The Yankees received their $26.9 million 2008 luxury tax bill only last week, and they have already qualified for the 2009 tax, exceeding the tax threshold when they have signed less than half of their 40-man roster.

The Yankees have 14 players under contract for 2009, and the annual average values of their contracts total $186.35 million. The threshold over which tax must be paid will be $162 million next season. At 40 percent, the Yankees’ personal tax rate (for multiple excesses), they already owe $9.74 million.

Although it applies only to next year, the Yankees’ current payroll total also exceeds the thresholds for 2010 ($170 million) and 2011 ($178 million).

The Yankees insist that their 2009 payroll will be lower than the 2008 payroll, but I am skeptical, not that I care what their payroll is. I don’t have to pay it.

The problem with computing payrolls is there are so many different ways of doing it. The original, old-fashioned way bases payroll on 25-man rosters and disabled lists as of Aug. 31. On that basis, the Yankees’ payroll this year was $218 million.

(The figure most widely used by reporters for the Yankees’ payroll is $209 million because that was the opening-day figure computed by Ron Blum of the Associated Press, who quickly and accurately reports contract figures as soon as clubs report them to the commissioner’s office. Once Blum has done their work for them in calculating all opening-day payrolls, baseball reporters for the most part are too lazy to update them for the teams they cover, adding each arrival and subtracting each departure, so they are now nine months behind.)

Until the past couple of seasons, the commissioner’s office used the old-fashioned method to determine payrolls. Now it bases payrolls on 40-man rosters. On that basis, the Yankees’ payroll this year was $222 million.

It was also, coincidentally, $222 million in payrolls calculated for luxury tax purposes. In that method, players’ contracts are averaged, and the average annual values are added to determine which teams are above the threshold as stated in the collective bargaining agreement. In the other methods, the salary for that particular season is used, and a pro-rated share of a signing bonus, if any, is added to the salary.

No matter which payroll the Yankees want to lower, they will have to do some tricky calculations. Their luxury tax payroll was $222 million; it’s now $186.35. The Aug. 31-based payroll was $218 million. It’s now $192.85 million.

On the other hand, with virtually every starting position player and nearly every significant pitcher signed, the Yankees apparently have only one player left to sign for a double-digit salary. That’s Andy Pettitte, who has not responded to the Yankees’ $10 million offer.

He hasn’t responded because he doesn’t want to take a $6 million cut in pay, but there’s no suggestion out there that says someone else is willing to give him more. Pettitte actually is a pivotal figure in a puzzling claim the Yankees have made. The claim has been bought and repeated by so many people, reporters and fans alike, that they recite it like a mantra: 88.5, 88.5, 88.5. Baseball writers use the number so automatically it must be a key on their computer keyboards: 88.5, 88.5, 88.5.

What is it? Put a dollar sign in front and million after it, and it becomes $88.5 million, the amount of money that has supposedly come off the Yankees’ payroll since last season and supports the tale the Yankees tell routinely, that their 2009 payroll will be lower than their 2008 payroll.

But the Yankees base their projection on that 88.5 figure, and it doesn’t exist, at least not that my mathematical gymnastics can find. Let me attempt to get to that total.

First some ground rules. For players who will not be back with the Yankees next season, I have used their base 2008 salaries and pro-rated shares of signing bonuses because that’s the traditional method of calculation used by the commissioner’s office and the Players Association. For players who were traded to or from the Yankees during the season, I have allotted to the Yankees only the portions of their salaries they earned while they were with the Yankees.

Let’s begin by taking the obvious departed players:

Jason Giambi	$23,428,571
Bobby Abreu	$16,000,000
Mike Mussina	$11,500,000
Carl Pavano	$11,000,000

Those salaries add to a rounded off $62 million. Now add Pettitte’s $16 million salary, although he may yet re-sign with the Yankees.

Wilson Betemit is gone with his $1,165,000 salary, and so is Ivan Rodriguez, whose salary last season was $13 million but only about a third of it with the Yankees, who paid him $4,262,294.

The Yankees didn’t exercise Damaso Marte’s $6 million option for next season, but they bought it out for $250,000 and they signed him to a new three-year, $12 million contract with a first-year salary of $3.75 million. The Yankees paid the relief pitcher $751,912 for the two months he played for them last season, but next season they will pay him five times the amount that was taken off the payroll.

