The Rays have consistently had high draft picks, either to develop themselves or trade away for other players (often high draft picks themselves), and also have NO pressure on them to perform each year.

This ONE season everything came together for them – a lot of their good young players became MLB ready at the same time, and they suffered no significant injuries to their solid starting staff.

The Yankees are under pressue to perform EVERY year, and because they tend to do pretty well they rarely get top draft picks. They use the resources they have to remain competitive all the time.

It’s ludicrous to take one year out of all of them, stack the Yankees payroll against the Rays and then use that as some kind of definitive answer to why the Yankees spend their money badly.

It’s like saying that an orange is a better fruit than a tangerine because it’s bigger.

Most seasons what they did this year would have been good enough for a playoff run. Despite the injuries. And wasteful spending.

You are wrong because very few of the rays talent last year that won them the world series were number one picks. Almost the entire team was via solid trades, smart signings and great draft picks out of the lowers rounds. Fact is, if the yanks spent their money as wisely as the rays, we would have won a lot more world series than zero since 2000. I did not say injuries did not matter. I said even with injuries, the yanks should not finish that many games behind a club that had a fifth of their payroll if they were spending money wisely all the time. And every team has significant injuries every year- a team like the yanks should be able to overcome them if they were spending the large majority of the money wisely.

dude, you are 100% wrong here.

Cano made $3M last year. that’s exactly what he would have made in arbitration.

how exactly could the Yankees have had that money “to spend in better ways”?

also, the Yankees didn’t NEED to lock him up, but they did it b/c they were able to get a good deal on his first 2 years of free agency.

they guaranteed him what he would have stood to make in arbitration anyway, and then they got two CLUB options for his first two years of free agency.

it was a very team friendly contract.

you are barking up the wrong tree if you are going to point to Cano as some sort of example of egregious spending.

it’s just completely wrong.

from 1998-2008, the A’s may have spent less per win, but that’s not the goal of a baseball team.

the goal is to win the World Series.

and the Yankees won 3 of those during that stretch and 2 more pennants.

the A’s won nothing.

if the goal of baseball was to win the Marginal Dollars per Win World Series, they’d be great at that. good for them. it’s a model they probably have to follow in their market.

it’s not a model that makes sense for a team in the biggest sports market on earth.

not familiar with Zune, but if something like that were set up (though not sure if its feasible), it would give itunes some real competition.

overall, LoHud is good for the occasional insight from a couple go-to posters, but otherwise, i can do without most of what is there nowadays.