Smith is their own guy. Muncy they got as a young castoff from Oakland. Pages is their own guy. Their system is how they got Glasnow and Betts through trade and despite being 2 time defending championship with a bottomless pit of money, they still value developing prospects. That same Dalton Rushing they can flip at any time for something useful. The difference between them and the Yankees besides their utilization of their systems is that the Dodgers are gonna spend, spend, spend. The Yankees have told you in 180 languages that they're simply not gonna to those lengths. So the pivot to that in theory should be, developing your own players so that if they pan out, they don't have to pay them crazy amounts of money, which would alleviate their payroll concerns. But Volpe aside, they're not that interested in doing that either unless they all produce like Judge's rookie year. So then they get these stupid half measures where the money they do spend, gives them little ROI whereas they coulda gone for bigger free agents had they had young controllable assets who they can develop.
So instead of hoping these prospects develop, we're hoping to get lightning in a bottle from players who haven't shown it to that point or we're trying to wring out 1 more solid year from an older vet who we know is washed. Positional clusterfukk aside, people are upset because Grisham is $22 extra million bucks they wanted to use for something else but now can't. It means for someone they really really like in Jones, we're not gonna see him get everyday reps, if at all, til he's a 26 year old rookie. They're generally indecisive with every young guy that passes through except Volpe. The franchise can't cry poverty and eventually lobby for a cap and then scoff at the one justifiable way to keep costs down and still produce talent and I've told you why the organization and the fanbase is in lockstep with that philosophy: because they think developing guys is for some other team to do and we'll just get em later.
I'm not of the belief of "we're wasting Judge's prime." That ship has sailed, whether it's ownership not wanting to spend money or make changes to better identify young talent, coaches teaching the dumbest philosophies, generally dumb ass players, and our captain not helping his own cause by either coming up short himself or befriending bums he thinks are necessary. Judge got 6 more years here. If he happens to win while he's here, great, but it's not gonna happen with the half measures and general lack of vision this team has. If it's that important, go get Tucker anyway. Go sign Imai. Go trade for Skubal. Spend like the Dodgers, but they won't do that, so if they're not going all out, it's not worth it to then watch a directionless trash Yankee team after his prime because they spent too much time investing in half measures.
. On top of this, the other reason we hate this move is that they’ll use his money as an excuse to not get a guy who will be a long term solution. Next year’s team has roughly $55 million committed to Grisham, DJ, and McMahon. Hideously bad resource management.
