The New York Yankees used to be the most economically powerful team in Major League Baseball, to the point of being known as the ‘Evil Empire’ and not many teams and fans liked the fact that they had a majority of the best players available, a situation that at least in the last two off-seasons has been reversed by not getting the best stars available.
Last year, they failed to convince the Japanese Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, while this offseason they lost out on Juan Soto and were left out of the finalists for the Japanese phenomenon Roki Sasaki to choose them for his MLB debut.
The late New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner once said in 1998: “Winning is the most important thing in my life, after breathing,” which explained what motivated him to make heavy investments to have the best roster.
Winds of change in the Bronx
While the Yankees have quality players led by Aaron Judge and Gerrit Cole, and managed to incorporate talented signings such as Max Fried, Paul Goldschmidt, Devin Williams and Cody Bellinger, the blow of losing Juan Soto to the New York Mets and not coming close to the brilliant winter market of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team that beat them in the last World Series, has the Bronx Bombers a notch below.
The current owner of the Yankees, Hal Steinbrenner, son of George, acknowledged how difficult it has been to compete with the economic waste of the Dodgers, in an opinion that will not please many fans.
“It’s hard for most of us owners to be able to do the kind of things that they’re doing,” Steinbrenner said in a conversation with Meredith Marakovits of YES Network, referring specifically to the additions the Dodgers will have to strengthen the roster with which they won the World Series, adding Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki, Tanner Scott, Hyeseong Kim and Michael Conforto, as well as the renewals of Teoscar Hernandez, Tommy Edman and Blake Treinen.
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