| As always, the Yankees will have some work to do this offseason, primarily with shoring up their pitching staff. They have a decent amount of money coming off the books, mostly in the form of Jorge Posada ($13.1M) and Kei Igawa ($4M), and that money will be plugged right back into the team. In fact, that money and then some figures to be spent this winter. With some help from Cot’s Baseball Contracts, let’s look at the Yankees salary commitments for 2012…
Guaranteed Contracts (eight players, $125.625M): Alex Rodriguez ($30M), Mark Teixeira ($23.125M), A.J. Burnett ($16.5), Derek Jeter ($16M), Mariano Rivera ($15M), Rafael Soriano ($11M), Curtis Granderson ($10M), Pedro Feliciano ($4M)
Option Pick-Ups (two players, $24.25M): Robinson Cano ($14M), Nick Swisher ($10.25M)
Option Buy-Outs (one player, $0.250M): Damaso Marte ($0.250M)
That’s guaranteed money only, and I took the liberty of leaving CC Sabathia out given his opt-out clause. The ten players (not counting Marte) account for $150.25M, and based on MLBTR’s projections, we should conservatively tack on another $17.9M for the six arbitration-eligible players (David Robertson, Boone Logan, Joba Chamberlain, Brett Gardner, Phil Hughes, and Russell Martin). That makes it $168.15M for 16 players.
The pre-arbitration guys don’t make a ton of money (relative to the baseball pay scale, that is), but they add up. There’s 18 of them on 40-man roster right now plus two more coming in David Phelps and D.J. Mitchell (who are Rule 5 Draft eligible), so let’s conservatively estimate those guys at $10M total (half a mil each). Andrew Brackman is a bit of a wild card. He earned $1M last season and I have to imagine he’ll make at least that next year per the terms of his big league contract. Let’s call it another $1M for simplicity’s sake, putting us at $179.15M for 37 players. Of course, a few of those pre-arb guys (Reegie Corona, Kevin Whelan, Justin Maxwell, etc.) figure to meet the roster axe at some point in the not too distant future.
So after all that, the Yankees still need to a) re-sign Sabathia, b) add one more starter, preferably two (assuming one is a Bartolo Colon/Freddy Garcia-type), and c) fill out the bench. Item (c) can be minimized by having Brandon Laird replace Eric Chavez and one of the minimum salary guys replace Andruw Jones. I’d be fine with Laird, at least to start the season, but I’m not sure who would replace Jones as the designated lefty masher. Greg Golson? Maxwell? Eh, not likely. Gonna have to spend a little something there. It was nice having a strong bench this past season.
Hal Steinbrenner has held firm on that $200M (or thereabouts) payroll limit over the last few years, so the Yankees will have to get a little creative to address all their needs. Sabathia did take a reduced salary in the first year of his current contract, so maybe he’d agree to that again knowing Rivera, Swisher, and Feliciano will be coming off the books after the season. Yu Darvish would likely come at a lower annual salary than C.J. Wilson, but would also require a massive up front posting fee payment. Also keep in mind that the salary estimates for the arbitration and pre-arbitration players are conservative and probably a little high, so that $179.15 might be more like $175M or so. Insurance might cover Feliciano’s salary for all we know. And who knows, maybe Soriano will opt out, but I’m not holding my breath.
The Yankees appear to have about $25M to play with this winter, which is a ton of free cash in most years. This isn’t most years though. Sabathia needs to be retained and they need even more pitching on top of that, so something has to give here.
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