So I went hunting for hilarious message board posts again and continuously saw the old reliable excuse of the Yankees "buying" a championship this past week.

Here's one I picked out:

As much as Yankee fans want to sweep those issues under the rug and concentrate on pure baseball, it is not possible.

The discussion over the Yankee monopoly is, by all means, a valid one, and is not simply whining or sour grapes as Yankee fans would dismiss it as. It is just as valid when they're winning just as much as when they aren't.

There are a couple central points about salaries, free agency, and "monopolies" people tend to ignore.

Firstly, while the Yankees do have the ability to out-flex every other team financially, a team with a consistent top 5 payroll really has no business criticizing them. The Red Sox are not destitute, and we can easily overspend to acquire quality players if the needs arise. When the Red Sox smartly signed JD Drew to his 5 year deal, they used these same financial muscles to capture a player which they coveted, and muscled out smaller clubs more deterred by his injury concerns. They did the same with Manny Ramirez when he left Cleveland as well. Did we as a fanbase weep for Cleveland then?

Part of the huge advantage a large market club is privy to, is that players like JD Drew, John Smoltz, Brad Penny, et al, can be acquired without much risk to the ballclub. Unlike a team like the Marlins, paying market rate for a player with injury concerns isn't damning to the Red Sox who can easily cover up the mistake--with more money.

Secondly, when explicitly discussing the two huge contracts the Yankees took on this year, we have to remember that 7-8 year contracts cannot be properly judged after one year. Many teams scaled back their pursuits of Sabathia due to concerns about his mileage and his conditioning. No one really knows if CC has the physical girth to be a durable freak of nature like Roger Clemens was, and another advantage large market clubs have is being able to weather 1+ possible dead years on the end of a contract. If CC's market rate was $22M, a smaller club needs to be confident that 22M spent each year is worth every penny. Consider Derek Jeter as an example. Is he a $20M annual player? Probably not. But the Yankees can afford to overpay his normal market rate in order t hold onto him, even into his later years if he starts declining.

A huge part of free agency is timing. When the Yankees had all their dead payroll coming off the books last year, it was pretty clear they were going to spend what they could to fill up the remaining holes in their rosters. Unlike the Red Sox, they had a clear need at 1B and SP, and the two biggest free agents happened to fill those slots.

Even if Mark Teixeira actually wanted to play in Boston (and he didn't, remember?), simply matching his contract would only have been part of the headache after acquiring him. Where does he play?

If Tex played first base, you'd be sliding Youkilis to 3rd base and benching Mike Lowell. While Youk has a plus bat, his defense at third base is nothing close to his defense at first. Up until this year, Lowell's defense was also still worth 1-2 Wins alone.

So, we'd look at their contributions and see what the difference is. You'd have 3 comparisons if you switch out Tex for Lowell in the lineup, and shift Youk to 3rd:
A. (Tex's 1B defense) - (Youk's 1B defense)
B. (Youk's 3B defense) - (Mike Lowell's 3B defense)
C. (Tex's offense) - (Mike Lowell's offense)

How convinced was the front office that the value from "C" was a clear enough win over A+B? Even if we make the assumption that the fielding value differences are a wash (so we decide the loss you incur defensively at 1B is gained back at 3rd), is Tex's contract + Lowell's contract worth the difference between their offense?

Revisionist history shows Tex being just shy of 4 Wins better than Lowell with the bat. That 4 wins without a trade of Lowell would have cost the team almost $32 million dollars in 2009(and 2010), about twice the expected rate per win, or the cost of one A-Rod. /snare drum

This is why I think even if Tex would have signed in Boston, Theo really didn't want to pull the trigger. The availability of Holliday in 2010 provided no need to make another brash trade and eating salary; he's made up for previous bad deals (Lugo, Renteria) in that fashion, and doing the same to Lowell may not have been the best move.

We've gone over this year the decline in Lowell's defense, yet Lowell's fielding runs were a negative for only the first time in a Red Sox uniform. Is it the hip? Is it just a quick onset of age? The front office seems to be gambling on Lowell's defensive ineptitude this year purely being a function of health, and now the rotation between C-1B-3B giving Lowell regular rest like JD Drew may prove to be what gets him back to his 2006-2008 fielding potential. Will Lowell ever be a 3 Win bat again? Probably not. But if he returns to his 2006-2008 fielding prowess, he'll contribute 1-2 defensive wins, and still be worth the final year of his contract. If Mike Lowell can provide the team with a WAR of 3 next year, the Red Sox will be paying market rate for his services, a nice surprise to a contract many people (myself included) were dreading going into 2010.

It's been clear that lately larger free agent signings have only been executed when Theo has been faced with a real hole at a position, rather than uprooting a bad contract. It's the same logic why I praised Theo for retaining Wakefield's services, even though he's only a league-average, at best, player.

So while bitter fans overreact about the "Yankee Monopoly" because we have to listen to Joe Buck fawn over them for another 10 days, stat-nerds like myself rock back and forth over concerns about Lowell's hip, Ortiz' mysterious drop in power, and what's really going on with Bay and Ellsbury's defense.

It may be a good time to take a step back and realize in order to fine tune the Red Sox, the front office needs to go step by step, and not risk backing themselves into a positional or fiduciary corner, or completely blow up the minor leagues by applying a drastic patch (Adrian Gonzales) that further compromises the roster and the payroll.

Once the season wraps up, we'll be more closely investigating each member of the ballclub and how they contribute to the team's success. We've given you a few bird's eye suggestions of how to change the team's makeup, and as we start getting more data, and some more rumblings from the Hot Stove Season, we should have a better handle on what the team's best course of action should be.

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