four-in-a-row, cruised past the Detroit Tigers, 7-1. Boston (43-19) maintained their one game advantage on the Yankees (40-18). It’s amazing the Red Sox and Yankees are the only teams in Major League Baseball with at least 40 wins. As many have said, the Yankees are on a path to 111 wins but if Boston continues its current winning percentage, the Yankees would have to settle for a one-game Wild Card play-off. Meanwhile, the Cleveland Indians hold a relatively comfortable 4.5 game lead in the AL Central and project out to 86 wins and would enter as a division champ.  That’s sick. 

The Yankees have the day off today in preparation for their weekend series with the crosstown Mets. It will be good to see old friend Todd Frazier but I am glad Yankees pitchers have to throw to the Toddfather and not some guy like Miguel Andujar in this series. Friday night’s game will be tough with Masahiro Tanaka scheduled to face Jacob deGrom. Hopefully the Yanks can hold it close to get into the Mets bullpen. I fully expect deGrom to bring his “A” game as there is nothing better than to beat NYC’s best team in New York.  Hopefully Masa was watching Sonny Gray and taking notes.

I haven’t had a chance to gather my thoughts about the Yankees picks in this year’s MLB Draft. I am anxious to read the Meet A Prospect segments by TGP’s Daniel Burch. The Yankees took six catchers including two for their first picks in the first and second rounds (Anthony Seigler and Josh Breaux). Within their first 16 picks, the Yankees took two 6’8” right-handed pitchers (Daniel Bies, 8^th Round, and Derek Craft, 16^th Round). The 11^th round pick, Tanner Myatt, also RHP, is no slouch at 6’7”. The shortest guy in the draft was LHP Dan Metzdorf (5’9”) who was taken in the 38^th round.  Go short people!

I was kind of hoping the Yankees would have selected 3B Triston Casas of American Heritage School in Florida. He had shown up as an option for the Yankees on a few mock draft boards. The Red Sox ended up taking him with the 26^th pick in the first round. I probably would have liked to have seen him go anywhere except Boston. I was also disappointed when the Atlanta Braves chose Stanford’s Tristan Beck, RHP, in the fourth round. Beck had been a late, back-end of the draft selection for the Yankees last year but did not sign. For as much as I’ve been down on former Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens, I was also disappointed when the Detroit Tigers got Roger’s son, Kody, a second baseman, in the third round. 

Lastly, I have to pay my respects to the late St Louis Cardinals great Red Schoendienst who passed away yesterday at age 95. While I am a Yankees fan, I grew up with St Louis as the nearest Major League city and it is where I experienced my first Major League game. While I liked baseball up to that point, I think my first game developed the love I have for the game. 

Wednesday, May 29, 1974…

 

The Los Angeles Dodgers, with future Yankee Tommy John on the mound, were facing the St Louis Cardinals at the old Busch Stadium in St Louis. Bob Gibson was on the hill for the Cards, but more importantly (at least for this post), the manager of the Cardinals was Red Schoendienst. I should have recognized the greatness of the manager in the other dugout (the legendary Walter Alston of the Dodgers) but it was Schoendienst that captured my attention on that day. I can’t even tell you why he was so memorable to me that day. Maybe it was his name. Maybe it was the aura of the Cardinals, a very proud franchise that is second only to the Yankees in history, tradition and World Series wins.

The Dodgers won that game, 5-2, and John was the winning pitcher but I went away from the game with a great appreciation and respect for the Schoendienst-led Cardinals. It probably helped that I got to meet and shake hands with Cardinals Hall of Famer Stan “The Man” Musial but I clearly associated the Cardinals with their manager. 

Schoendienst, a second baseman, played in the Majors for 19 years.  While he spent most of his time with the Cardinals, he also played for the New York Giants and Milwaukee Braves. Red was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1989. During the course his career in baseball as a player, coach or manager, he wore a Cardinals uniform for 67 out of 74 consecutive years in the game. To this day, I still can’t think of the Cardinals without thinking of Red. 

