Yankees Payroll?

Is the giant payroll for the Yankees worth it? With the prospect of renegotiating A-Rod's contract to an even higher level, is there BizBall sense in what management is doing? My answer is no.

I am not a Yankee lover or hater. I am just looking at it from a business perspective. The Yankees have a solid season ticket base, they are moving into a new stadium with numerous luxury suites that will go for hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and the team has significant concession revenue streams, along with various naming right options that can raise even more money. Lets not forget the broadcast revenue numbers which are the best in all of baseball. So why invest more money into the team?

The statistics are clear that investing in players can increase revenue. However, that is normally true for smaller market teams or teams that have been in the dumps. Teams with a rich history and solid revenue streams do not need to invest as much (i.e. Boston or Chicago teams). If the Yankees play well and make it to the playoffs on a regular basis the fans will stay. It is only ego that drives up the salaries in a push to win it all one more time. George can learn a good lesson from the former owners of the Dodgers. They used to have a very simple strategy. That strategy was .500 ball. Team management aimed to have solid seasons where the team would win 50% of their games in any given season. Some years the team would lose more and other years the team could even go to the World Series (as they did). However, management's goal was to try to provide a winning team as often as possible. The Yankees want to spend like they need to have a winning team all the time. While wins help, as long as they are competitive they will still make tons of money.

Thus, the BizBallz strategy would be to drop some of the high payroll players to add some new fresh talent who can develop new fans and rely on some veterans to help keep the team competitive.
Gil-