What does that even mean? Why not factor in the $9 mill per year they save by dumping Vazquez? You know, since we're factoring in things that are not Randy Johnson's salary.
As for the injury comment, one has to wonder why Lupica is so convinced that David Wells is worth $4 mill per year; and Pedro Martinez is worth almost as much as Randy Johnson; and the ever-popular Andrew Eugene Pettitte with the Bad Elbow is worth $13 mill per year.
In reality, the Yankees would not be shocked whatsoever if Randy Johnson gets injured. Everybody gets hurt in pro sports at one time or another, young and old. The question is whether or not Unit is worth the risk. The answer is, "of course he is."
When Lupica the Mentally Challenged claims that "about $125M more [was] spent by the Yankees since the Red Sox last won a World Series," do you believe him? Can you trust his numbers?
I truly wonder if he's remembering to subtract the salaries of Javier Vazquez, Miguel Cairo, Jon Lieber, Kenny Lofton, John Olerud, etc.
Without context ... without simple arithmetic ... Lupica's assertion has absolutely zero meaning.
"You know who can assemble a team the way the 2005 Yankees are being assembled?
Anybody.
You know who ought to get fired if they don't win going away?
Everybody.
That's one way of looking at things, of course.
The other way, the one that gets all Yankee fans to think you're swell (and substantially cuts down on the phone calls to the office from Very Spooky Fans), is this:
Only the United Way spends money in a more noble fashion than George Steinbrenner does."
No, no, no, no, a thousand times, no. There are plenty of other ways to look at it, thank you very much.
Lupica thinks that Yankee fans are supposed to be embarrassed about the team's payroll. In order to deal with this guilt, we're all forced to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that the Yankees are noble somehow (sounds like a Red Sox fan to me, though the phenomenon exists to some extent in NYY fandom, for sure).
Steinbrenner & Cashman aren't "swell" and they aren't "noble." I don't ask them to be, do you? They're just businessmen takin' care of their business.
If the Yankee brass are geniuses in any way, it's in two areas: (1) Understanding their bargaining leverage in certain situations, and (2) patiently and unashamedly exploiting that advantage. But that hardly makes them geniuses, even in MLB GM terms.
If small men like Lupica choose to be offended, Cashmans' job is to offend them (Lupica's hypocrisy makes his faux indignation difficult to take seriously; he's just mad that the big bucks are no longer being spent on his puppy love crushes like Cone and O'Neill and Pettitte).
Does anybody really benefit if the Yankees cut their payroll in half and win 80 games? The Machine grinds to a halt in the name of "fairness" and "parity"? Maybe Mike Lupica would feel some smug satisfaction, but the Yankees would rather win 100 games and draw 4 million ... and make lots of cash money.
If one understands the basics, then one realizes that not everybody can assemble a team like the 2005 Yankees. Why? Because not everybody generates the revenue.
The Yankees are neither noble nor ignoble, they're neither geniuses nor idiots. They're just investors.
See how that works? Assets paired with liabilities, credits paired with debits, income paired with expenses. It's not too difficult to understand, but you'd first have to understand basic math.
Speaking of investing, Idiot George bought the Yankees for $10 mill in 1973. They're now worth about $1 bill (with a "b").
I wouldn't expect Mike Lupica to be able to figure out the annualized rate of return, since he can not even grasp basic arithmetic, but it's even higher than Tanyon Sturtze's career ERA.
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