The poor New York Yankees just can’t keep up with the current cash flowing ways of the world champion Los Angeles Dodgers according to the team’s chairman and managing general partner in an interview with the YES Network that aired Tuesday.
Yankees’ Hal Steinbrenner: Spending like Dodgers ‘difficult for most’ owners
You know there was a time Mr. Steinbrenner, but we’ll get to that in a moment. The somewhat recent history of top payroll teams is quite interesting indeed.
Back in 1993, the year before baseball owners forced the players to strike. the year Toronto’s Blue Jays made it back to back champions. Any idea which team had baseball’s highest payroll that season? That would be the champs, the Jays.
Fair playing field
The winning Jays however were a mere $3M more than Cincinnati with the Yankees just $4M and change away from the top. The difference between first and fourteenth in 1993 payroll? Blue Jays – $45.7M, The Giants $34.6M.
I’m going to say this didn’t sit well with the Yankees or Hal’s dad George. While they were certainly near the top of player payroll, they hadn’t won a world series since 1978.
When the Yankees finally ended the drought in 1996 they were atop MLB’s spending. The Yanks had pushed their number to $52M. The gap between first and fourteenth was now just under $22M.
Yanks go on spending spree
Four world series later in 2000 the Yankees were now spending almost $93M but only a couple of million more than the Dodgers, that’s when the next Yankees world series gap began and the Yankees decided to buy themselves a winner and pulled away from everyone else.
Here’s what top MLB payrolls looked like in 2006:
1st – New York Yankees – $194,663,079
2nd – Boston Red Sox – $120,099,824
The difference between first and second was the same as between the second place Boston Red Sox and the twenty-fifth highest payroll in Cleveland.
The Yankees can pretty much blame the current Dodgers on themselves, if anyone showed them the way it was the Yanks.
Yanks worth $7.55B
The Yankees were worth just over a Billion in 2006 and are still worth more than the Dodgers ($5.45B). Their revenue was higher during the 2024 season ($679M to $549M).
It’s laughable to hear the Yanks cry poverty in the face of another MLB team outspending them. It’s the same kind of hollow whine that comes from all the other teams that refuse to spend more on payroll while pulling in the cash and watching franchise values skyrocket.
Boo hoo.
