The Yankees' rebuild signals the end of an era for Major League Baseball
On Sunday, the Yankees made it official: They’re rebuilding.
It’s the end of an era in baseball. The official end of the time where the teams with the most money won the most games, year in and year out.
Don’t be mistaken — money will always buy wins in baseball. But the connection isn’t as direct as it once was. And the Yankees, the team with the most to gain, are recalibrating to better position themselves in the years to come.
Don’t think of it so much as a rebuild, but a market correction by the biggest company out there.
We could have predicted that the Yankees were entering a new era in their franchise’s history this past winter, when the team didn’t spend a single cent on free agents.
After years of paying big bucks and handing long terms to players that were on the tail-end of their peaks (or worse), the Yankees finally figured out what the best teams in baseball seemed to piece together more than half a decade ago: Building a team through free agency is a terribly inefficient way to win games.
The Yankees lineup is filled with players who were paid big bucks in free agency (or before free agency was officially granted, as a wink-wink condition of a trade to acquire the player). And those players continuously decreased their output, even while their costs went up.
This season, the Yankees are paying nine players more than $13 million, with five of those players getting more than $21 million. In all, the nine combine to be paid $190 million.
Only one of the nine, Brett Gardner, was brought through the Yankees’ system. Only two of those nine players, Gardner and Masahiro Tanaka, have a WAR above 2, which means that the other seven are playing at a bench player level.
That $190 million for nine players would be the fifth-highest payroll in the league, and the Yankees are getting the combined output of two Jose Altuves.
The Astros’ diminutive second baseman might be an excellent player, but you wouldn't pay him $80 million a year, would you?
In years past, the decidedly mediocre Yankees were able to buy their way out of this kind of a problem. They’d spend another $30 million to buy a player to cover up for the wasted $20 million they spent on a player the year before. But that method has led us to this dead end. The Yankees finally realized it’s counterproductive to keep spending — to keep patching — and they’re now doing the prudent thing and rebuilding.
The Yankees have bought into the new formula for success in baseball — building from within. A great farm system can lift a small market team like the Kansas City Royals to a World Series win, and farm systems have made the Astros and Cubs serious contenders after years of futility.
Yes, the Cubs have spent big money on free agents, but the foundation of Chicago’s team, much like the Astros and Royals, has come from their farm system.
There’s a place for free agency in baseball, and there always will be, but it’s not a prudent way to build a team. It’s not the cure, it’s DayQuil. The Orioles signing Mark Trumbo to a one-year deal is the perfect example of a prudent free-agent signing. The Giants giving a two-year deal to the undervalued Johnny Cueto this past winter is another excellent example.
But both Trumbo and Cueto joined pennant-contending teams that built from within. The Giants' entire infield, including catcher Buster Posey, is homegrown — as is their ace, Madison Bumgarner. The Orioles are built around Manny Machado and Jonathan Schoop, who came out of the Orioles’ minor-league system, and second-chance guys like Adam Jones and Chris Davis.
And yes, the Orioles gave Davis a huge deal (seven years, $161 million) this past winter, and time will surely deem that a mistake. But compared to the rest of the free-agent market, Davis was signed as a relative bargain. That’s how crazy it is on the open market.
On the flip side of the Cubs and Astros, there are the Angels (sixth in payroll), who have the worst franchise health in baseball, thanks to the worst farm system in baseball (it's really not even close). This futility, despite having the league’s best player. You can blame big-money free-agent signings and constant patching for that. Then there are the Dodgers and Red Sox, who both have exceptional farm systems that have, to this point, covered up for some albatross free-agent deals. How are Carl Crawford and Pablo Sandoval working out for them?
Building from within is Moneyball 2.0. Every front office in the league uses Sabermetrics now, but not every team is taking advantage of the market inefficiency of clubs having a minimum of six years of team control of their homegrown players.
But the Yankees have seen the light, and they’ll be better off for it. By selling relievers Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller for absurd prices this month, the Yankees have significantly bolstered an already good farm system. And while not every highly-regarded prospect will pan out at the big league level, the Yankees have now accrued enough promising youngsters to like their chances of hitting the jackpot a few times in the coming years.
It’s all a roll of the dice, so it’s better to have a lot of really well-weighted dice to roll.
And when some of those players — say, recently acquired prospects Clint Frazier or Gleyber Torres — break through, the Yankees can buy out their arbitration years at a significantly discounted rate, and then sign them through their peak years without having to bid against other teams in an open-market free agency. They can spend and save at the same time.
That’s the model that the Astros have used to come back from the dead. The Rays used it too, and they went from worst to first before inexplicably abandoning the model of success under new ownership. Now the Yankees are believers in the school of thought.
Whoever thought we’d see the day?
If the Yankees, who have no financial limitations, have seen the light, we’re clearly in a new era.
Baseball is, at its core, a numbers game. And the Yankees have finally figured out which numbers work.
