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Hal Steinbrenner

Latest On Brian Cashman’s Future

By Simon Hampton | November 4, 2022 at 8:25pm CDT

Brian Cashman’s contract with the Yankees officially ended on October 31, but while he’s no longer an employee of the team, he continues to act as GM and the expectation is his contract will be extended, per Andy Martino of SNY. Jon Heyman of the NY Post is even more certain, citing a source saying there’s a “100 percent” chance Cashman returns.

Cashman has been with the Yankees since 1986, and served as their GM since 1998. During that time the team has gone to the World Series seven times, winning four championships, the last of which came in 2009. They’ve made the playoffs each of the past six seasons, but there’s been some frustration among Yankees fans over the team’s inability to get back to the World Series lately. That frustration does not appear to extend to owner Hal Steinbrenner though, and Martino cites the strong bond between Cashman and the Steinbrenners as reason to believe that even if a split were to happen, it would be amicable.

The expectation is that a renewal will happen, although Martino reports that while Cashman and Steinbrenner have discussed the future of the franchise recently, they haven’t talked on contract terms. Cashman’s previous contract was a five-year, $25MM deal signed in December of 2017. Nonetheless, it seems a near formality that Cashman’s contract will be renewed, and the Yankees can turn their attention to the playing roster moving forward, beginning with the enormous task of trying to re-sign Aaron Judge.

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The Yankees’ (Brief) History Of Contract Extensions

By Mark Polishuk | March 29, 2020 at 11:38pm CDT

Twenty-eight different contract extensions were signed between teams and players between February-April 2019, and the Yankees were one of the many clubs that joined in on this rush.  Aaron Hicks was a season away from free agency at the time, though the outfielder chose to forego the open market in favor of a contract that paid him $64MM in new money through the 2025 season.  Right-hander Luis Severino inked a four-year, $40MM deal that covered his four arbitration-eligible years as a Super Two player, and the deal also contains a $15MM club option for the 2023 season, which would have been Severino’s first free agent year.

Another extension came after the season, as the Yankees worked out an agreement with Aroldis Chapman that would see the closer decline his opt-out clause in favor of a three-year, $48MM extension that essentially added an extra year (and another $18MM) onto the final two seasons of Chapman’s previous contract.

Three extensions in less than a year is a pretty notable amount of business for any team on the long-term front.  In the Yankees’ case, however, it counts as an absolute flurry given how rarely the Bronx Bombers have engaged in such internal long-term deals.  New York’s three extensions in 2019 came on the heels of only six extensions in the previous 18 years.

The reason for this lack of extension action is simple — it was against team policy.  “I just don’t believe in contract extensions, and that’s throughout the organization, no matter who it is,” managing partner Hal Steinbrenner told the Associated Press and other reporters in 2010.  “Hopefully nobody takes that personally. It’s just business.”

Between the time Steinbrenner officially became the Yankees’ control person in November 2008 and the start of 2019, his anti-extension stance stayed almost completely intact, with two exceptions that somewhat mirrored the Chapman and Hicks situations.  C.C. Sabathia also had a contractual opt-out decision following the 2011 season, though he and the Yankees worked out a new deal that gave the southpaw five years and a guaranteed $122MM to overwrite the previous four years and $92MM remaining on his previous contract.  Prior to the 2014 season, Brett Gardner (like Hicks) was also just a year away from free agency before New York locked him up for a four-year, $52MM extension.

Beyond the Sabathia and Gardner contracts, however, that was it on the extension front.  As Steinbrenner noted, the “no matter who it is” edict even stretched to the likes of Mariano Rivera or Derek Jeter, who both reached the open market before eventually (and, in Jeter’s case, not without some contentious words) re-signing with New York.  Even general manager Brian Cashman’s last three contracts have only been signed after the GM’s previous deals had expired.

Why would the team take such a hard line?  In short, the Yankees always wanted as much flexibility as possible in deciding their future moves, since they had the financial resources to immediately pivot to a better option in free agency or the trade market if such an upgrade was available.  Whereas other teams pursued extensions as a way of locking up young talent into their free agent years or at least getting some cost certainty through arbitration years, such concerns simply weren’t on the Yankees’ radar given their free-spending ways.

Of course, the franchise has become somewhat more cost-conscious in recent years, which likely explains the Bombers’ openness towards extensions in 2019.  After 15 years of overages, the Yankees finally ducked under the Competitive Balance Tax threshold during the 2018 season, allowing them to reset their penalty clock for 2019 (when they surpassed the threshold again).  Though New York didn’t go to the extremes of other big-market clubs like the Cubs or Red Sox in limiting or eliminating their luxury tax payments, the Yankees saw value in getting under the tax line once, plus they had the additional bonus of being able to cut their tax bill while still remaining competitive since so many of the club’s young stars seemingly broke out at the same time.

