In my usual random stumbling through the net, I came across the following chart:
2024 Revenue vs. 2025 Payroll
Specifically, it was brought up during a discussion arguing that Hal Steinbrenner’s leadership — or, more directly, his lack of aggressive spending, unlike his father — is holding the Yankees back from winning another championship. The writer didn’t note the original source of the graphic/chart, so I can’t give anyone proper credit there (or explain why the list cuts off with 25 teams).
Side note: the comments and activity on the post have me once again wondering if newsletter was the right choice over basic free blog; the ancillary “in-network” traffic that happens with a blog looks really appealing right now, given how slowly my subscriber base is growing — but that’s a bigger discussion for another time. Heck, even Substack did a better job at this than Beehiiv, which might have me consider moving back if it weren’t for the whole supporting Nazis thing (kind of a deal-breaker).
Also of note was this paragraph:
“Basically, this chart confirms Yank fan suspicions for the last decade: the Steinbrenners hoover money and pretend to cheer. It does not calculate their true wealth. As owners of YGE — Yankee Global Enterprises — the family not only possesses a majority of the Yankees, but 25 percent of the YES Network, 20 percent of the New York City Football Club of Major League Soccer and 10 percent of AC Milan, an Italian soccer club. They have more money than we shall ever imagine. No matter what happens, no matter how badly the Yankees play, the owners cannot lose.”
It all presents an interesting — and perhaps accurate — perspective.
New York has been among the biggest spending teams in MLB for well more than two decades. That spending has led to just one championship in the last 25 years (2009), though. Gone are the days of the “Evil Empire” getting any player it wants.
Of course, all of this is relevant to the looming threat of a labor stoppage after the 2026 season when the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA) expires (technically, it expires at 11:59 PM EST on December 1, 2026).
MLB owners and the MLBPA have yet to start formally negotiating a new CBA, but things are already getting hostile between the two sides.
Owners and Commissioner Rob Manfred are expected to push for a salary cap. The issue has been something owners have wanted to implement for quite some time now, and it finally seems likely that they will make it the centerpiece of their efforts in negotiations. The common narrative — even including nonsense angles like “the Dodgers are ruining baseball” — is that other owners have grown increasingly frustrated with the free-spending nature of teams like the Dodgers and Yankees; implementing a salary cap would help “even the playing field” (history has shown that theory is also total nonsense).
An unofficial cap already exists, of course, in the form of the competitive balance tax (CBT). Once teams exceed certain payroll thresholds (there are three separate tiers with increasing penalties), they’re required to pay an extra tax on any overages. These limits have had some minimal impact on teams — often an excuse for a team not making an addition at the trade deadline — and some owners, like the Mets’ Steve Cohen, don’t take them seriously.
From CBS Sports’ Dayn Perry in March 2025:
“Calls for a cap in baseball are typically accompanied by specious claims that it will promote competitive balance across the sport. This has not been true in the past, and indeed it’s still not true. What caps do is limit labor costs, and that appeals to owners. The competitive balance stuff is just agitprop designed to rally fans and opinion-shapers around the idea. More to the point, the perception from the owner side is that being a part of a capped league is better for franchise values than the alternative. This obviously appeals to owners who see their teams as portfolio holdings as opposed to semi-civic trusts, and those kinds of owners are too much with us these days.”
Therein lies one of the key problems: too many MLB owners are not pushing to win. The Dodgers aren’t ruining baseball. Nor are the Yankees, Mets, or any other team that is actively spending money to improve their rosters. It’s the owners at the bottom, the ones who care more about being able to say they own an MLB team than actually owning an MLB team, the ones who are content to spend little and pocket whatever revenue-sharing money the league sends them, who are ruining the game.
These bottom-dwelling ownership groups won’t suddenly push to spend more with the implementation of a salary cap; it will only serve to limit those owners who have already been aggressive.
The MLBPA and Executive Director Tony Clark have been adamantly opposed to a salary cap for the same reason (among others).