Two other pitchers won’t be back with the Yankees, but the Yankees won’t be saving a load of money as a result of their departures: Darrell Rasner’s $409,000 and the $200,328 they paid Sidney Ponson as a pro-rated share of the minimum salary ($390,000) contract they gave him after Texas released him from a guaranteed contract.

The Yankees would put Kyle Farnsworth and Latroy Hawkins in the departed column, but both pitchers were traded last July, just before the non-waiver trading deadline and don’t figure in the payrolls based on Aug. 31 rosters and disabled lists. In other words, Farnsworth was traded for Rodriguez, and you can’t count both of their salaries.

So let’s see what we have. With the initial $62 million and assuming Pettitte won’t be back, the total off the payroll is $78 million. Throw in Rodriguez, Betemit, Rasner and Ponson but not Marte, Hawkins and Farnsworth, and the total off the 2008 payroll becomes $84 million and change.

That’s close to 88.5, but it’s not 88.5. And if Pettitte should sign, it becomes $74 million. There are other deductions to make from the off-the-payroll total. Like Marte, teammates Pavano and Giambi had options that the Yankees opted not to pick up. Their buyouts were more expensive — $1.95 million for Pavano, $5 million for Giambi, making a total of $7.2 million in buyouts, which reduces the off-the-payroll savings to $76.8 million.

Now let’s see what the Yankees will spend next season that they didn’t spend this season. Right off the bat they have $23 million for CC Sabathia, $22.5 million for Mark Teixeira and $16.5 million for A.J. Burnett.

Alex Rodriguez’s salary will rise by $5 million, Robinson Cano’s by $3 million, Chien-Ming Wang’s by $1 million. Add $5.4 million for newcomer Nick Swisher and a net of $2.7 million for Marte. Those eight players will be paid $79 million that wasn’t on the payroll this year.

Add $79 million to the $7.2 million in buyouts, and we almost wipe out the $88.5 million the Yankee claim. If Pettitte signs for $10 million, the new money will exceed the departed money, even if it is $88.5 million.

But it’s all the Yankees’ money, and as far as I’m concerned, they can spend it any way they want.

The average annual value of 14 Yankees’ contracts already signed (in millions):

Rodriguez	$27.50
Sabathia	23.00
Teixeira	22.50
Jeter	18.90
Burnett	16.50
Rivera	15.00
Posada	13.10
Damon	13.00
Matsui	13.00
Cano	7.50
Swisher	5.35
Chien-Ming Wang	5.00
Marte	4.00
Molina	2.00
Total	186.35
2009 Tax Threshold	162.00

 

As the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers for only four years, Mark Attanasio is a mere babe in baseball. Like many players, he might not know what came before him. Baseball life, to Attanasio, began in 2005.

He could be excused, then, for not realizing the storm he might be creating when he invoked the inflammatory words “salary cap.”

Attanasio raised the incendiary issue in an e-mail interview with Bloomberg News when he was asked his reaction to the Yankees’ signing of three free agents for $423.5 million.

“At the rate the Yankees are going, I’m not sure anyone can compete with them,” Attanasio replied. “Frankly, the sport might need a salary cap.”

No one in the sport has uttered that provocative phrase in more than 10 years. It caused the most disastrous work stoppage in sports history, and no one who was around in 1994-5-6 wants to experience that terrible time again.

Before going further with this matter, let’s clarify the terminology. Everyone, including the three major professional sports that have one, calls it a salary cap. It is not a salary cap because it does not place a cap on individual salaries.

Under the rules in the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League and what was proposed in Major League Baseball, teams may pay an individual player anything they negotiate. The team, though, cannot exceed the amount of money allowed under that season’s rules for its entire team.

In other words, there is a cap on payrolls so we should be talking about a payroll cap, not a salary cap.

When Attansaio commented on the Yankees’ signings, he was talking about a payroll cap. He wasn’t suggesting that a team be restricted in what it could pay any single player but what it could pay its entire roster of players.

Actually, I can’t be certain what Attanasio was proposing. I wanted to talk to him to find out more about what he meant, but he was not available. His spokesman said he was traveling with his family and wouldn’t be available until the new year.

I wanted to ask Attanasio if he was aware of baseball’s history with the idea of a payroll cap, how the owners kept proposing it in labor negotiations, the players kept rejecting the idea and a work stoppage usually resulting.

It was interesting that it was Attanasio who raised the issue and not one of his more senior colleagues. They know better than to bring up subjects that are better left dormant.

