Bobby Abreu to NYY for steaming pile of crap

Dude, I'm not being insincere. You have to look at how Steinbrenner does things in the aggregate. Yes, owning the network is a major source of revenue that gives him a leg up. And yes, with a valuation that is more than a billion dollars and growing, he has safety net today that that other teams don't. But he is in that position, in large part, because of how he has gone about running the team. He didn't always have that huge safety net. He has been very innovative in creating new revenue streams and has been rewarded--things like the Yes Network. It's no surprise that it is a model other teams are now following. Other teams play it safe and try to suck out profits. They aren't very innovative. And they haven't been rewarded the way the Yankees have.

By all accounts, the Yankees lost money five out of the first six seasons that Steinbrenner owned them, when team valuations were in a much closer range. Remember, the Yankees were worth less when he bought them than when CBS had bought them--CBS had run the team the way the Tribune Company is running the Cubs today. Steinbrenner has taken gambles other owners wouldn't, including taking those losses early on when it looked like he was just a lunatic. It won two championships in the 70s, though, and helped set him on the path to the exponential growth in valuation that has far exceeded other teams. While other owners are sucking out profits, he is commited to reinvesting in the product on the field--to the point where he has been willing to operate at a loss, just in terms of baseball operations, for at least the least two seasons. As Boom and Wetzel put it, he revinvests on the field, which in turn produces more money to be reinvested. It is the way a business that wants to grow operates.

One other thing that Wetzel pointed out that doesn't get commented on enough is that while virtually every other sports owner tries to hold up his locale for taxpayer-funded stadium deal, Steinbrenner has commited to the majority of the funding himself for a new $1 billion stadium. At some point in time, when that is a huge asset on the books that boosts the Yankees valuation even further and gives them even more of an advantage, it's going to be insincere for the Pohlads of the world to cry foul.

You can hate Steinbrenner for lots of reasons, but as Wetzel put it in that column I linked to, he really is the "ultimate fan-owner."

 

Their big cushion is their huge valuation. They went from a valuation of $362 million in 1998 to $1.026 billion last year, a huge leap. Compare that to the Cubs, another major market team, which were worth $204 million in 1998 and were worth $448 million last year. Or the Dogers, which were worth $236 million in 1998 and were worth $482 million last year. Both are teams that haven't reinvested, and they haven't been rewarded. The Yankees ability to go ape shit in the free agent market was their willingness to go ape shit in spending on players when they couldn't afford to the way they can now. They constantly put everything--and then some--back into the product on the field, and they've been rewarded with a business that has grown in value. You're right. It's the system. But the Yankees played within the system better than everyone else, which is why they are at where they are.