Randy Levine-The Enemy From Within

Without Randy Levine, the Yankees might not have a financial empire has successful as what they have now. One reason they can afford $200 million payrolls is because of things like YES, the new stadium, lucrative marketing deals and brand building, all of which have Levine’s fingerprints.

I also think you are exaggerating Levine’s role in the Igawa signing, and incorrectly extending it to what the Yankees bid for Darvish.

They weren’t willing to bid the amount it would take to win. They put down the money they wanted to put down and if they win, awesome, if not, oh well. Hearing that they actually bid $45M doesn’t make them any more or less winners or losers. It doesn’t matter because it wasn’t enough and I would have been surprised if $45M was enough. Just like they threw in a $2M bid and surprisingly, they threw in what they were willing to pay for Darvish. Clearly they question the value of a Japanese pitcher making the transition and would rather go after a decent utility player at a much lower price because its much less of a risk. Will Darvish be awesome this year? Probably and maybe even the next year but by the end of the contract the Texas Rangers will be regretting this signing unless they handle Darvish with kids gloves and the Yankees weren’t willing to pay that much money and treat him like a prospect.

Randy, shut the fuck up

This is Joe Torre’s finest quote, straight from the Yankee Years.

Agreed by the way. Levine is a dumbass and hopefully his days of doing anything other than helping Hank write checks are over.

Cubs in agreement with free-agent OF Reed Johnson on one-year deal.

If the Yankees really wanted Darvish, they would have and easily could have outbid both those teams. However, if they did everyone would be up in arms about “Oh how could they spend so much just to get one unproven player” or the classic “The Yankees are ruining baseball with their excessive spending” bullshit narrative, and unless the Yankees are truly run by idiots, these types of things do not factor into their baseball & business decisions.

And while Cashman may not have had his hand on Soriano or possibly Igawa, he was certainly willing to break the fucking money bin wide open for Cliff Lee for 7 years, or trade one of our best prospects for a 3 month rental of him.

I don’t see the connection between Levine and a posting bid and I think a lot of what you’re saying is a bit unwarranted. Cash just got his new contract and I highly doubt someone like Levine would go over his head not two months after he signed the deal. We all know Cash wanted more if not full control of baseball operations, so I just see this as extremely unlikely.

And why are we talking about Torre in this?

Echoing the sentiment above, there’s really not a whole lot of sense in this attack. We have no idea the extent to which Levine individually impacts the baseball decisions that are made or which decisions he has pushed for. I think that the trust fund babies have no business trying to go over Cashman’s head, but who is to say that Levine is even doing that?

He came out and said some good things about Rafael Soriano after the signing, but does that mean that he was ranting and raving about what a good idea it was to sign him to this deal and personally made it happen? Maybe, maybe not. Cashman made no secret about not being happy about the signing and maybe Levine thought it would be prudent not to sign someone and then have the entire organization be incredibly negative about it.

It just seems stupid to level these vague, unsupported accusations when we really have no idea what impact he is having on the decisions that are made.

It just seems stupid to level these vague, unsupported accusations when we really have no idea what impact he is having on the decisions that are made.

It?

i wasn’t willing to eat AJ’s contract, so i did the next best thing: i ate AJ! now we’re out from under! is that fiscal genius or what?