The Big Lie: The Yankees Bought Their Championship

One of the most prominent go-to complaints about  the New York Yankees is that they “buy their championships,” including this most recent one. It’s a convenient thing to believe. They have a high payroll, and they are seen as the hegemon of the baseball landscape. However, just because it is convenient doesn’t always mean it is right.

The WSJ’s Andrew Zimbalist does a good job deconstructing this big lie. He points out both the obvious (that the Yankees play by the rules MLB has laid down and 20 different teams have made the playoffs since 2004) and the not so obvious (that, according to his review, 70 to 85 percent of a teams actual success was determined by factors other than payroll.)  All good points. Furthermore, he goes into what MLB could do to further enhance competition from lesser teams, perhaps providing motivation for them to spend.

This gets into my same problem with the majority of the “Convenient Untruthers” who repeat the line about “buying championships”:  It comes from generally three types of fans:

1. Red Sox and Mets fans, whose team generally spend above the luxury tax threshold. That’s like someone in Alpine, NJ complaining about their neighbor’s mansion being too big for the neighborhood. Cry me a damn river.
2. Fans of teams with low payrolls, whose owners are obscenely rich. Your team’s owners are perfectly fine with pocketing the luxury tax money and fielding an inferior product. Go yell at them.
3. Morons.

The system isn’t perfect, but the Yankees don’t buy their championships. They simply put a down payment on success. Spread the word.