[sublime]

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Sublime,
You did a good job here valuing each deal. However, this type of analysis works best in a salary cap environment, where every team only has x number of dollars to spend in order to achieve maximum production.

clearly, this isn't the case in baseball, or with the NYY.

which is why paying a premium for potentially extra production makes sense for them.

And, why having a potentially bad 4th year to deal with isn't a disaster, since they can probably eat some of the contract in a trade, or afford to have a $13M guy as 4th outfielder.

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thats the issue though. i dont give the yankees more leeway because they have more money, its a poor way to evaluate the deals they make. they need to be held to the same grading system as the red sox, and as the san diego padres. a good deal (giles) is a good deal and a bad deal (wagner, damon) is a bad deal.

look at it this way. lets assume your neighbor makes twice as much money as you. you both go out and buy the same car, and while conversing about your purchaces, you find out he paid 35k, while you paid 29k for the same exact product. are you not going to assume hes a sucker, just because he makes more money than you? of course not! you both entered the same market place and got the same product, yet mr jones paid more money because he went to the fancy dealership which is in place to fleece guys like mr jones.

baseball is a marketplace, and the product that is being sold (either runs created, or prevention of them) have a fair market value. those that pay less than the market value are schrewd and those that pay more are suckers.

there is no premium for runs 25-30. they are worth the same as runs as 20-25.

another rant-

this moronic argment that damon is worth more money because the yankees are in the 'win now' more. LMFAO! they have a payroll that will lekely never go under 200m again, every single season is a win now for them!

the deal SUCKS. its bearable for year 1, tolerable for year 2, awful for year 3, and putrid for year 4. i have shown with MATH that the deal is bad for even 2006 and yet people will say its an ok deal. amazing.