When I wrote 10%, I meant that by not signing Jeter at all, and spending that money elsewhere, is a decision amounting to almost 10% of their annual budget.
This seems vague and self-defining to me. Of course no one literally has an infinite amount of money, but all indications are that the Yankees mean to stay close to their budget for 2010, or so the Steinbrenner boys are insisting. Jeter fans are acting as if they can spend and spend, which obviously they’re not prepared to do.
There have been some reports last night and today that the two sides are talking again, and the Yankees may have sweetened their offer to about $17 million a year for three years, and perhaps an option for a fourth year. Tom Verducci did a story yesterday that put Jeter in the context of other shortstops (Larkin and Ripken) and similar 'franchise icons (Molitor, Brett, and Biggio) at similar points in their careers. He pointed out that Ripken and Larkin got raises at about the same age Jeter is now, Brett got a raise later in his career, and when the Brewers offered Molitor a pay cut, he left for Toronto. Biggio did take a large pay cut at 36 and got a small raise at 40 and 41. He also points out how much money the team wasted on Kei Igawa and others last year. It’s interesting stuff and it does make you wonder somewhat why the team has taken such a hard line on Jeter.
What went unmentioned, however, is that Jeter is still looking at making a lot more money than any of these guys. The Yankees’ “lowball” offer was $15 million a year after Jeter had been making $18.9 million a year, compared to the Orioles giving Ripken $7.55 million a year in 1997, the Reds giving Larkin around $9 million a year in 2000, and so on. So it’s an interesting piece that’s missing some context.
One thing i wonder is why so many people are critical of the Yankees taking a “hard line” with Jeter, and yet not critical of Jeter taking a similarly “hard line” with the Yankees. He and his agent asking for $22-24m/yr for up to six years is more of a slap in the face to the Yankees than the Yankees’ $15m/yr over three years was to Jeter.
I’m no Yankees fan, but the ballclub and its fans have made Jeter a tremendously wealthy man, and it seems to me that loyalty in these situations should probably work both ways. If people are going to rag on the club for not being loyal to Jeter, or for just thinking about money, why not rag on Jeter for doing the same thing? Why can’t he show a bit of willingness to be flexible for the sake of the millions of Yankee fans who watch him every week, and the thousands who pay exorbitant ticket prices to see him at the ballpark?
Even more basically, why can’t people see both sides of this negotiation for exactly what it is: two parties to a business deal, each trying to get the best value possible out of the transaction? Why even bother whining about things like loyalty or respect?
And some parts of that article are stupid, like this:
This writer is a fucking idiot. On the one hand, he’s criticizing the Yankees for using “a few down months” to push Jeter’s value down; on the other, he’s arguing that one 28-game stretch at the end of the season should boost Jeter’s value in the negotiations.
And he’s completely disingenuous about the “few months” thing. The fact is that it’s more logical to take Jeter’s 2010 as indicative of his likely future production than it is to take his outstanding 2009. Does the writer forget that Jeter had a pretty damn average 2008 season as well? As Christina Kahrl put it in Baseball Prospectus:
And all that doesn’t even take into account his liabilities as a defensive shortstop.
Of course, defensively they could put him in the outfield. Jeter’s problems at short have never been due to a lack of speed—he’s always been a fast runner—but to his poor footwork. Even though his speed is slowing a little as he gets older, maybe he could put it to better use in the outfield. One problem there, though, is that the Jeter-as-Yankee-icon seems to revolve as much around him playing shortstop as it does about his presence on the team. That was made pretty clear when A-Rod came to town.
Jeter has been a fabulous player for the Yankees, and for baseball. He’s off to Cooperstown on his first ballot. But i’m amazed that so many people are arguing that the Yankees are somehow being unreasonable in their negotiations here.
It is simple, Jeter needs the Yankees more than the Yankees need Jeter.
I don’t see it that way. He could absorb a pay cut, but that’s true of any player who has been around as long as he has. A lot of these guys attach pride to these dollar figures. That’s how it goes. Unspoken in all of this, at least here, is that Alex Rodriguez is a few years into a contract that will pay him about $27 million a year until he’s 42. Rodriguez is the better player, but Jeter appears to have started by looking for a similar deal. I don’t think he believes he’s slightly more than half as good as Rodriguez.
Beats me. It’s sports, and people always have to break these things down to personal issues. Personal issues can be involved, but it’s usually about money.