Major League officials chose not to comment. A spokesman for Commissioner Bud Selig said he felt it would be inappropriate for him to comment on comments made by an owner.

One skeptic on the union side suggested that maybe Selig put Attanasio up to raising the cap issue, but Selig took too severe a beating in the last strike to look for more. It may be more likely that Selig called Attanasio, the steward of Selig’s former team, and asked him to forget the cap idea and leave sleeping dogs lie.

Rob Manfred, the owners’ chief labor executive, also declined to say anything. “I’m not going to comment about what an owner said,” Manfred said.

Donald Fehr, the leader of the union, who has led the players in their repeated rejection of a payroll cap, did comment. Refering to the Yankees’ perennially high expenditures and their inability to win a World Series championship since 2000, he said, “Other major league clubs seem not to have had any problems competing with the Yankees the last seven, eight years.”

Attanasio was most likely upset because the Yankees lured Sabathia away from the Brewers by offering $61 million more, then signed two more expensive free agents. But the Yankees didn’t overwhelm A.J, Burnett and Mark Teixeira the way they did Sabathia. The Atlanta Braves were close on Burnett, and a few teams, including the Boston Red Sox, were close on Teixeira.

If the players had their reasons for choosing the Yankees, such as the Yankees giving them the best chance to go to the World Series, that’s not going to change as long as the Yankees remain competitive.

Critics of the Yankees, on the other hand, argue that most, if not all other teams, would have been forced to stop at Sabathia. They would not have been financially able to sign Burnett and Teixeira, too. But the Yankees have the money and will have more from revenue generated by their new park.

Should they voluntarily limit themselves in what they spend? If so, where should they stop? Should they decide themselves or should someone else? If someone else, who? Bud Selig? Mark Attanasio?

That would be the role of a payroll cap, Attanasio might say. All right, where would Attanasio draw the line to create the cap?

The Yankees’ 2008 40-man payroll was $222 million, $76 million more than second-place Boston paid its players and $79 million more than the Mets’ payroll. Attanasio’s Brewers were right in the middle, 15^th, with an $88 million payroll.

Should the Yankees have to come down to the Brewers’ level? If a payroll cap were set above the Brewers’ level, would they have to increase their payroll to reach the cap?

But for me to go on about a payroll cap is irrelevant because baseball will never have a payroll cap. What baseball will have, however, is unpredictability in which a team with a $222 million payroll doesn’t even make the post-season.

In addition, with the payroll cap issue out of the picture, the owners and the players have negotiated a record two consecutive labor agreements without a strike or a lockout. The existing agreement runs through Dec. 11, 2011. That’s at least three more years of labor peace.

Owners stopped pushing for a payroll cap because baseball’s revenues took off. They reached $6.5 billion this year, providing enough money for owners and players both, not to mention the commissioner, whose salary one club official said he was told exceeded $20 million.

Information Bank Redux?

In 1987 and 88, the owners ran a bank that took deposits from all of the teams. The teams, though, didn’t deposit money. They reported offers they made to free agents, and the information was shared with other clubs. The union discovered the existence of the information bank in 1988 during a hearing on its grievance against the clubs charging collusion against free agents.

I personally thought the information bank was a great idea. It was the easiest time I ever had getting information on offers made to free agents. The only problem was the bank violated the labor agreement.

Faced with an arbitrator’s ruling against them, the owners closed the bank. Now, however, some agents suspect that clubs are sharing information again, letting everyone know what they offer free agents.

“There are a lot of rumblings that all the teams know exactly what everyone is doing with free agents,” one prominent agent said.

But a union lawyer said the union didn’t have any evidence of information sharing, and Rob Manfred, the owners’ chief labor executive, denied the existence of any sharing operation.

“I don’t know how an agent would have any information about that,” Manfred said. “There is no formal notification about information. Given all the information that’s out there publicly, it would be difficult not to know what teams have offered.”

Whether or not the clubs are sharing offers, there’s no question that the market is moving slower than usual and except for some of the big contracts, free agents are signing for or being offered less than in past years.

But agents acknowledge that the clubs have a ready-made excuse, or cover, for not acting as they have in previous years: the economy.

“There’s continuing pressure for teams to cut their budgets,” an agent said. “Teams that intended to be aggressive had to cut back because budgets have been lowered.”

Commissioner Bud Selig has warned clubs about watching what they spend because of the depressed state of the economy. Most teams seem to be heeding the warning. The Yankees aren’t in that group.

