Levine: We have money to improve the team

Via Mark Hale, team president Randy Levine confirmed that the team has money left to upgrade the roster despite reports to the contrary. “There’s obviously room to improve the team,” said Levine. “I don’t like to get into the amounts, but obviously there’s room to improve the team … We intend to always improve in whichever way we can. So far, after [CC Sabathia], as far as large contracts, we haven’t done anything. But that’s really our choice.”

I roughly estimated that the Yankees are sitting on a payroll of about $197MM right now, but I wouldn’t take that number as gospel. It’s just an estimation and the error bars are probably in the $10M range. There’s really only three players left on the market that would require a contract in excess of $10M per year (Hiroki Kuroda, Edwin Jackson, Roy Oswalt), but I don’t see the Yankees going after any of those guys at that price. The bench still has to be addressed, but so far the Yankees haven’t spent any money because there really hasn’t been anyone worth spending it on.