The 2011 season has yet to begin, but Baseball Prospectus recently ran a piece by Jeff Euston looking at the AL East payroll projections for this season and beyond. The 2012 Yankee payroll caught my eye for a few reasons, and there’s reason to believe that next off season will be as quiet as this past one in terms of major moves. Here’s the breakdown:
New York Yankees
Projected 2011 payroll: $203,410,714 (1st)
2010 payroll: $213,359,389 Opening Day (1st), $215,053,064 year-end (1st)
Future commitments: $153.161 million for 2012, $125.911 million for 2013, $76.411 million for 2014, $69.411 million for 2015, $44.125 million for 2016, $21 million for 2017.
Here’s , which goes player by player, and the 2012 free agent list from MLBTR to compare what options may be available.
The Yanks have 50 mil coming off the books. . . maybe. Let’s dispose of a few things that are very likely to happen right off the bat. CC and Soriano will opt out, assuming both are healthy and have a good season. The Yanks will pick up the 14 mil option on , whose value was 25.5 mil last year. ‘s option is 10.25 mil. He was worth in 15 mil 09 and 16.4 last year, and looking at the available RF in 2012 he’s probably the best one available even if he wasn’t signed. Barring a -esque catastrophic injury, the Yanks bring ole Swishalicious back at that price. Let’s assume that (since Cashman was opposed to his signing in the first place) Soriano walks and gets a 3 year deal somewhere and they bring CC back with a year or two tagged on to the end of his contract at the same 24 mil rate. That brings the Yankee payroll to 163.16 before we get to the arb guys.
is entering his 4th year of arbitration, so if he has a good season he will be in line for a big pay raise over the 4 mil he’s scheduled to earn this year. But given the Yankee depth at Catcher, Martin is much more likely to be traded than ever see that arb hearing as a Yankee. is a 3rd year arb guy, so figure as a LOOGY he gets his 1.2 mil doubled next year, or thereabouts. and are 2nd year arb candidates, so let’s estimate both get their salaries (1.4/2.7 mil respectively) doubled as well. and are both in their 1st year of arbitration, and each earned roughly 450K last year. Give them a mil a piece. That takes our estimated 2012 payroll to 175.76 mil before the ‘‘ goes about his work.
But where? The only glaring need we can see right now is the same one they have this year in Spring Training, and that’s for a starting pitcher. In my scenario they have a rotation of CC, AJ, Hughes with and the Killer Bs all as possibilities for 2012. Looking at the list of 2012 free agents, there aren’t any really enticing rotation candidates out there. The oft-injured will be 37 years old. isn’t the type of hard thrower that the Yankees typically target. ‘s results have never matched his stuff, and we have one of those already. Oswalt and Wainwright’s options will almost certainly be picked up if they’re healthy, and if they’re not healthy you don’t want them. The rest of that list is loaded with pitchers that when faced with the prospect of signing them, you’d rather look from within or to the trade route to fill your needs.
We would also be well served to expect the unexpected. Injuries can change everything. A mid season trade for a starter under team control for a few seasons could bridge the gap between 2011 and the (hopeful) arrival of one or more of the Killer Bs. What if CC really wants to go back to California? What if Joba’s rediscovered his old velocity? The Yankee rationale for burying him in the bullpen was largely based on the thought that he never recovered from the shoulder injury in 08, and his ‘stuff played up’ in the bullpen. Could they rethink that position and look to make him a starter next year if Joba’s throwing 98-100 MPH this June? Perhaps. Or maybe they leave him in the pen and pencil him in as the Closer-in-waiting for the day when Mariano retires, whose contract expires in 2012.
Will Liriano or King Felix become available? I have my doubts either trade will happen. Will another quality starter be made available? History tells us yes. The 2011 season will answer many of these questions for us, but as things stand right now 2012 doesn’t appear to be a year where the Yanks will go on any 2008-like spending spree. Quite the contrary, it could another year like this past off season where the Yankee payroll actually goes down another notch or two. Looking at things as they currently stand, that would be my best guess.
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Yu Darvish (if the Yankees can forget the horrors that were Hideki Iarbu and Kei Igawa.)
No thanks! Dice K hasn’t been a fraction of the hype and while this kid is a much more dominate pitcher than Dice K ever was (and he’s younger than Dice K was) he also has had no innings or pitch limit in his career and I’m pretty sure his arm is going to shred like cheese.
Last year he pitched at least 2 games I know of where he threw over 150 pitches and he goes over the 120 pitch mark in almost every game he pitches in.
