As the Yankees continue to make cuts, these two former players continue to get paid.
Recently, our very own David Hill made a list of former MLB players that despite the shutdown are still getting paid. It made me wonder if there are any former New York Yankees players that fit the bill?
Now, remember, the $5B Yankees –the 2nd richest sports franchise in the WORLD– recently cut 45 minor leaguers who were getting a weekly stipend of $400. Cumulatively, that amounts to $18,000 per week.
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To put this in perspective, $18,000 is just .00036% of the team’s total net worth. Less than chump change, if you will.
Now, in my research, which was extremely limited thanks to spotrac, I found that 45-year-old ex-slugger and entrepreneur Alex Rodriguez is due $5,000,000 this season. Keep in mind that A-Rod played his last game in New York close to four years ago, in 2016.
With that money, the Yankees could afford to continue paying these minor leaguers for a year and still have over $4M leftover. Instead, the franchise does what every great American company does in times of crisis, they abandoned these players, leaving them to fend for themselves in an American economy that could hit 20% unemployment.
Meanwhile, you have small market teams like the Minnesota Twins and the Kansas City Royals vowing to keep their minor leaguers. According to Forbes, the Twins are the 19th richest MLB franchise with a current value of $1.3B and the Royals rank 29th (out of 30) with a valuation of $1.025B.
There’s really no excuse for the Yankees. Especially when you consider that the team seemingly had no problem eating the remaining $26M of Jacoby Ellsbury‘s atrocious contract just months prior, and then spent $324M on Gerrit Cole, which ultimately catapulting their luxury tax bill to $24M.
A great team invests in its future and takes care of its own. Unfortunately, this time, the New York Yankees got it wrong.