Steinbrenner Talks Yankees Offseason

For the first time since the Yankees got rid of the beard rule back in spring training, Hal Steinbrenner, Managing General Owner of the Yankees, met the media to talk about the Yankees offseason.

Steinbrenner on Payroll

Yankee fans have taken to Steinbrenner in recent seasons with his spending habits. While the Yankees are always at the top of the league in terms of payroll, it's not the highest, and to the standards of fans, the Yankees have failed.

"Would it be ideal if I went down ? Of course." Steinbrenner said. "But does that mean that's going to happen? Of course not. We want to field a team we know we believe could win a championship."

The Yankees finished the year with a payroll of $319M, Steinbrenner said.

Both Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman, Senior Vice President and General Manager have heard that the payroll situation is "fluid", contrary to reports over the past few weeks.

"We can talk before goes into winter meetings about a range, but because it’s a fluid situation, that range can go bye bye in two seconds if there’s a deal that arises that I feel would be very beneficial to some area of need that we have."

Steinbrenner on MLB Labor

Image of Hal Steinbrenner.

Steinbrenner has been open about his opinions on the state of labor in baseball and his steady push for a salary cap.

Steinbrenner was also asked by The Athletic about a quote he made last offseason about the Dodgers spending not correlating to championships. He, for the second season in a row, was proven wrong.

"If there's a correlation between spending the most money and winning a championship, I still think it's a weak correlation sample size of data." Steinbrenner said. "But they earned every bit of it. They struggled with injuries throughout the season, which I did talk about in that same quote. But they got healthy at the right time.

"The rotation got healthy, and when that rotation is healthy, they're tough to beat. They, quite frankly, played up to their potential. They really played up to their potential, especially those last two games. That has to happen. Your players have to play up to their potential when you're playing a team as good as the Blue Jays, and you're playing under that kind of pressure in the World Series. Hats off to them. It's not easy to do twice, and they did it in dramatic fashion this time. But, again, we'll see what they do next year and we'll see how it pans out. There was nothing low about my payroll and the Mets' payroll. Look where we ended up."

Steinbrenner on The Yankees Profit

With Steinbrenner talking payroll, he also brought up the fact that the team might not be turning a profit. "I don't want to get into it. But that's not a fair statement or an accurate statement. Everybody wants to talk about revenues." Said Steinbrenner. "They need to talk about our expenses, including the $100 million expense to the city of New York that we have to pay every Feb. 1, including the COVID year. It all starts to add up in a hurry. Nobody spends more money, I don't believe, on player development, scouting, performance science. These all start to add up. If you want to go look at the revenues, you got to somehow try to figure out the expense side as well. You might be surprised."

Steinbrenner on the 2025 Team

New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner looks on before a baseball game between the Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays on Aug. 21, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Corey Sipkin, File)

Steinbrenner was asked about the biggest issue with the 2025 season, he responded by saying "mental mistakes - baserunning for sure, which is why we made a change. That has been a thorn in our side most of the season this year."

When talking about the 2025 season, he talked about Aaron Boone as "a good manager at many of the things he has to do."

Steinbrenner also talked about what people have dubbed the "Annual Boone June Swoon", saying "I don’t expect to see that every year."

Steinbrenner left the door open for the Yankees to do something big this offseason, but largely it seems like the Yankees are running it back and trying to win with the same team as 2025 with few changes. He mentioned that the starting rotation, after the month of April, is going to be strong, and the outfield and infield are good, but they will look at their options. Steinbrenner said the Yankees will look to work on their bullpen.