In 2005 I explored the “Yankee Premium, how much of the Yankee payroll reflected a revenue advantage relative to the rest of baseball and how much reflected the ability of NYY players to negotiate away the revenue advantage into their own pockets.
Here’s an update for 2009 salary data where I match Yankee players with players from other teams whose productivity are “in the neighborhood” of the Yankee. The question is, what is the pay rate of a comparable players in terms of production and freedom of movement. I’m not using any sophisticated matching technique, so there’s plenty of room to quibble, sometimes that that the match is not good enough and sometimes too good. There’s not offensive match for A-Rod among third basemen, but someone like David Wright would be much cheaper than Mike Young. Joe Mauer’s years of service are much less than Posada, but Mauer is mobile. The point is not any specific match, but the aggregate amounts. Where one player is considered a better fielder, I’ve tried to compensate with batting stats such as Mike Cameron and Johnny Damon in a position, CF, where fielding matters more.
Player (Salary, Career OPS or ERA, Years)
1B: Teixeira ($20.6, 0.923, 7) Howard ($15.5, 0.961, 6)
2B: Cano ($6.0, 0.818, 5) Kinsler ($3.2, 0.814, 4)
SS: Jeter ($21.6, 0.847, 15) Tejada ($14.8, 0.810, 13)
3B: Rodriguez ($33.0, 0.966, 16) Young ($13.0, 0.798, 10)
C: Posada ($13.1, 0.885, 15) Mauer ($10.5, 0.892, 6)
OF: Damon ($13.0, 0.854, 15) Cameron ($10.0, 0.788, 15)
OF: Matsui ($13.0, 0.852, 7) Werth ($2.5, 0.827, 7)
OF: Swisher ($5.4, 0.869, 6) Hawpe ($5.5, 0.875, 5)
SP: Sabbathia ($15.3, 3.62, 9) Buerhle ($14.0, 3.80, 9)
SP: Burnett ($16.5, 3.84, 11) Fuentes ($8.5, 3.47, 9)
SP: Pettitte ($5.5, 4.20, 15) Garcia ($10, 4.08, 10)
RP: Riveria ($15, 2.25, 15) K-Rod ($9.1, 2.53, 8)
Yankees: $178m Non-Yankees: $116
A close-to-comparable team has a labor market price tag of about 65 percent of the Yankee total for these key positions. In other words, the Yankee players extracted nearly 40% in “rent” above their market values from the Yankees because they are just as aware as anyone else of the Yankee revenue advantage.
My point is not that the players dissipate all of the revenue advantage of the Yankees. Rather, using gross payroll differences vastly overstates the Yankees advantage. The rent capture by players means that the Yankees must spend their money wisely to make it translate into wins, as the period of the 1980s-early 1990s showed.
