Introducing The Small Market Yanks!

Under Hal Steinbrenner the Yanks have shown themselves to only be "Big Game Hunters" every 5 years or so (2009 and 2014), when big money comes off their books.  Of course, this freakishly stupid stance has come at the expensive of several great players (all Cubans, Yu Darvish, etc) who could have been Yankees but for their moment of availability.  It's also cost them a raft of draft picks every time they go for a big free agent class.

You'll also recall that Hal stalled a few offseasons with his "goal" of getting the payroll down to 160M.  Of course, the way to do that would have been to spend in the draft and IFA before the rule changes and have a new, cheap core ready to roll a couple of years ago.  Now, because of their pound foolish and penny wise past, we're going to have to sit through the next few years watching old players decline further before young players can get chances because of the sunk costs.

And we are where we are because of Hal's peculiar policies that not only set him against the fans, but set him against Yankee history.   And for 4 out of every 5 years will render the Yanks a small market team that can't contend for big players, and lose their own homegrowns like Cano and Roberston to bigger spenders.  So now we know how the Royals fans have felt most of the time since the `80s.