With the CBT penalty reset, the Yankees had the freedom to explore a tactic like signing Severino through his arbitration years.  The deal was seen at the time as very canny, given that Severino seemed to be a burgeoning ace, and thus in line for an escalating arb price tag.  In Hicks’ case, he may have had extra motivation to sign an extension given how the restrained 2017-18 and 2018-19 free agent markets left a lot of players settling for below-market deals or having long waits on the open market.  Hicks could have preferred the security of just remaining in New York, and his price was apparently satisfactory enough for the Yankees to make the long-term commitment to a player they obviously wanted to retain.

The early returns on both deals, however, haven’t been good.  Injuries limited Hicks to only 59 games in 2019 and he underwent Tommy John surgery last October, putting him out of action until at least June (though he might not miss any game time at all, given the delayed start to the season).  The news was even worse for Severino, who tossed just 12 innings last season due to injuries and then underwent a Tommy John procedure of his own in late February.  The righty now won’t be back on the mound until early in the 2021 campaign.

It isn’t yet clear if the disastrous starts to both of these extensions may have once again made the team wary of such longer-term deals, or if Steinbrenner and the Yankees front office still consider the process to be sound — after all, there’s still plenty of time for Hicks and Severino to make good on their deals.  Since big-picture concerns likely inspired the club’s decision-making towards those extensions in the first place, it’s safe to assume that inevitable changes to the sport’s financial structure will also impact the Yankees’ future approach more so than a pair of Tommy John surgeries.

Both baseball and the world at large are gripped with the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, plus there’s also the fact that the current Collective Bargaining Agreement between MLB and the players’ union is up in December 2021.  With these factors in mind, it isn’t a stretch to say that the way baseball does business could be vastly different two years from now, which could leave the Yankees and several other teams hesitant about committing any more long-term money until things can be figured out.

Working out an extension for, say, Aaron Judge seems to pale in comparison to such matters.  But, when trying to guess whether or not New York will (once the roster freeze is lifted) seek out multi-year deals for the likes of Judge, Gleyber Torres, Gary Sanchez, DJ LeMahieu, Miguel Andujar, or any number of other players, it’s worth noting that the Yankees generally don’t extend players very often, and it wouldn’t be a shock if they return to their old wait-and-see approach.

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AL East Notes: Steinbrenner, Jays, Romo, Rays, Orioles

By Mark Polishuk | February 10, 2019 at 7:33pm CDT

After the Yankees worked to get under the luxury tax limit last offseason, many New York fans expected a classic Bronx Bombers spending spree this winter, particularly with Bryce Harper and Manny Machado in the free agent market.  While that type of splurge hasn’t happened, Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner rejected criticism that his team hasn’t been willing to spend.  “I mean, we’re well above $200 million [in payroll] — we’re at $220 [million] right now — and we’re well above where we were last year,” Steinbrenner told ESPN News Services and other outlets.  (Roster Resource projects the Yankees’ at a little under $203MM in dollars, though at just over $217MM in terms of luxury tax value.)

“I think we’ve definitely got a better club Opening Day than we did opening day last year, particularly in pitching, which is my biggest area of concern,” Steinbrenner said.  In regards to the argument that the Yankees’ enormous revenues should necessitate a league-high payroll, Steinbrenner also pointed to the team’s high costs, as well as future money that is being earmarked to retain members of its young core.  That said, Steinbrenner also didn’t rule out the possibility of more notable additions: “I’m never done until I’m done, and that’s usually not until Opening Day.  Proposals come to me every day with these guys, between the analytics guys and the pro scouting guys, and I’m going to consider every single one of them.”

