2013 Storylines Review: Contending On A Budget

("Add any more money to 2014 and I'll f*cking kill you."  Courtesy of Getty Images)

Way back in March, I opened up the "2013 AB4AR Season Preview" series with a post on the most important storyline the team was going to face this year, how the hell they were going to manage to contend on a budget.  In a vacuum, the Yankees cutting payroll down to $189 million and still staying competitive is the easiest thing in the world.  They're still the biggest, baddest dudes on the block with the deepest pockets and they're still spending more than every team in MLB not named the Dodgers.  If any team can put together a winner with a hair under $200 mil, it's the Bronx Bombers.

Baseball isn't played in a vacuum though, especially not the business-savvy version of Major League Baseball that's spread across both leagues in the last handful of years.  The Yankees' plan to start their payroll cutting plan in 2013 while still maintaining their traditional level of competitiveness was flawed from the beginning and they executed that plan to flawless flawed perfection over the course of the season.  Whether Hal Steinbrenner truly meant what he said when he said he was still committed to fielding a championship-caliber team is irrelevant.  What is relevant is the fact that attempting to do that in the way the Yankees did in 2013 was completely and utterly wrong.


And the worst part about it was that we saw the plan playing out before the season even started.  Cut down by injuries, injury setbacks, and injury rehabs in spring camp, the Yankee front office put their plan into high gear early.  They handed Kevin Youkilis a $12 million "show me" contract to hold the fort down at third base while A-Rod was still healing, traded for Vernon Wells and the 2 years still left on his contract to do the same for C-Grand, and plugged the remainder of the roster holes with more aging/crappy veteran players like Travis Hafner, Lyle Overbay, and even Ben Francisco.  This, of course, coming after they re-signed Ichiro Suzuki to a 2-year/$13 million deal.

That experiment played out almost exactly as any reasonable baseball fan with a basic understanding of modern statistics expected it to.  Wells, Hafner, and Overbay got off to good starts in April, and Youkilis was at least healthy enough to play the field.  But then his back started to act up and he hit the DL, and the rigors of playing every day started to wear on the mid-to-late 30s crew.  Their regression back to and then under the mean wasn't slow and steady either.  Their production from mid-May on was just as bad (if not worse) as their April production was good.  For the year, Youkilis, Wells, Hafner, and Overbay combined for -1.6 fWAR in 1,360 PA.

With Plan B falling apart on them early, the Yankees went to Plans C and D at the same time.  They tried calling up some of their young players, mid-level position prospects with varying levels of low Major League ceilings.  There were some highs early, but for the most part it was an uninspiring performance from the kids.  Zoilo Almonte, David Adams, and Austin Romine combined for -0.5 fWAR of their own in 413 PA, forcing the Yankees to look for more veteran help while their rookies floundered.  Because of the 2014 payroll plans, however, all the Yankees could "afford" were sub-replacement level players willing to take 1-year or non-guaranteed deals.  They plowed through a horde of crummy utility infielders, all the while waiting for the return of their injured regulars that never came.

The few moves the Yankees did make to help the team came too late to have any real impact.  Alfonso Soriano brought some respectability and depth back to the middle of the order, but he wasn't enough to carry the team to the postseason and he's no more of a viable full-season solution in the outfield next year than Wells or Ichiro.  And Mark Reynolds and Brendan Ryan, bless their hearts, weren't going to be able to fill the offensive shoes of a healthy Jeter or A-Rod for a full season.

The Yankees started the 2013 season with a weak offense, an offense that got even weaker as the players who constituted it fell victim to their age and individual baseball crappiness.  They never made any real moves to address that weakness and took the same approach with a pitching staff that was inconsistent at best all year and faded as well down the stretch.  With no players in the farm system capable of producing at an acceptable level and no money to spend thanks to the future payroll plans, the Yankees left themselves with no options and no real chance of contending on a self-imposed budget.  They'd already tied up too much money in their aging veterans, foolishly falling behind the times while assuming that "the tradition of the pinstripes" would spark a bunch of cheap, crummy, 1-year deal veterans.  They proved in 2013 that their method doesn't work when your team is constructed the way it was, and they've dug a deeper hole for themselves for 2014 if they're truly trying to contend again.