Jack Curry kind of set the Yankee world on fire earlier this week on YES Network’s “Yankees Hot Stove” program, seemingly implying that no major moves were planned for this winter. We’re still reasonably early in the offseason, so I’ll believe that interpretation when the team heads down to Tampa, but more than one report has already come out since the World Series that Hal Steinbrenner still hasn’t decided whether or not he wants his club’s payroll to exceed $300 million.
I feel the need to preface
this post by saying that I don’t care about Hal Steinbrenner’s financial well-being, or what share other partners demand, or if spending “too much” will lead to a work stoppage in 2027. I don’t care about these things, but Steinbrenner and company do — or at least want to use that last point as cover for what they’ve always wanted to do anyway. I don’t think the Yankees should have much of a budget at all; if you adjust the 2009 team’s $218 million payroll to 2025 dollars, Steinbrenner spent just north of $330 million delivering the club’s most recent World Series title.
Right now the estimated payroll for the 2026 season is $260 million, with a mil going to Aaron Hicks’ buyout and $15 million going to DJ LeMahieu. The org does get $5.5 million back from the Marlins and Cubs to help offset that dead money (courtesy of the Giancarlo Stanton and Cody Bellinger trades), but if you only have $40-odd million left to play with, these black holes reflect worse and worse on the way the team chooses to allocate its money. In the same vein, while it’s not technically dead money, Ryan McMahon and Anthony Volpe likely combining for $20 million on the left side of the infield in 2026 after combining for less than three fWAR in 2025 is certainly hobbled money.
If Aaron Judge continues to post 10-win seasons, he might just be the most underpaid player in the sport, and both Ben Rice and Cam Schlittler have chances to be among the most valuable contracts in baseball when comparing onfield value to salary. It is in these mid-ranges, the moves the Yankees have made over and over to just edge the CBT thresholds, the extending out of DJ and Hicks’ terms, the lack of a long-term solution at third meaning you pay a guy $16 million when he can’t hit, that pile up and pushes the team higher and higher toward that seemingly self-imposed topline number.
It sounds like Bellinger is the top position player target, with FanGraphs estimating the outfielder will cost about $27 million on a per-year basis. If Steinbrenner is hard on that $300 million number, it becomes pretty difficult to make any other move after Bellinger, even as the Yankees could really use another starter or bat. I’ve written before that Tatsuya Imai seems like a perfect fit for the Bronx, especially to counter big pitching moves made by the Blue Jays and Red Sox. It seems impossible to add both and stay under $300 million without a surprising trade or two.
All of this comes back to trying to dodge the CBT in the first place, stretching out contracts to longer terms — except that carryover is starting to force the Yankees’ hands in forward-looking CBT conversations. The org has walked a tightrope with longer-term, lower AAV deals, and now seem like they’re starting to tip, just a little bit.