Here’s more from around the AL East…

  • The Blue Jays have shown interest in veteran reliever Sergio Romo, Fancred Sports’ Jon Heyman tweeted earlier this week.  Romo is close to signing a new contract, as per Heyman’s earlier reports, though the mystery team may not necessarily be Toronto, as multiple clubs have been engaged in pursuit of the right-hander.  Romo, who turns 36 next month, posted a 4.14 ERA, 3.75 K/BB rate, and 10.0 K/9 over 67 1/3 innings for Tampa Bay last season, which included 25 saves and five “starts” as the Rays’ opener.  It isn’t out of the question that the Jays could also look to deploy Romo as an opener, given the number of young arms in Toronto’s starting mix as well as the veterans (Aaron Sanchez, Marcus Stroman, Clayton Richard, Matt Shoemaker) who carry some injury-related question marks.  It’s probably more likely, however, that the Jays see Romo as an experienced bullpen addition, in the same vein as their signings of Seunghwan Oh, J.P. Howell, and Joe Smith in the last two offseasons.  By that same ilk, Romo could also become a trade chip for Toronto by midseason.
  • The Rays are on the verge of a new TV contract that should be finalized sometime during the 2019 season, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports.  The team’s last deal with Fox Sports Sun expired at the end of last season, and the two sides have agreed to “basically…a placeholder deal” for the coming year while the new contract is completed.  Some notable obstacles remain, however, such as the exact length of the deal, as well as bigger-picture issues as the sale of Fox Sports Sun and other regional Fox cable networks, plus how the threat of the Rays leaving the Tampa/St. Petersburg area could impact the contract.  “There still things in flux,” Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg said, though “It’s going to happen. There’s a structure of a deal.”  Exact figures of the new contract aren’t likely to be revealed, though Sternberg estimates the Rays will rank around 20th of the 30 teams in terms of TV revenue — the previous contract paid the Rays around $30MM per season, ranking them near the bottom of the league.  Previous reports indicated that the Rays would earn $82MM per year on the next contract, though Sternberg says the actual total is “well, well, well under” that figure, and some of the expected increase has already gone into player payroll.  “Much of the reason we’ve spent all that we have is because we knew we had some more revenue (coming) off of TV. Unfortunately [the contract is] going to fall reasonably short of what we anticipated four years ago,” Sternberg said.
  • Under GM Mike Elias, the revamped Orioles’ front office has taken a big step towards modern statistical analysis, though some seeds towards this direction were planted last summer before Elias was hired.  As Jon Meoli of the Baltimore Sun notes, several young pitchers acquired by the O’s last summer were obtained from teams (such as the Dodgers, Braves, and Yankees) that have already embraced analytics, leaving the prospects already well-versed in modern data and eager to learn more.  “I’m big into the new analytics and stuff like that, so I like to see the data that I produce, I guess, with how my pitches play off each other,” said right-hander Dean Kremer, one of the youngsters Baltimore acquired from Los Angeles in the Manny Machado trade in July.
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Reactions To A-Rod’s Forthcoming Release

By Connor Byrne | August 7, 2016 at 4:43pm CDT

With Alex Rodriguez’s playing time all but nonexistent lately and unlikely to increase, Yankees managing partner Hal Steinbrenner met with the designated hitter on Wednesday night to gently break him the news that it was time to move on, details FanRag Sports’ Jon Heyman, who adds that the two probably talked on a few occasions before Rodriguez made a decision. A-Rod could have remained a member of the team, although he would’ve continued to garner few at-bats. The 41-year-old instead chose to make a more graceful exit, announcing Sunday that he’ll play his last game with the Yankees on Friday before taking on an advisory role with the club next season. He’ll also receive the nearly $27MM remaining on the contract he signed with the Yankees in 2007.

More reactions to the end of A-Rod’s career as a Yankee:

  • In a report similar to Heyman’s, Joel Sherman of the New York Post writes that Steinbrenner and Rodriguez had two face-to-face meetings, and the owner didn’t give the player an ultimatum to retire or else. Rodriguez, in a face-saving move that will give him a chance to find post-playing opportunities in baseball, took the best deal for himself by agreeing to an amicable release, opines Sherman, who questions the importance of the 22-year veteran’s coaching role. Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson has held a similar position with the Yankees for several years, but Sherman points out that his job is mostly ceremonial. That doesn’t mean A-Rod’s will be, however.
  • The Yankees’ decision to part ways with Rodriguez came as a surprise to him, he told FOX Sports’ Ken Rosenthal. “I’m obviously disappointed but I’m also at peace with their decision,” said Rodriguez, who admitted that his relegation to the bench made him “very uncomfortable.” Rodriguez understood it, however, pointing to the organization’s youth movement. In addition to A-Rod, the Yankees have said goodbye to fellow veterans Andrew Miller, Aroldis Chapman, Carlos Beltran and Ivan Nova since last weekend, and first baseman Mark Teixeira will retire at season’s end. On his new position with the franchise, Rodriguez stated, “The great news is, I’m going to be in a role I think I’m going to enjoy. I’m also going to learn a lot. The fact that Hal asked me to do this is something that I’ll treasure.”
  • Regarding Rodriguez’s torrid 2009 postseason, one in which he hit .365/.500/.808 and guided the Yankees to a World Series championship, general manager Brian Cashman said Sunday, “That doesn’t happen without Alex’s significant contribution.” Not only that, Steve Politi of NJ.com argues that Cashman wouldn’t be the Yankees’ GM right now if for not that Rodriguez-fueled title. Since then, the Cashman-run franchise has lost three of five playoff series and a Wild Card game, and it’s likely to miss the postseason for the third time since 2013. But that 2009 triumph has helped keep Cashman in the fold and made it easier for ownership to swallow the club’s current retooling status, Politi contends.
  • Rodriguez will technically collect more money going forward from his previous team, the Rangers, than the Yankees, according to Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. Texas agreed to pay $67MM of Rodriguez’s contract upon trading him to the Yankees in 2004 (a figure that changed after he opted out of the deal in 2007) and still owed him $26MM in deferred money when it went through bankruptcy in 2010. That sum has since grown to $40MM and will continue to increase via an investment account, a source told Grant. Importantly, the money A-Rod has coming to him from the Rangers – who have since changed owners – doesn’t come from their operating budget or impact their payroll. Rodriguez will receive the rest of the payout between this year and 2025.
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