Steve, I think what’s missing in your analysis is how the Yankees do in 2011. If the Yankees don’t make the post season with their current make up they will be forced to reevaluate what they do in 2012. If CC and Soriano do opt out and I’m not sure either one will especially Soriano but if they do you have CC, Soriano, Posada, Igawa and Marte coming off the books for sure that’s about $57MM. Add back CC because the Yankees would probably add a year or 2 on to the back end of the contract and say another $1MM yearly. That still leaves $32MM available for additional signings plus increases in arbitration awards. Say $10 to $12MM bump in 2012 arbitration awards over players 2011 salaries that still leaves $20M up for grabs. Enough to sign say Oswalt if he declines his portion of the mutual option Another possible pitching option for 2012 is Joel Pineiro. So their are options for 2012 that the Yankees might be interested in that could help the team and still keep them in the same general payroll range.
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This is why I think they trade for Carpenter at the deadline. If he’s at all effective, they’ll eat that $15M in 2012 without blinking an eye just so they don’t have 2 rookies in the rotation at the same time.
The problems with Carpenter are the fact that he is 37, injury prone, showing signs of age, spent his entire career in the NL and overall prospect cost.
Carpenter isn’t getting younger and by the time of his first pitch next season he would 38 years old and making 15 million dollars, it’s not a very wise investment even for a healthy pitcher but Chris has proven to be anything but in his career and is yet again dealing with injury in ST.
In 2009 Carpenter had what can only be described as a spectacular season, and it came close to being a career best season, however his 2010 numbers while good are quite a bit further away and probably a lot more likely for Carpenter this year. He also showed a marked decline in velocity over the last season as he dropped to 91 MPH average on his fastball, this isn’t always a huge concern but it shows more physical decline and if his velo keeps dropping it could be a real concern in the AL East.
The biggest concern for me though is prospect cost, I don’t see the Cardinals just dumping Chris if they aren’t out by 15+ games and even then he probably would be more useful to keep around in case Pujols leaves and you want to pick up the option yourself with the extra money. I think that any team that trades for Carpenter is going to find that the Cardinals want him treated as a potential ace and they will want at least 1 big name prospect, I can’t see them just giving the guy to us for Warren and Noesi and if they ask for Betances or Brackman I would simply laugh at them.
There are a number of possible pitchers of interest next year.
Injury bounce back candidates:
Justin Duchscherer
Jeff Francis
Rich Harden
Scott Kazmir
Adam Wainwright
Chien-Ming Wang
Brandon Webb
Older stop gaps:
Roy Oswalt
Chris Carpenter
Mark Buehrle
Back of the Rotation inning eaters:
Jon Garland
Aaron Harang
Joel Pineiro
C.J. Wilson
I wouldn’t say there are any aces out there but if all we need is a 3rd or 4th starter assuming Sabathia comes back ,Hughes progresses, A.J.performs more like 09 and less like 10 than Nova,Killer B’s and a free agent competing for the last two spots makes sense
C.J. Wilson especially and Pineiro are a more then back of the end rotation eaters.
As for the list of “injury bounce back pitchers”. I can’t see the Yankees being interested in any of them. Wainwright probably won’t be even appearing in any games until mid summer 2012. As for the rest of the group other then Webb non look like they offer anything to the Yankees above and beyond what the Yankees have waiting in the wings.
How do you know? CJ Wilson has had 1 good season in which he probably had some extreme luck on his side in because his numbers just don’t match up.
204 IP, 7.5 K/9 4.1 BB/9, 1.83 K/BB, 49.2 GB%, .266 BABIP, 0.4 HR/9, 3.35 ERA, 3.56 FIP, 4.20 xFIP
These numbers don’t scream an ace pitcher, they show a pitcher who walks a ton of batters (Burnett walked 3.76 in 2010 and 4.22 in 2009), strikesout very little, has a microscopic BABIP and a very low GB percentage which seems like he had avery lucky overall season.
I would say he isn’t likely to pitch this well again and I would put money down saying his ERA this year will be much closer to his 2010 xFIP than his 2010 ERA.
[...] moves just as well as we know the players they sign and trade for and how those players perform. We project payroll, and muse about future moves that could be made to improve the team just as much as we muse about [...]
Nice text it is interesting. Keep creating more great articles.
Wow,incredible! this was a very entertaining articles. i enjoyed it very much!
You’re talking about a team with 150 mill tied up in 5-6 old guys. And for a while. LOL, how you put a rosy spin on this is beyond me!