On thing the Yankees may be hoping is that Jeter was playing hurt much of last year and will be healthy and better in 2011.
Contrary to what some people have said about the Yankees having an unlimited budget, they do have one. It’s about $200 million, which is about $50 million more than anybody else.
If the Yankees don’t sign Jeter (and I think both will find common ground, about 3 years for $60 million), they will need to get a shortstop and leadoff hitter. They are a team that went to the ALCS so they would need somebody pretty good (although you could move Gardner to lead off). I don’t know if Hanley Ramirez or Troy Tutlowski are available and Ramirez is a dog at times. Plus considering how much of a deal they yankees made out of Jeter setting the Yankee hit record two years ago (nobody knew that record existed), they can hype him getting 3,000 hits. Get some merchandising deals with The Core of Rivera, Posada and Pettitte).
A few years ago when A Rod opted out, there was somebody at Forbes who argued he was worth $40 million…something to do with the high net worth of the Yankees and what his share of that would be.
It’s a sports team on the other side of the revenue but the New York Islanders never really recover from kicking Bryan Trottier to the curb two decades ago to save money. Trotts also ended up with two Stanley Cups with Penguins. Of course incompetent corrupt owners and idiots in the front office (Mike Milbury, Garth Snow) helped in that. I don’t know if anyone in the Yankees thinks of this but the same happened 45 years ago when they fired Yogi Berra, he went to the Mets and the Yankees went into a decline for a decade.
As a semi-interested observer who nonetheless lives in their market and is inundated with Yankee information, the two big unknowns for me are how the Hank & Hal regime differs from their father, and how Jeter handles the grim reality of getting older and the necessity to be moved to another position. The dude’s been around forever but I don’t really know much about him. It seems to hard to imagine the Yankees drawing a financial line in the sand or Jeter taking offense and signing with the Dodgers out of spite, but weirder things have happened.
Maybe it’s cuz I’m not a Yankee fan, but to me I’d just sign someone like Beltre for less than 20 mil, move A-Rod to short until a young ss comes along in a year or so, and consider I’'d gotten off cheap. A contract for Jeter at top dollar is what teams generally try to avoid–a star whose reputation may exceed his abilities, coming off a declining season, at age 36, seeking a LT contract at top dollar? Pass. At the very least, try to low-ball him, is how the smart money is bet.
I have endless admiration and respect for Bill James, but his analogy is just senseless.
MLB has more than a hundred years of precedent for paying lower salaries to older, less capable ballplayers. There’s no insult at all in it. The union doesn’t try to prevent it and has never seriously suggested it.
In normal industries, it would rightly be considered outrageous because it’s simply not done. No company worth a penny more than a cat turd would suddenly bust down the salary of an older, accomplished employee.
If in fact asking a veteran of diminshed skills to take a lower contract would cause players to hate that team and refuse to play for it then there shouldn’t be any more ballplayers in MLB at all, because ALL TEAMS DO THIS.
Having read this entire discussion, it sounds like it comes down to this:
You’re viewing it purely from a rational, on-field stats basis. Jeter is getting older, his production is down, and (ludicrous Gold Glove award aside) his defensive range is limited. All true. And, if on-field production is your only criterion, you’re absolutely right – it makes no sense to re-sign Jeter at anything close to what he made last year.
What the other posters have been noting is everything beyond on-field production. Jeter’s the most-beloved Yankee of his generation, cutting him loose (or low-balling him) is a sure-fire way to anger Yankee fans, and there may be a willingness on the part of the Yankee front office to overpay Jeter in his final contract as thanks for all he’s done for the team.
Right. James completely misses the fact that the knowledge and skills and abilities valued by most companies remain valuable even as the employee ages; not exactly the same thing as a physical job like baseball where, as James and others like him have ably demonstrated, performance is very likely to drop of in the late 30s.
