Take The Money And Stuff It In Your Pockets

When you blog, you can never predict your reactions; sometimes posts you think will be provocative generate consensus, and post that express the most self-evident banalities generate controversy. The fact that some commenters tried to defend the Phillies’ decision to trade Bobby Abreu and Cory Lidle to the Yankees for a Best of Tom Shadyac DVD box set is one of the strangest examples of the latter. The defense seemed to be that it was the best the Phillies could get, so it was unfair to criticize them. It’s possible that this was indeed the best offer, and it’s certainly true that I have no idea if they could have done better. But the obvious error here is simply assuming it was a good idea for the Phillies to trade for whatever they could get right now. Why? If you examine the wild-card standings, you’ll note that the Phils are 2 games out in the lost column, behind three teams that are over .500 with mirrors. The idea that they just had to dump the best right fielder in the league right away whether they could get anything or not is ridiculous, and it could well cost them a playoff spot (which would make it short-sighted even in the only terms the Phillies care about, this year’s profit.)

For the first and last time, then, let me defend the Yankees. People whine and moan about their advantages. But it takes two for Steinbrenner’s investments to work: he wouldn’t be able to spend as efficiently without other teams in substantial markets with new stadiums being unwilling to pay the market rate for players. (And Steinbrenner–who started with less capital than any other major league owner–is, unlike the Phillies, building a new stadium mostly with his own money.) Unlike the Phillies (or, say, the Gillick-era Mariners), Steinbrenner invests his money in the team; he actually wants to win. And these investments produce many of the advantages people consider inherent: the Yankees have not always been a great draw. “Baseball towns” are about nurture, not nature. And while being more interested in risk-averse short-term profit-taking than competing is an owner’s privilege, it’s maddening that during the next labor dispute this will suddenly turn into a pretext to take money from the players and give it to the owners, and also maddening that they’ll blame the fans if attendance drops. Enough. Stop bitching about the Yankees and start competing with them.