New York Minutes

So the Mets and Yankees have gone on their usual obscene spending spree at the MLB talent markets, taking on salary at a time when most teams are shedding it. And there is (relatively) no hue and outcry, mostly because:

1) The players they are getting are pitchers, and therefore more than a little suspect when it comes to delivering value for the money (A.J. Burnett is, just like Carl Pavano, an ex-Marlin...)

2) Both teams were irrelevant to the MLB postseason last year, and even with the talent infusion, are not a lead-pipe cinch to get there now

3) All of the players who have been bought come with caveats, some of them significant.

CC Sabathia is fat and hasn't done it in the playoffs; he also clearly didn't want to go to New York. Seven year contracts are also a strange new world of risk; one big injury and they are on the hook for years of hurt.

AJ Burnett has a career 3.81 ERA and an 87-76 won-loss record, and had his only good year in the AL was last year -- to wit, in his walk year. That's also the only year where he stayed healthy and threw over 200 innings. If everything goes well for the Yanks, he's the number four starter (behind Sabathia, Wang and Chamberlain), and works fine as that. But at $16 million a year for another five years (which means they are expecting him to still be viable at age 36), he's going to be untradable if he doesn't work out.

K-Rod has the single save season record, but he's also had reduced velocity in the second half of last season, and a checkered post-season career. JJ Putz, as my bitter fantasy team can attest, was far from effective last year, and relievers are like that.

Finally, there is this -- Sabathia's already left his original team, last year, when Milwaukee rented him. Burnett is joining his third team. Putz took a while to become dominant. Only Rodriguez is coming from a situation where he is deeply recognizable as attached to one franchise, and that franchise didn't choose to keep him. So this doesn't have the effect of, say, Jason Giambi getting ripped from his first franchise by the big money boys, or Manny Ramirez being auctioned off from his first team.

It may all seem unfair and an obvious system error to have such inequitable payrolls, especially in a time of austerity. But with luck, both NY teams will fail for other reasons (the Yankees have a surprisingly ordinary or worse offense, and the Mets are filled with, well, the Mets, who have a two-year run now of choking in September), and we'll all be able to pretend that payrolls don't dictate much of the merits of the teams. Much as we have, well, for the past 150 years...