Friday, October 24, 2008
Can the Yankees afford Sabathia AND Teixeira?
I’ve been having pipedreams of the Yankees signing both Mark Teixeira and C.C. Sabathia, but can they realistically afford it? Let’s take a look.
Using the data from Cot’s Baseball Contracts, the Yankee payroll was around $210 million in 2008.
If the Yankees buy out Jason Giambi’s 2009 option, it will cost them $5M. when they buy out Carl Pavano it will cost them an additional $1.95M. Bobby Abreu, Andy Pettitte, Mike Mussina, Kyle Farnsworth and Ivan Rodriguez all come off the books.
Let’s assume they pick up Damaso Marte’s $6M option, and that everyone who doesn’t have a contract for 2009 but is still team property gets a 20% raise. The Yankees are left with a payroll of around $152M for 2009. Although the Yankees supposedly want to lower payroll, I think they would go back up to last year’s level for the right players, so that means they have $58 million to play with.
If they sign Sabathia for $25M and Teixeira for $23M, that probably means they would only bring back one of Pettitte or Moose, although they have another $26M off the books in 2010 with the end of the Damon/Matsui contracts, so a little juggling of the contracts could conceivably mean the Yankees could afford to bring back Moose AND Pettitte while still signing Teixiera and Sabathia.
If those are the only moves they make this offseason, CAIRO says 850 runs scored is a reasonable offensive projection, even with some combination of Brett Gardner and Melky Cabrera in CF. Bring back Pettitte and Moose and adding Sabathia combined with the return of a healthy Wang has CAIRO seeing 710 runs allowed as a reasonable pitching/defense projection. That works out to a 95 win Pythagenpat record.
Is that good enough? I guess it depends on what Tampa Bay and Boston do this offseason, but it’s at least close.
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