The
big-spending New York Yankees suddenly have a lot of company.
This year,
11 baseball teams will spend more than $100 million in payroll and 15 will
spend at least $90 million, according to this report. The most noteworthy new free-spenders
are the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim at $157 million. They spent a large fortune
to pry Albert Pujols away from the reigning World Series champion St. Louis
Cardinals and CJ Wilson away from their division rival Texas Rangers, who are
coming off consecutive American League pennants.
A close
second is the suddenly flush Florida Marlins, who technically spent money they haven’t even
made yet off their gorgeous new ballpark to lure Jose Reyes, Mark Buerhrle and
Heath Bell to South Florida. Save for the Mets, the National League East should
be an extremely competitive division and fun to watch, partly due to the
Marlins’ expected resurgence. If my Syracuse Orange do not make it to the Final
Four (and major doubt was cast earlier today by the crushing loss of Fab Melo),
my back-up plan is to head to Miami to watch the Yankees play the Marlins in an
exhibition at the new stadium (and, of course, to work on my tan).
But no one
will ever outspend the Yankees in terms of total payroll, even with the
Steinbrenners and Brian Cashman furiously working to get down to the magic $189
million threshold by 2014. The Yankees have absolutely no intention of lowering
their payroll anywhere close to the point that they could be confused with the
old Florida Marlins. But at least now they have some company closer to the top.
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