The Yankees will also take into consideration their lack of new homegrown stars. The most popular Yankees through the years have been players who came up in their system and played their whole careers in the Bronx. Before Jeter, there was Mattingly. Before that, Thurman Munson, Willie Randolph and Ron Guidry. Before that Mantle and Berra and on and on.
It’s likely that Pettitte and Posada will be gone after next season. That leaves Jeter and Rivera, and I can’t believe the great Mariano will play for more than two seasons. Joba has gone backwards, Hughes is a question mark, Gardner is very good but is more of a role player.
That leaves Robinson Cano as the only homegrown star. With all that in mind, I think they’ll sign Jeter for 4 years/80-85 million, play him at shortstop next year and worry about moving him around later.
Despite my earlier arguments about the Yankees’ almost-unlimited money supply, and my belief that Jeter will probably be paid more than he’s worth, 4 years at $20m±per would be insane, even by Yankee standards.
I would have said 3 years for 45 million but then I remembered what happened with A-Rod. They had no competitors but they went as crazy as Hicks did in Texas, and threw in a bunch of milestone bonuses for good measure. He may get paid less, but they’ll be something sweetening the contract, bringing it’s value up.
How much has Monument Park been worth to the Yankees all these years? The reason they have all the money to spend on players is because they build icons. They need to continue to add icons to keep the interest of the future generations. Jeeter is an icon. Jeeter’s face will be in monument park and if the Yankees play it right his face will basically print money for years to come. You need heroes of old to sell the product they sell. Jeeter transition’s the Yankee product to a new generation of Yankee fan. Just like your Dad talked about DiMaggio and you talk about Mattingly your son can talk about Jeeter. A tradition of winning is not bought, it is built. The Yankees will pay for Jeeter’s legacy for the same reason they pay for on-field talent, they realize they need to pay for icons to be the best.
Pretty much nothing. Oh, I’m sure some Yankee fans get all weepy as they lead their four-year-olds by the hand through the hallowed monuments, and with breaking voice explain how Babe Ruth fought valiantly in both World Wars and Mantle played through several cancer operations and amputations, but does this bring much money into the operation? Their marketing is built on winning–when they have lousy teams as in the late eighties and early nineties, they don’t draw so many fans, like any other team. Give them twice the statues and half the wins, and they’ll have serious problems.
Most Yankee fans are so ignorant of their own tradition that somehow the myth has emerged, with some of you supporting it here, that the Yankees never tried lowballing DiMaggio and the other greats, which they were famous for doing. Nonetheless, it was just business–they certainly underpaid all their star players, both systematically and individually, Dimaggio holding out bitterly, and signing reluctantly for far less than his value, on several occasions, but he still embodies Yankee pride and excellence. They have Jeter by the balls now: a good starting point for negotiations would be “Hey, Derek, you’ve made out like a bandit with your last contract, and your skills are pretty replacable, so how about you give two or three years for free and we’ll call it call it even? We’re not even asking that you pay us anyting for the privelige of wearing the pinstripes, that’s how big-hearted we are.”
If you’re interested, one of these players was acquired in a trade from the Pirates. Yankee fans spouting ignorance about Yankee tradition is itself a great tradition.
In the Bill James quote above, is he saying the Yankees would be creeps if they *didn’t *overpay for Jeter??? Puh-leez. Any other team would get lambasted and the GM fired for knowingly overpaying an aging star. Look at the Red Sox…cut ties with Clemens when they felt it was time (he only continued thanks to roids), cut ties with near-Jeter-level-fan-favorite Nomar and that worked out pretty well.
Braves showed Glavine the door in an unpopular but ultimately wise move. They also let Smoltz walk. Chipper is comparable to the Jeter situation, although he’s in a more obvious decline.
I’d note that, at least if we’re talking about Yankees greats from the 1940s-1960s, that that was before Steinbrenner bought the team, which may or may not be relevant.
You seem to be an expert on spouting ignorance. Well deserved, as you can’t grasp that it doesn’t matter what the Yankees pay Jeter. It won’t affect what they do at any other position. I can make an mp3 and say it really slowly if that helps.