More from Perry:
“As well, caps typically carry with them some guaranteed share of revenue for players, and agreeing to what counts as team revenue is a complicated thing in this era of stadium-adjacent real-estate developments, equity stakes in regional sports networks, and the like. Owners will argue those aren’t baseball revenues, while players will argue those money sources wouldn’t exist without baseball.”
“Presently, teams share national broadcast revenues equally. On the local front, however, each team contributes 48% of local revenues — meaning local broadcast contracts; gameday revenues like ticket sales, concession sales, and parking receipts; sponsorships; and merch sales. Those pooled revenues are then distributed equally among teams. ….. For small-market teams, revenue sharing is in essence guaranteed profitability with effectively zero risk. Needless to say, large-market teams tend not to care for this lack of accountability on the bottom end.”
“Teams, especially small-market ones, get so much guaranteed money for merely existing that there aren’t really strong incentives to do the work of building the best possible roster. When you’re profitable regardless of home attendance and what kind of local broadcast contract you can command, then you can do, well, not much of anything and not feel it in the bottom line.”
With the ever-present “philosophical differences” existing between MLB owners, the group is already not on the same page. Getting them to agree to fair terms will be a Herculean effort to begin with, but any changes to MLB’s revenue-sharing system will still require the MLBPA’s approval. To date, the players have shown no willingness to increase how much money is already taken from owners willing to spend and given to those not.
There will, of course, be other issues at hand in the CBA negotiations. Owners are expected to once again push for an international draft to replace the current international amateur free agent system. There is also a belief that the league could look to expand the postseason to 14 teams. The MLBPA is expected to fight all of these proposed changes.
This is all to say that a work stoppage of some kind — the 10th since the first CBA was agreed upon for the 1968 and 1969 seasons — is nearly inevitable. And it all boils down to money more than anything.
But, circling back to the Yankees, how can we applaud them for being one of the few clubs to actually spend on payroll while still criticizing them for not spending enough on payroll? Isn’t that a bit hypocritical and counterintuitive?
One-third of the league is investing a bigger percentage of revenues into payroll. Wouldn’t that suggest the Yankees should be able to spend even more (ignoring the CBT thresholds and penalties, for a moment)?
With a work stoppage looming and a lengthy title drought hanging over their heads (the current 16-year stretch is the second-longest in club history, behind only 1979 to 1995), the time may be now for the Yankees to get back to being aggressive.
The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner recently took a thorough (and surprisingly convincing) look at the Yankees’ approach to the offseason, specifically whether the club should prioritize signing Kyle Tucker or Cody Bellinger in free agency. Buried deep in the post is another notable point:
“Another thing: Aaron Judge factor. Judge will turn 34 next season. At some point, likely sooner rather than later, Judge will no longer be otherworldly. The Yankees will need offensive coverage when that time comes. But getting top-of-the-line talent in free agency is going to be extremely difficult until the 2028 offseason, when Yordan Alvarez, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Gunnar Henderson could become available. Before then, the best offensive free agent arguably will be Seiya Suzuki or Jeremy Peña. Options are limited in the next two years.
Free agent options to add offense are indeed limited. Tucker, Bellinger, and Kazuma Okamoto headline this year’s free agent crop of hitters. Pete Alonso, Josh Naylor, J.T. Realmuto, Luis Arraez, Bo Bichette, (old friend) Gleyber Torres, Alex Bregman, Kyle Schwarber, and even Munetaka Murakami make up the next tier of available bats — but each brings some concern that likely eliminates the Yankees as their best fit.
The potential group of free agent hitters available next offseason is even more limited: Tyler Stephenson, Alec Bohm, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Nico Hoerner, Randy Arozarena, Ian Happ, and Suzuki highlight the group.
There are only a few impact bats among the group, with even fewer who look like fits with the Yankees’ roster. New York may need to pay heavily to secure one of them. The team might have to land one of their top targets, too.