I don’t see how he could be an upgrade over the outfielders they have.
I’m not doubting that he attaches some sort of pride to it, but that’s not the question. The question is why the Yankees should take that into account when evaluating his future value to the team, which is exactly what you seemed to be sugesting they do when you accused them of taking a hard line.
That whole argument is stupid. Rodriguez got that contract at age 32, with plenty of good years ahead of him. I’m sure that the Yankees knew that he was unlikely to be worth as much by the time he reached 42, but paying him that much was the only way to get his services when he was 33 and 34. And A-Rod has, in fact, given the Yankees outstanding service, including 2 MVP seasons in which the Yankees likely wouldn’t have made the playoffs without him.
Jeter, on the other hand, is asking for a similarly-sized (on a per-year basis) contract at a time when his best years are almost certainly behind him, and when there is no real short-term upside to weigh against the medium-to-long-term downside. As Christina Kahrl said in the article i quoted earlier:
Jeter got his big-money, long-term deal ten years ago, and is now worth well into 9 figures as a result. He simply doesn’t have the same sort of value leverage now as he did in 1999.
I wasn’t accusing them of anything. I thought I was stating a fact: they offered less money and fewer years than people expected (I don’t think I was alone in being surprised they started at $15 million), and so far, they have stuck to that proposal. We all know they’ll raise it a little, but not to the neighborhood Jeter wanted.
He certainly doesn’t. That’s why it looks like he’ll get less money and fewer years than he wanted.
Sure you were.
The very use of the term “hard line,” in this instance, carries a sort of accusation. It implies that they’re not being fair, that they’re not simply making a business decision.
Furthermore, you didn’t only call it a “hard line,” you said you were surprised that the Yankees were doing this. Why be surprised? It’s a perfectly valid negotiating tactic, especially since just about everyone in baseball recognizes that the Yankees are about the only team in the Majors likely to offer Jeter even as much as $15 million per year. He just doesn’t carry the sort of value for other teams that he does for the Yankees, especially given his age and his recent decline in performance.
You’re completely wrong. “Hard line” means nothing other than taking a position and sticking to it. It does not mean the team is being unfair. (When this whole thing started I said Jeter was going to get overpaid. How can they be unfairly overpaying him?)
I said I was surprised they offered less money and a shorter contract than I expected.
Yes, it is.
I’ve said the same thing in this thread.
Here is a website (credit Rob Neyer) that shows the baseball cards of Derek Jeter in every other MLB uni.
You guys crack me up, btw, with your vague pronostications and all the “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” stuff you keep peddling. How about just putting a dollar figure that you think his new contract will total out at? The years don’t really matter, since this is almost certainly his final meaningful contract—if the Yankees pay him 60 million for three years or 60 million for 10 years, he’s probably going to be useless beyond 2012 anyway, so the years most likely won’t matter. That’s the part that kills me in all this, that the Yankees are supposed to think there is a HUGE chance that Jeter’s off-year in 2010 is just an off-year, and not the beginning of a very sharp end, as they might with any other 36-year-old having a bad season. It’s like the Mets signing Robbie Alonar to a long range deal when he got there and suddenly started playing terribly in his early 30s–they would have been complete assholes to conclude that he had an All-star future, but the Yankees are being assholes, IMO, to conclude that Jeter’s 2010 is a statistical blip. I put the odds at 50-50 that instead of rebounding to previous levels, Jeter declines further in 2011–and won’t they look like idiots for having signed him to a big bucks, mega-years contract if his stats continue to go south, as they do for most players his age? That’s what I’m rooting for, anyway.
Prediction: they foolishly sign him to a contract worth 52 milliion over three years. Your dollar figure is…?
OK, it looks like I was on the money, a million over: Jeter just signed a three-year, 51 million dollar deal, according to ESPN. I still think this is going to blow up in their faces, as Jeter pulls an Alomar on them, and they’re forced to play a severely declining Jeter for much longer than his level of play warrants, and pay him money that keeps them from signing some superstar (Werth, Crawford, Beltre) who might make the difference in their appearing the playoffs or not.
