Lupica's Bitching and Moaning Again

Mike Lupica is at it again. He's once again found a reason to bash the Yankees. This time the fact that the Yankees set a budget and stuck to it seems to be just too much for Mr. Lupica to handle. A man who has spent years bashing the Yankees spending is now upset that they're setting budgets. I know I know, it makes complete sense. (hat-tip to TYU)

It's amazing how this guy always finds something to complain about regarding the Yankees, it's almost like he's intentionally searching for reasons to complain. Interestingly, he sounds a lot like those fans who are never satisfied and expect a superstar at every position, a fan he's spent years ridiculing.

The headline of the baseball offseason isn't that the Yankees have Curtis Granderson now, that they have Nick Johnson and Javy (Game 7) Vazquez back, that they now have Randy Winn, who hit a total of two home runs last season, to share time in the outfield with Brett Gardner, who hit three. The headline is that the Yankees have a budget. We are supposed to believe that this budget is the reason that Johnny Damon goes now. Sure it is.

Now you can take the Yankees at their word, buy this notion that they can't spend $200 million on baseball players anymore. But if you do, you sort of have to wonder if the team really is rolling in dough, the way we're constantly told. Printing money like they're the Goldman Sachs Yankees. You have to wonder if they even made money last season in a new Stadium and with all those home playoff games, all the way into November.

Maybe the only way we'll ever find out what the books really look like on 161st Street is when the Steinbrenners sell the team someday. You can hide a lot of things from a prospective buyer. The books are hardly ever one of them.

Ahh yes, how could the Yankees ever want to spend money responsibly? Why do that? I personally think this is a smart move by the Yanks, especially with how strong next year's free agent class is, but for Lupica it's another case of damned if you do and damned if you don't.

By the way, just for fun, check out this 10-year-old quote from Lupica (hat-tip to Craig Calcaterra):

The Yankees continue to live big and baseball dies a little bit at a time, even as this as treated like some kind of boom period. If you even suggest that there is something wrong with the assembly line we see working at Yankee Stadium, you’re just anti-Yankee. More and more the Yankees are treated, especially by the local media, like the company in a company town.

And now back to today's article:

But for now the story, and the Yankees are sticking to it, is that they've got a by-God budget. That they couldn't afford what they say Damon wanted. Or what they thought he wanted. Or what they were afraid Damon's agent, Scott Boras, might try to weasel out of them, because nobody can out-weasel Boras.

Really? Johnny Damon turns out to be the one guy the Yankees can't afford? It would be like finding the one bar girl Tiger Woods didn't want to take home with him.

Ahh the Tiger Woods cheap shot, how original.... Anyway, the Yankees have made it pretty clear that they were willing to sign Damon to a two-year deal earlier this offseason, before they acquired Granderson, Vazquez and Nick Johnson. According to Cashman Boras told the Yankees that Damon wouldn't take a penny less than two-years at $13 million per. Can anyone really blame the Yankees for backing away from that one? Well, anyone besides Lupica.

This Yankee budget, by the way, revolves around the completely arbitrary figure of $200 million. To them, it is some kind of magic number, even though nobody else in baseball spends anything close to that, has ever spent anything close, will ever spend anything close to that.

I guess trying to start getting their spending down to the level of the rest of baseball is a bad thing now? Didn't you want them to do this for years? Now go reread that quote from 2000 again for a laugh.

But does anybody believe that Johnny Damon, who helped beat the Yankees in 2004 when he was with the Red Sox and played such a spectacular World Series for the Yankees five years later against the Phillies, has to go because of money? Or because Boras made Brian Cashman mad?

Let me see if I have this straight: Boras' No. 1 top-dog client, Alex Rodriguez, got to opt out of his Yankees contract during Game 4 of the 2007 World Series, show up the Yankees as much as anybody ever has, but that wasn't a career-ender in New York?

Yep, Johnny Damon at 36 is the same kind of player A-Rod was at 32. Also the fact that Hank Steinbrenner pretty much made that deal happen while Cashman was ready to say goodbye to A-Rod seems lost on Lupica. .... Oh, and what does 2004 have to do with anything? Does Lupica know that was over five years ago?

You know what the bottom line is on this sudden bottom line the Yankees have? If they wanted Damon to play two more years here, he'd be playing two more years here. They just don't want to say that. And for some loopy reason, they want to act as if they're the victims here.

From everything I've read, the Yankees did want Damon back, at the right price. The same way they wanted Bobby Abreu back last year at the right price. If Abreu had realized his market value earlier last offseason he'd probably still be in pinstripes, and the same can be said for Damon. Both players overplayed their hands and both will end up with below value contracts from teams they probably didn't want to play for. That's their fault, not the Yankees'.

Of course Cashman doesn't want to be regarded as the guy who can only buy the World Series. Of course he wants to have the kind of rep as a personnel savant the way Theo Epstein and Billy Beane do. Of course he did make a whole series of terrific small moves to improve the '09 Yankees.

Except: Except none of those moves matters if Cashman didn't get to spend nearly a half-billion dollars on CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira last winter! And if the Yankees don't win this season, you can only imagine what happens to this new budget next winter if somebody like Joe Mauer is in play. What kind of money will they throw at him?

So now he's attacking Cashman and accusing him on not making a move to save his own rep. It's hard for me to believe that that's the way Cash would operate, especially when everyone with insider knowledge of the situation is saying that Hal Steinbrenner is the one setting the budget, not Cashman.

The first budget in all of Yankee history is good cover here. Boras is much better cover, just because banging him around is a much more enjoyable workout than you could ever get at the gym. But if the Yankees wanted Johnny Damon, he'd still be here. They didn't. He isn't.

Again, the Yankees did want him back, but they didn't want to get ripped off in the process. That led them to look elsewhere and they found players they feel will do the job replacing him. I really can't find fault in that, but of course Lupica can. After all it is the Yankees we're talking about. The same way they were wrong for spending they're now wrong for saving.

What do you think about this? Does it make sense to you or do you still have a functioning brain?