Gloating from Up North
In the Globe,
Bob Ryan makes a point about the Yankees that I wish more Red Sox fans realized, particularly every time they start lamenting how much money the Yankees spend on payroll: Beyond a certain point, money doesn't help build a team. Quite the contrary.
Having the wherewithal to overspend for players is not necessarily a good thing. That's how you wind up with injury-prone mercenaries such as Randy Johnson and Gary Sheffield, as opposed to younger, healthier, and hungrier players. A key older free agent signee who really is the right man in the right place at the right time (i.e. Curt Schilling), well, that's what everyone wants to find. There just aren't many of them. This is hardly an original thought, but the Yankees were better off when they had players such as Paul O'Neill and Tino Martinez, guys just below the star level who came to play without personal agendas and bloated self-images.
This isn't exactly the case for Moneyball; despite the A's current success, I'm sure they'd love to have twenty or thirty million dollars more to spend on salaries.
It is to suggest that a combination of moneyball and the occasional free agent may be the best way to build a championship team.
Ryan adds,
The Boss has always believed that if you just pile star after star on top of each other, good things will happen. It doesn't work that way.
I think he's right. A team still needs chemistry, a sense of urgency, desire. A team still needs to have fun. And on George Steinbrenner's Yankees, those things are hard to come by.