Farewell to a great St Louis Cardinal and to one of the game’s greatest guys. 

Photo Credit: St Louis Post-Dispatch (Robert Cohen)

The Red Sox have played four more games than the Yankees, thanks to the rainouts, and the Sox play again today. Here’s hoping for a Red Sox loss (finally) against the Tigers. I’d love to end this day with the Yankees only trailing the Sox by a half-game. The Tigers have a decent pitcher on the mound (Matthew Boyd, 3-4, 3.23 ERA) while the Red Sox counter with Jar-Jar Binks, excuse me, I mean Jalen Beeks. 

So, Go Tigers, and as always, Go Yankees!

P.S.  A special wish for a safe and successful surgery for Jordan Montgomery, and the all best for his post-surgery recovery and rehabilitation!

The Stars in Their Courses

The Stars in Their Courses

By David H. Lippman

  

Right before Cole Hamels demolished the Yankees on May 22nd, he made a cryptic statement to the media on how he was hoping he would get a chance to pitch for a contending team in critical games in September and October. As the Texas Rangers were 10-31 before that game, playing with overmatched minor-league call-ups in lieu of skilled veterans like Elvis Andrus and future Hall-of-Famers like Adrian Beltre, it’s unlikely that there will be a pennant chase in Arlington, Texas.

So what did Hamels mean? The answer was simple, of course: later this season, the Rangers, like most teams falling out of contention throughout baseball history, will sell off their higher-priced assets to acquire cheaper minor leaguers for the endless “rebuilding” campaign. Hamels expects to be one of them, and he probably will. He said so.

But what’s interesting about this routine statement was the timing – the Yankees were making their annual visit to the Dallas-Fort Worth blast furnace, and is the one large weakness on this otherwise astonishing Yankee team is their questionable pitching rotation. Despite his age, Cole Hamels would likely fill a critical gap. He knows that. The Yankees know that. And Hamels was smart enough to remind us with that fact before the game and during it.

He’s not the only well-known lustrous ballplayer making such noises. Last year, Bryce Harper, the signature player for the Washington Nationals, told interviewers during the All-Star Game that he didn’t think he wanted to go to the Yankees when his contract expires this fall. Now he’s making noises about the possibility of doing so, reversing his previous stand. And Manny Machado, who is doing a fine job of impersonating a shortstop for the otherwise hopeless Baltimore Orioles, also made similar noises, which got Aaron Judge in trouble when Aaron made them to Manny.

In theory, the Yankees could acquire two of these players (Hamels and Machado) this year, at least as rentals, and all three after the season, putting Miguel Andujar or Didi Gregorius out of a job, or Aaron Hicks out of a job, or filling up holes in the pitching rotation.

Why are these players making these noises? Well, obviously they all want to reel in the immense bucks that the Yankees can (and historically have) throw at the players they want. They also know that playing for the Yankees increases the side money (endorsements and appearances), post-game fun (nightclubs), and opportunities for post-season appearances (and more money). All ballplayers want to ride in the float with their wives and kids down the city’s main street at the World Series Victory Parade. The sole exception was Catfish Hunter, who was a very humble guy – as soon as the World Series was won, he would race for the Stadium exit, the taxicab, and the flight to North Carolina, to return to hunting, farming, and his family.

But this is all a gigantic change from the 1980s and 1990s, when free agents and big-name players would not come to New York and genuinely feared doing so.

Time after time in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, the Yankees would make their best pitch to some of baseball’s biggest players, and get turned down repeatedly. A three-team trade that would bring New York-raised master hitter Rod Carew to The Bronx fizzled out when Carew refused to play for the Yankees. Bobby Grich, seen as the possible replacement for Fred Stanley at shortstop after the 1976 World Series, instead signed with the Los Angeles Angels, claiming Yankee owner George M. Steinbrenner III “threatened” him.

The result was that the Yankees could not sign a great number of top-line free agents – even during the mid-1980s time of collusion, when Commissioner Peter Ueberroth convinced the owners to resume treating players as chattel. Nobody wanted to join the Yankees.

