Yankees - Half A Billion Dollar Bust?

Interesting quotes from Chapman.

Between the end of the 2013 season and the beginning of spring training 2014, the New York Yankees committed nearly a half-billion dollars to four players, with one goal in mind: to return to October baseball after missing the postseason for only the second time in 18 years.

So far, they have yet to recoup hardly a nickel -- or a playoff game -- on their investment.

Which doesn't necessarily mean these were bad deals, only that they have yet to reveal themselves for their true value. As Yankees GM Brian Cashman points out, "We never won a World Series with Mike Mussina, but I think he lived up to his [ultimately eight-year, $109 million] contract and performed at a high level and made us better. So in that respect, it was a good contract."

Mussina went 123-72 as a Yankee between 2001-2008, during which the club went to the World Series twice, losing to the Arizona Diamondbacks in seven games in 2001 and to the Florida Marlins in six in 2003.

And yet, history judges the Mussina deal as a success. How will history judge the signings of Jacoby Ellsbury, Masahiro Tanaka, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran?

The quartet was signed in rapid succession after the Yankees decided to pass on giving Robinson Cano the 10-year deal he was demanding. Instead, Cano signed with the Seattle Mariners and Ellsbury, Tanaka, Beltran and McCann became Yankees.

But despite signing the four to long-term contracts totaling $438 million in guaranteed money, the Yankees missed the playoffs again in 2014. And as the 2015 season hurtles to its halfway point, the Yanks remain in a four-team dogfight in a diminished but still highly competitive AL East.

And of the four players signed before the 2014 season, only one -- McCann -- is performing anywhere near his career standards this season; the other three have either been slowed by injury or bedeviled by underperformance.

And while all four have a chance to rewrite the narrative, it is generally assumed that the early years of a long-term deal are when a player can be expected to perform at his best; the longer a contract goes on, the more a club is likely to experience diminished returns on its investment.

"Money doesn't always equate to performance," Cashman acknowledged. "In fact, most of the time it will never equate. That's the cost of doing business. Signing a player to a long-term contract is like buying a car. They don't tend to get better with age, and the ones that do are probably cheating."

Couldn't have happened to a "nicer" team.

Cars cheat?