Capping off a Record

If Chris Capuano can make it back next season from his second Tommy John surgery (elbow ligament transplant), he will have a chance to end the 16-start losing streak with which he finished the 2007 season. On the other hand, he could break the record Walt Dickson set with the Boston Braves in 1912 when the Braves lost 18 successive Dickson starts.

Capuano, a 30-year-old left-hander, underwent elbow surgery last May 15 and missed all of the 2008 season. The Brewers didn’t tender him a contract this month, making him a free agent, but signed him to a minor league contract. They would welcome his return considering that they have lost CC Sabathia and could also lose Ben Sheets.

The Brewers lost Capuano’s last 16 starts in 2007, giving him the third longest such streak behind Dickson and Jack Nabors, whose team, the Philadelphia Athletics, lost 17 of his starts in a row in 1916. But Capuano added an extra twist to his streak.

After the Brewers removed him from the starting rotation and put him in the bullpen, Capuano was the losing pitcher in his first two relief appearances, giving the Brewers losses in 18 consecutive games in which Capuano pitched.

Big Contracts Don’t Produce Rings

Before anyone sizes the fingers of CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira for World Series rings, pause and think about Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi and Alex Rodriguez. Mussina and Giambi signed with the Yankees thinking they offered the best chance to get a World Series ring. Rodriguez greeted his trade to the Yankees with the same thought.

But Mussina played eight years with the Yankees without winning a ring and has now retired. Giambi played seven years without getting a ring and has left as a free agent. Rodriguez is still with the Yankees but has already played five years without a ring. 

In other words, glamorous, high-paid players don’t guarantee a World Series championship.

 

In last year’s voting for the Hall of Fame, Jack Morris received the most votes he had gained in his nine years on the ballot. From the results in his first four years of eligibility, you would think he was some mediocre, at best, pitcher who didn’t rate his spot on the ballot.

“The first couple years it’s human nature,” Morris said, talking about his reaction to the early voting. “You wonder what went wrong. Did I make these guys mad? I got over that.”

When he played, mostly for the Detroit Tigers in the 1980s, Morris was not the friendliest guy in the clubhouse where most reporters were concerned. They respected his pitching ability and results, but they never voted him a “good guy” award.

“No question I built up walls,” he said in a telephone interview. “I did it purposely. I did everything with a purpose. I wanted to win every day.”

Remaining aloof from writers, keeping them at arm’s length, was Morris’ way of remaining focused, keeping distractions away. He wasn’t the first pitcher to adopt that position; he wasn’t the last.

Years ago pitchers were like other players in their relationship with reporters. They talked to them any day of the week, even on days when they were pitching. Then someone got the idea of not talking to reporters on the day he was pitching. In recent years some pitchers – Roger Clemens is believed to have been the first — expanded their silence to not talking the day before they pitched. 

Steve Carlton didn’t talk to reporters on any day of the week. But Silent Steve made it into the Hall of Fame. The writers he disdained did not hold it against him. I don’t know if any writers refuse to vote for Morris because of his personality. They shouldn’t. Personality is not listed anywhere in the voting guidelines.

But do some writers shun a player because he was obnoxious? Out of 543 who voted a year ago there were probably a few who didn’t put an X next to Jim Rice’s name because of his behavior.

Rice is on the writers’ ballot for the last time this year, and after receiving 72.2 percent of the votes and falling 16 votes short last year, he needs help, maybe from some of the people who found him to be unprofessional. Rice was an irascible person who seemed to go out of his way to be disagreeable.

I remember one instance when he was in the midst of a great season and I was assigned to write a piece about him. I was covering the Yankees at the time and was in Boston for their series so I arranged with Rice to talk to him before the game the following day when he arrived at Fenway Park.

He was at his locker when I arrived at the appointed time, but he kept walking away to get or do something or other. When he finally stayed at his locker and I began asking him questions, he stood with his back to me and remained in that position throughout the interview. Thanks, Jim.

Reggie Jackson, then with the Yankees, talked to Rice and tried to get him to be more accessible for the writers and more cordial, explaining it would be to his benefit, but to no avail.

However, if I don’t vote for Rice, it will be a result of his career and not his boorish behavior. I haven’t decided about that vote.

I know, on the other hand, that I will vote for Morris. In fact, if it would help, I would write his name on every line on the ballot to make up for some of my ignorant colleagues who have never understood how dominant a pitcher Morris was throughout most of his career. He even lightened up eventually.