The reasons in the 1980s were obvious to anyone who remembers the era. Even long-time Yankee fans have trouble keeping tracks of who was manager in a given year. Billy Martin as a default answer usually works. His presence, paranoia, and fondness for alcohol made him a periodic menace to himself and his own team. The Yankees were in perpetual disarray, and players staggered out of the team dazed, exhausted, confused, and relieved.

This kind of atmosphere and the stories the survivors told in their new clubhouses frightened pending free agent ballplayers and their negotiators. Despite the Yankees’ core of talented players – Winfield, Mattingly, and Guidry – their tradition (which needs no rehearsing), and the numerous advantages of playing in New York (endorsement deals and extracurricular activities), “franchise players” avoided The Bronx, except with their visiting teams.

That “boycott” reached its peak or nadir in the late 1980s, when anybody who’d played in an All-Star Game was eager to flee New York or avoid it in the first place…with the result being the horrific 1990 Yankees, whose high in low was Andy Hawkins losing a Chicago game in which he did not give up a hit. Since he lost, the game is not recorded as a no-hitter.

All that changed once Joe Torre and the Core Four replaced Stump Merrill, Steve Howe, Oscar Azocar, Mike Witt, and Pascual Perez. Once again, the Yankees were the hot place for free agents and their spokesmen to bring their wares.

The Yankees promptly re-filed their lineup with a great many talented ballplayers, to the point that players who had no idea of what being a Yankee truly meant were begging to play in pinstripes.

That had some good results: Gary Sheffield, Hideki Matsui, Mike Mussina, to name three – and some horrific ones: Kevin Brown, Rondell White, and Carl Pavano of hated memory. Now we have top players dropping their “no-trade” clauses to accept moves to New York, like Giancarlo Stanton.

But despite revenue sharing and post-season defeats from between 2000 and 2008 and from 2010 and to the present, the big players are seeing the point, and headed for The Bronx. Yankee Stadium is the place to be, and the stars are coursing toward The Bronx.

The Yankees may not gain the services of Harper, Hamels, and Machado this year, or even next. But it’s clear that talented and established players will want to come here. They may not push out the young guys – Torres, Andujar, and Bird, for example – but it’s a pleasant problem for a general manager to face, be he or she sitting in a luxurious office in Yankee Stadium or in a less-than-luxurious living room.

My Reaction To Jordan Montgomery Getting TJS

It was recently announced that this Thursday Jordan Montgomery would undergo Tommy John surgery. While losing Monty for the rest of this season isn't going to hurt the Yankees shot at the World Series, the loss of Jordan Montgomery is far from insignificant. 

In 35 starts for the Yankees, between last season and this one, Monty has thrown to a solid 3.84 ERA. Yet his value to the rotation has been greatly overlooked.

I'm not saying he should be considered the team's ace, and was on his way to starting the Wild Card game or Game 1 of the ALDS. Actually, I don't think he would have started a postseason game at all. Severino, whoever they trade for, and Tanaka would likely be the starters then. But way more often than not, when Jordan started the team had a chance to win. And you can't ask for more than that from your #4 or #5 starter. 

Actually, there are plenty of teams that are lucky to get one win out of five starts from their 4th and 5th starters.

I don't want to say I'm concerned about the team's chances to win it all this season due losing Montgomery. The aforementioned Severino and Tanaka, along with Gray, Sabathia, and German should be able to keep leading the Yankees to plenty of victories. Not to mention an addition to that rotation via trade. But if you are waving this off as nothing, possibly comparing it to the team not having Jacoby Ellsbury around, you haven't been paying attention.

My Yankees MLB Draft Story: Austin Romine

My Yankees MLB Draft Story: Tommy Kahnle

My Yankees MLB Draft Story: Clint Frazier

My Yankees MLB Draft Story: Jordan Montgomery

My Yankees MLB Draft Story: Kyle Higashioka

My Yankees MLB Draft Story: Tyler Austin