Hal Steinbrenner: Yankees' $189 Million Payroll Not a One-Year Deal

Despite the fact that the Yankees only need to get their payroll under the new CBA's tax limit for one season to avoid paying exceedingly high luxury payments to the rest of baseball, Hal Steinbrenner has put the idea to bed that the team will only be looking to stay under the limit for 2014, according to Ken Davidoff. If anyone was thinking that one year of savings would be enough to send the Yankees right back to their spending ways for 2015, that seems to not be the case. Assuming that's true, the new budget-conscious Yankees could be a regular occurrence going forward, as opposed to a one-off experiment.

The Yankees stand to gain a lot by resetting their penalties as a repeat offender of high payroll, so it makes good business sense that ownership would strive for the magical $189 million dollar goal next season, though they could theoretically just go right back to their spending ways without losing as much money thereafter. Baby Steinbrenner seems to not think that's necessary, claiming that he doesn't need a payroll north of $200 million dollars to win the World Series. Hard to disagree with that assessment, as teams with lower payrolls than the Yankees have won it all plenty of times, but if the team intends to stick to those limitations, they have to change the way they pursue every player. Nick Swisher's exit was a step in the right direction, but two guaranteed years for Ichiro Suzuki was at least half a step backwards.