Go, Sox!
from baseballmusings.com, a fuller explanation of the 51 million guaranteed. There are incentives that Jeter is about as likely to collect as he is to deserve (as opposed to “to win”) another Gold Glove:
Baseballmusing.com also had a story on a quality (and affordable) FA catcher, which would have been a much better signing (with maybe Miguel Tejada as a ss signing) for the Yankees:
http://sports.espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/news/story?id=5895013
I think Jeter is mostly upset at himself (though he may not know it) because he essentially admitted he needed the Yankees when the Yankees made it clear they did not necessarily need him. Hell, they were probably hoping not to sign Jeter so they could move A-Rod back to SS and sign a decent (fielding) 3B.
If they didn’t want to sign him, I’m guessing they probably would not have offered him 25 to 50 percent more than any other team would have offered. They did want him back and obviously they figure he’s worth it to the team even if his value on the field is down. And given Rodriguez’s hip problems, he’s not going back to shortstop. They didn’t want to get tied to Jeter for too long or for too much money (figuring out where he should play is going to be hard enough), but they didn’t want him to leave.
I gotta agree with Marley23 on this. They definitely wanted him.
Also, i don’t think they just wanted him due to PR issues with the fans. Despite his comparatively bad year, and despite the fact that he’s more likely to decline than improve, he can still play. He might not be what he used to be, but having him at SS isn’t going to hurt the Yankees any more than anyone else they could have got this year. There simply aren’t a whole lot of good shortstops on the free agent market.
Not only that, but the Yankees are businessmen, and even if Jeter doesn’t get them many more wins than a replacement-level shortstop, his presence on the team is worth money to the club.
Sabernomics author J.C. Bradbury has Jeter valued at about $9 million for 2011. Now, Bradbury isn’t just a sabermetrics guy, he’s a professional economist who bases player values not just on their performance, but on their actual monetary value to the team. He uses the theories and calculations of labor economics to arrive at his conclusions, and while this doesn’t make him the only word or the last word on player value, it means that he’s thinking about not only how a player contributes to team wins, but how a player contributes to his employer’s bottom line. The same sort of thing that Cashman and the Steinbrenners think about when deciding who to sign.
Bradbury’s $9 million value for Jeter is based on playing for an average ballclub. This number increases by up 50% on a successful and competitive team, which the Yankees clearly are, putting us not far away from the actual numbers of Jeter’s contract. One reason for the higher value to competitive teams is that Bradbury has calculated income curves showing that getting to a certain number of wins, and hence a shot at making the playoffs, can have significant effects on team revenue. You can view his revenue curve on this page (scroll down a bit), and you’ll see that team revenue remains pretty flat between about 60 and 80 wins, but after 85 it tends to really take off.
On top of all that, there’s the fact that Jeter is so closely associated with the Yankees and is such a recognizable and popular part of the organization. This factors in not simply because of nebulous concepts like loyalty, but because a guy like Jeter can bring people to the park and sell merchandise. Here’s what Bradbury had to say about the Jeter issue back on November 16, before the very public wrangling between Jeter and the Yankees over his contract:
Link (you need to be a Baseball Prospectus subscriber to read the article).
That analysis by Bradbury sounds to me like exactly what happened.
One question I would ask is: how much would the Yankees have paid Jeter if he’d had as good a year in 2010 that he had in 2009?
My answer is: not all that much higher than they ended up paying him for an off-season, and very possibly the beginning of the end. I’d put the number at maybe 68 mil for 4 seasons, as opposed to the 65 mil for 4 season, or the 52 for 3 seasons guaranteed that they ended up paying him anyhow. Even off a good year, he’s still the same age, still has the same defensive issues, still is playing in a topped-out market.
I read today that Jeter is pissed off because of the “rancor” in the negotiations. What a primadonna. He gets a lot more than he is worth but is still unhappy.
My post was mostly in jest, but the Yankees were obviously prepared to let Jeter go and, it appears, Jeter wasn’t prepared to leave. The Yankees didn’t mind signing Jeter, but they made it clear that his departure was acceptable. So, though they didn’t mind keeping him, I don’t think it was imperative, or even a really strong desire, to keep him.
Jeter is riding the post steroids era train. Athletes were able to play at their peak until nearly 40. Contracts for players in their mid 30s were not so risky in the near past. it may be that they are again. if they expect him to produce for several years they may get disappointed.
Werth got a contract that goes until 39. that is too long.
Ordonez is 37 and the Tigers are trying to resign him. But he has to be dropping in ability now. He has been hurt the last 2 seasons and missed a lot of games. But they need him if he can hit . It is tough to figure out now.