"We have evaluated, now we will organize," Cashman said. "Then we will meet with ownership."
Cash will go talk to Hank and Hal, get authorization for next season's budget, and then dive into the market.
Because the Yanks are moving so methodically, the mood around baseball seems to be that this will be a long free agent season. No one wants to be the team to set the market, and no free agent wants to sign until the Yankees have made their offer.
The consensus that next season holds the free agent gems, may deflate the market even more- if you know there's going to be a party on Saturday, you don't spend all you funds on Thursday night.
Then there is the talk of collusion. Ken Rosenthal reports on the escalating war of words between Scott Boras and MLB Chief of Labor Relations Rob Manfred. Boras thinks the game was worth $6.3 billion dollars, and that there are a dozen clubs with $200M revenues fielding teams for around $70-$90M (what they receive from revenue sharing and MLB's tv and licensing contracts). All of these numbers have allegedly attached to them because baseball doesn't disclose hard numbers, a point sure to come up in the next labor talks.
I've hated Scott Boras for years. His willingness to pick and choose facts to present each client as a baseball immortal, his eagerness to move successful players to dead-end franchises for an extra nickle, and his enthusiasm for non-traditional contract loopholes and incentives are all repugnant to me.
But if Scott Boras becomes one of the central figures in a movement to expose baseball's finances and move more of the revenue from the owners to the workers, he could have a Darth Vader moment.