The Yankees Are Too Good at Bargain Shopping
Brian Cashman's biggest strength can't build a World Series winner
The Yankees haven’t lost more games than they’ve won since I was in elementary school, even after the Core 4 retired and the Yankees no longer have a huge spending edge over most of their competition. Yet, the Yankees have only been the undisputed best team in baseball one or two times since the peak years of the dynasty. Brian Cashman deserves a ton of credit for both their sustained success and low peak.
Every great MLB club has a superpower. The Rays use their full 26-man roster better than any other club. The Dodgers have an incredible and consistent farm system. The Houston Astros have the best advanced scouting in the majors. The Guardians manage to develop new elite pitching year after year.
The Yankees under Brian Cashman are the kings of the bargain bin. Over the last six years, Cashman acquired Didi Gregorius, Aaron Hicks, Gio Urshela, Luke Voit, Jose Trevino, Clay Holmes, Wandy Peralta, Domingo German, Nestor Cortes, Chad Green and Matt Carpenter (I’m sure I am forgetting some trades) for effectively zero cost. Without those players, the Yankees are not a winning team over the last five seasons.
The bargain bin has allowed Cashman to paper over a lot of more expensive failures. While the Yankees have only made one top-of-the-market free agent signing over the last six years, Gerrit Cole, and still have several bargain bin players making the minimum on their roster, they still ended the 2022 season with a $249 million payroll.
The alternative to the bargain bin is what the Dodgers and Astros do best: bring up a steady stream of young players through the farm system. However, the Yankee farm system has struggled to follow their lead. At one point during the season, 24 out of 26 players on the active roster were acquired via free agency or trade. The Yankees finished a little stronger than that, but it’s remarkable how little of this roster came out of the Yankee farm system.
Young amateurs are better than bargain bin trades because they are younger. Jose Trevino was 29 when the Yankees acquired him. Holmes was 28. Urshela and Voit were 27. Hicks was 26. Gregorius was a spry 25. While it was a minor miracle that all of these players turned into all stars, the Yankees could only count on a couple of seasons from each until they exited their prime. Some had enough service time to go to arbitration and get big raises. Cashman had to keep finding new bargain bin miracles to sustain the success.
When a roster has a base of young, cheap players making the league minimum, they can afford to go out and pay for more of the Gerrit Coles of the world without breaking the payroll. The Dodgers could afford to sign Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts (and maybe Aaron Judge) because they had Gavin Lux and Will Smith hanging around. When those guys get expensive, they can count on a few new young players to emerge from their farm system.
The result has been a tremendous amount of roster turnover and former miracles turning back into pumpkins, or at least becoming average players. The bargain bin strategy has a ceiling. Even after Aaron Judge had the best season of all time, the Yankees still won only 99 games in 2022:
Compare that record with the Astros and the Dodgers:
The value that Brian Cashman has been able to acquire from baseball’s forgotten, discarded players is incredible. Cashman’s front office has largely failed to develop hitters over the last two decades, with a handful of notable exceptions. Their record on pitching is a bit better, but doesn’t quite live up to the heights of many of their top competitors. The Yankees should have the best front office in baseball, but instead they have a merely good GM and a large payroll. That’s good enough to win more games than they lose every year, but not good enough to build a powerhouse.