<
        >

          New York Yankees

          Red Sox make an Evil Empire move for David Price; will it work out?

          play
          Red Sox show commitment to winning with Price signing (2:09)

          Curt Schilling weighs in on Boston giving five-time All-Star David Price a seven-year, $217 million deal and how that will impact the free agent market. (2:09)

          • Andrew Marchand, ESPN Senior WriterDec 2, 2015, 12:10 AM
            Close
              Andrew Marchand is a senior writer for ESPNNewYork. He also regularly contributes to SportsCenter, Baseball Tonight, ESPNews, ESPN New York 98.7 FM and ESPN Radio. He joined ESPN in 2007 after nine years at the New York Post. Follow Andrew on Twitter »
            Follow on X

          The deal: The Red Sox have signed David Price to a seven-year, $217 million deal, while the Yankees continue to sit out 2016 free agency.

          The reason: The Yankees' new budget-conscious, levelheaded approach will be tested with the Red Sox's Price move. There is nothing more Boss Steinbrenner than throwing record-setting money at a problem. That is what Boston is doing, which might be a good short-term bet for a 30-year-old starter, but long term you usually eventually end up with a deal that you don't want, like CC Sabathia's.

          So, while for 2016, this makes sense -- and if Price can match Sabathia and lead a championship run in his first season, the Red Sox will be thrilled -- in the long term these deals don't work out. It has been proven time and time again.

          That is what the Yankees are betting on. They think avoiding deals like the one for Price is the smart move, at least until they sneak under the luxury-tax bar as early as next offseason.

          At the moment, if the Yankees had signed Price, they would be taxed at a 50 percent clip. So that $31 million for '16 would become $46.5 million. That is one of the reasons the Yankees were never going to go after Price and why they are likely not signing any big-time free agents this winter.

          The impact: In the short term, the Yankees are going to have to listen to a lot of complaints from their fan base. With the prices the fans pay, they have a right to have their voices heard. However, long term, if you really want to get younger and cheaper, you have to take some medicine.

          The Yankees are going to wait for Mark Teixeira ($23 million per year) and Carlos Beltran ($15M per) to come off the books next season, then Sabathia ($25M per) and Alex Rodriguez ($21M per) to drop from the payroll following the 2017 season. Maybe then they will be up for spending big again.

          Hal Steinbrenner, though, is fond of saying that teams with lower payrolls keep winning the World Series, not the Yankees, so who knows for sure?

          The Red Sox played much better than the Yankees in the second half of 2015. Boston seemed as if it basically just ran out of season or the Red Sox would've caught the Yankees. The Red Sox are now much better for 2016. That is an immediate concern the Yankees must deal with. Still, long term, the Yankees may be better off that they are not the ones acting like the Boss this winter.