FanPost

let's slaughter this HORSE!

1 - Hal is a very, very rich man. pocketing an additional $50M per year of team revenue is petty. $50M is approx 1.5% of the team's current valuation. to be clear, $1,500 is 1.5% of $100,000. does Hal really need an extra 1.5% added to his overall wealth? if Hal absolutely needs to make an additional $50M each year so he can pay for his yacht bills, then he should utilize his massive collateral to diversify his investments thereby increasing his yearly income.

2 - his decision to pocket the team's recent exponential growth in revenue is short-sited. his miserly ways threaten to disrupt or cheapen the value of the brand. the intrinsic value of owning the Yankees is derived from the market value assigned to the brand. short-sighted investment endangers long term growth. if the Yankees become the team that is miserly in free agency, cheap with its own players, expensive and disloyal to its fans, how long before all the negative publicity starts to indelibly sink in?

3 - owning a sports team is unlike owning a for-profit business in the sense that an interest in the bottom line should be secondary to an incessant desire to win. an individual of means may open a restaurant or an art gallery, not to turn a profit but rather as an exercise in vanity. owning the Yankees, much like owning Manchester United, is the ultimate status symbol. what the well heeled abhor more then most is the appearance of being cheap, not as in being frugal but rather as being uncharitable. Hal is in danger of losing his place at the table and this will affect his families' reputation for the next generation.

4 - success breeds success, failure breeds failure. the Yankees haven't won a World Series title in 9 years, the third longest title drought in their illustrious history. the fans have given Hal the benefit of the doubt and waited for him to produce the results he swore he was chasing. "My psyche is kind of the same every year, which is we need a team that’s going to win a championship," if Hal's penny pinching ways were working, the results would speak for themselves. rather it is his failures that are doing most of the talking these days. say what you will about George but gosh golly darn it, he got the job done.

5 - unfortunately for Jason Giambi, time didn't stop in the year 2000. unfortunately for us all, inflation has also carried on after the year 2000. Hal is an accomplished business man with a far greater appreciation for how inflation depreciates the value of money over time. why is Hal behaving as if a $300M contract in 2019 is not equal to a $200M contract in the year 2000? the harsh reality is that if you lose the trust of the fans, it is very hard to gain it back.

fool me once, "We’re still the New York Yankees, all you guys know that. We know what the fans expect. We know what the town expects. We’re not going to be afraid to spend money." Steinbrenner told reporters in 2015, the year the Yankees passed on Scherzer." shame on me.

fool me twice, "We’re going to do our best to field a championship-caliber team every single year. This coming year is going to be no different than last." shame on you.

fool me three times, "You can only be a genius if your team wins through not spending money. And that’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous. But they’ve done a good job in conditioning the whole world to see it that way." shame on us both.

6 - at the end of the day, this is not solely about how much of the exponentially growing revenue should be re-invested back into the team's payroll, or about failing to sign a young stud to field a position of need on a championship caliber club, or about the merits of the personnel that Hal chooses to entrust the team's greatest responsibilities to. this is about results. as an outsider looking in, a fan will never have the entire picture available to them thus they need to depend upon a measure of success that is easily quantifiable. luckily, the Yankees have made winning championships their sacred creed. unluckily, for all of us, they have failed quite miserably as of late to achieve their self-professed goals.

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