Of all the reactions to the Yankees’ signing Mark Teixeira, John Henry’s was the most amusing and the most offensive.
The Red Sox owner issued the following statement:
“From the moment we arrived in Boston in late 2001, we saw it as a monumental challenge,” team owner John Henry said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “We sought to reduce the financial gap and succeeded to a degree. Now with a new stadium filled with revenue opportunities, they have leaped away from us again. So we have to be even more careful in deploying our resources.”
This translates roughly to: The Yankees are opening a new stadium, giving them gobs of new money with which they can raise their payroll to newly astronomical heights. We, the poor Red Sox, cannot hope to compete financially. Wah!
This message is breathtaking in its cynicism. As Henry well knows, the Yankees’ payroll is likely to go down next season thanks to loads of salary coming off the books in the form of Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi, Carl Pavano, etc. The notion that the Yankees have “leaped away from” the Sox is bunk. The Yankees outbid the Sox by $10 million over eight years. That’s chump change when discussing these sort of economies.
An honest Sox response could have been: We think Teixeira is $170 million good, but not $180 million good; or Wow, the Yankees really snuck in there, didn’t they? But The Yankees operated in a different financial stratosphere here is just bullshit.
And Sox fans should feel insulted that he expects them to take it seriously.
UPDATE: I also wrote on Teixeira to the Yankees over at Robert Emmet, on how this was New York’s William Shatner moment.
December 27th, 2008
As I read his comment he is saying that the Yankees historically had more revenue opportunities thank the Red Sox. Since they are in the largest market in the country this seems logical. And in the past 6-7 years the Sox have worked to find more revenue opportunities to try to make the overall operation closer financially. It seems obvious that the new stadium will generate more money for the Yankees. Are you seriously suggesting it won’t? Where is the outrage that they are abandoning the house the Ruth built, btw?
December 27th, 2008
Bob:
Perhaps I should have more laboriously connected A to B to C. Let me try again.
You are correct that Henry is saying that the Sox have tried to close the financial divide. That they have done this is beyond dispute.
The new stadium will certainly provide new revenues. Again beyond dispute.
Henry goes on to suggest that the Yankees’ new revenues are the reason they were able to sign Teixeira. The idea being that if not for the new revenues, the Yankees would not have been able to sign the three top free agents from this year’s pool. Put another way: The Yankees could not have afforded Tex in 2008, but are able to radically increase their payroll in 2009 because of the new revenues from the new ballpark.
Right?
Wrong. The Yankees payroll will actually go down in 2009. So if the old Yankee stadium were still being used … they could still afford Tex.
So either John Henry is blindly ignorant of basic public facts about baseball … or thinks Red Sox fans are.
December 29th, 2008
Well, this is the same kind of faux poor-crying Henry. Lucchino and Co. did when the Yanks bought A-Rod. It is, I agree with you, the theater of the absurd.
However, as disappointed as I am with the results of the Tex sweepstakes, I LOVE the fact that the Sox stuck to their guns and did not overpay for him. Since Theo took over, they have only overpaid for Dice-K, Drew, and Lugo, and that’s not too bad considering they won a World Series and Drew and Cide are still top-5 at their position.
What Henry MAY have meant, and this would have been accurate, is that the Yankees can afford to OVERpay for superstars. There is no doubt that the Yankees overpaid for Tex and GROSSLY overpaid for Sabathia. They’ve consitently done that for players like Giambi, Jeter, Pavano, and of course, Damon. The results have been mixed, but none of them have won a Series.
Theo has held firm to the premise that he will not overpay for players in their decline and he will not enslave the team to long contracts. the sox could have afforded to come up to the Yankees number for Tex, but they wisley chose not to. The Yankees can afford (old stadium or new) to overpay for stars, the Sox can only afford to pay for stars. But by growing their own (Youkilis, Pedroia, Ellsbury, Lester, Papelbon), they don;t really have to.