Yankees' Hal Steinbrenner saying it's 'difficult' to spend like Dodgers is absurdity

Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner gave his take on the Dodgers' latest offseason spending spree on Tuesday, in an interview that will have fans shaking their heads in disbelief.

"It's difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kind of things that they're doing," Steinbrenner said during an interview with the YES Network, according to ESPN. "We'll see if it pays off."

The Dodgers' payroll is the highest in baseball, sitting at $390 million for next season, a number that jumps to over $500 million with luxury tax penalties. But Steinbrenner crying poverty and saying that teams can't compete with them is the absolute height of absurdity.

When Steinbrenner says that it's tough for teams to compete with the Dodgers, he's saying that no one can build a roster with the kind of payroll they have. What he means in actuality, is that no one wants to.

You're telling me that no one could afford to sign Teoscar Hernandez to a three-year, $66 million deal? No one could give Hyeseong Kim a three-year, $12.5 million contract? No one could give Blake Snell, a two-time Cy Young Award winner, a five-year $182 million deal? None of those contracts were absurdly expensive for the caliber of player signing them; none of them would have broken the banks of any club in the majors, even the supposedly poor, small-market teams like the Marlins, Rays, or Pirates.

Can the Marlins or Rays afford to build a $390 million roster? Of course not. But the idea that the Dodgers are just throwing absurd sums at players and pricing other teams out of the market for them is patently false.

You're telling me that the Orioles couldn't have given Hernandez $66 million over three years? Or the Yankees couldn't afford it? Come on.

It is true that without a hard salary cap, the teams with the most money are going to have an advantage when it comes to roster construction. But Steinbrenner owns THE NEW YORK YANKEES. If any team has a decided financial advantage over the rest of Major League Baseball, it's them.

This isn't Reds owner Bob Castellini lamenting the unfair market conditions that put his lower net worth and smaller market at a disadvantage; it's the owner of baseball's most famous team playing in the largest media market in the U.S., the subject of roughly 7,000 percent of national media coverage.

There was a time, not too long ago, when New York was the team throwing money at all their problems, was the team every big free agent ultimately landed with, was the team small-market owners spent their time whining about. And now, suddenly, that money is gone? Suddenly, it's too hard to compete with the Dodgers?

The Evil Empire, the mighty, unstoppable financial juggernaut, is too cash poor to hang with the mighty Dodgers? The coffers are barren, the reserves are tapped, and now they have to root around in the couch cushions to afford a functional third baseman? Give me a break. Frankly, the idea that the Yankees, Cubs, or even the White Sox can't hang with Los Angeles' spending is patently absurd.

They have the cash to hang, they just don't want to spend it. And ultimately, that's the real problem here. It's not the Dodgers spending to build a contender, to turn their title-winning team into a potential dynasty. It's other teams not bothering to open their checkbooks to try and do the same.

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Yankees' Hal Steinbrenner saying it's 'difficult' to spend like Dodgers is height of baseball absurdity

By Sam Westmoreland | Jan 29, 2025