“Eventually,” he said, “I realized I wasn’t going to win every day. Once I understood that and better understood me, I understood writers better.”

Interestingly in recent years, Morris has been a member of the media, though not a writer. He has been part of the Minnesota Twins’ broadcasting team the past four years.

“I’ve been fortunate because the Twins at times have had a three-man radio booth,” Morris said. “I think they’re re-examining that. It’s hard. I don’t know how long I’ll last.

It keeps me around the game and I enjoy it, but part of me says I’m wasting my time. The satisfaction comes from coaching, but you’re married to the uniform again. You can’t do it part-time. You have to be there full-time. It’s something I think I would enjoy doing.”

Several years ago, Morris related, he was in Toronto for an autograph show and, sitting at his signing table, he looked down and saw two loafer-clad sockless feet and instantly knew it was Paul Beeston, the Blue Jays’ chief executive.

Afterward they got together for a drink, Morris said, and Beeston said, “Jack, you have to get back in the game. The game needs people like you. You’re a great teacher.”

And then Beeston offered him a job managing the Blue Jays’ AA minor league team for $50,000. “Fifty grand!” Morris said. “I did the autograph show for 10 grand. I appreciate Paul. He’s the only guy who ever offered me a job. But you’re not going to entice good people to work in the minor leagues for 50 grand.”

Even former players who don’t get into the Hall of Fame.

“It’s totally out of my control,” Morris said of the impending election. “I guess I ask as many questions as some of the writers do. Some say I don’t belong. That’s the American way. That’s how the system works. Unless you’re a No. 1 guy, it depends on who’s taking the tally.”

It’s most likely that voters hold his earned run average against Morris. His 3.90 ERA would be the highest in the Hall if he were elected. “What’s funny,” Morris said when that possibility was mentioned, “is in today’s day and age that would be phenomenal.”

Morris’ career achievements make it obvious to me that he is a legitimate Hall of Famer. His credentials in brief:

From 1979 through 1992, 14 years of his 18-year career, Morris won 233 games, 41 more than the next highest total, and pitched 169 complete games, 62 more than the next highest total. He pitched 235 innings or more 11 times and won 20 games three times. His career record was 254-186.

He pitched on three World Series championship teams and was responsible for winning one of them, pitching a 10-inning 1-0 victory for the Twins in 1991 in one of the great post-season performances of all time.

“I’m not going to toot my own horn and say I deserve it; that’s foolish,” Morris said. “It’s either going to happen or it’s not.”

He spoke about a writer who calls him every year to talk about the Hall. “Last year he said he didn’t vote for me,” Morris said. “I asked what did I do to take your vote away from me? He said he votes for only so many guys.”

Such are the foibles of the voters.

“It’s a wonderful reward, but it’s not going to change my life,” Morris said. “I’ve finally come to an understanding in what retirement means. I’d like to have a second career that challenges me, that gives me the things baseball did, but I’m not going to rely on the Hall of Fame to do it.”

Morris thought he might have some opportunities with the Twins other than broadcasting. “I’m open minded,” he said. In the meantime, he will await the outcome of the voting.

“It will be interesting to see what happens,” he said, meaning the entire vote, not just where he is concerned. “I have mixed emotions. Will Jim Rice make it in is his final year? Will Rickey Henderson make it in his first year? Will anyone else get in if those two do?”

Henderson, he continued, is an obvious choice. “No sense waiting with him,” he said. Then he digressed to pitching candidates, bringing up Rich (Goose) Gossage, Bruce Sutter and Dennis Eckersley.

“The last three pitchers have been relief pitchers,” Morris said. “I could argue that point forever: Which is the harder role? But it doesn’t matter. These guys were the best of the best relief pitchers. I’ve never begrudged anyone who has made it.”

That’s not to say he doesn’t have his views on particular players.

“Guys ask me about Rice,” he said. “He was one of the 10 best. But I had a more difficult time with Dwight Evans. I thought Evans should have been elected and he hardly got any consideration.”

And he added, “I look at my shortstop, Alan Trammel. I’d take Trammel over Ozzie Smith any day of the week. But Alan is my friend. Ozzie did backflips. Alan wasn’t flashy. I’m not begrudging Ozzie. I say if Ozzie’s in Tram has to be in.”

Trammell received only 99 votes, or 18.2 percent, last year. He is on the ballot for the eighth time this year but isn’t expected to do any better. The key question for me, though, is will Morris do better?