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An eye toward the future while retaining the present

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Earlier today, Brian Cashman and Randy Levine, center, helped lead the groundbreaking ceremony for Heritage Field. Last night, the two spoke about the Yanks’ organization. (Photo courtesy of the Yankees)

As the Yankee farm system plays host to numerous young stars, the team believes Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera will be back in the Bronx next year. That’s the message team president Randy Levine and general manager Brian Cashman delivered at a Times Talk last night.

Speaking to a packed house of fans and reporters, Cashman and Levine expounded on the past, present and future of the Yankees as Times reporter Michael S. Schmidt and later the audience bombarded the two team officials with questions. Levine, though, generated the biggest reaction when he issued his statement on Jeter’s and Rivera’s futures. “We don’t negotiate in public, but I would find it highly, highly unlikely if both of them were not back with the Yankees,” he said. “”Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera are the Yankees.”

Cashman, meanwhile, refused to comment as directly on the situation. He declined to respond to an audience member who asked about how A-Rod’s deal could impact Jeter, and although he said that Jeter “still feels confident” at short and is viewed by the team as a short stop, he chose instead to highlight the team’s minor league stars. The GM spoke glowingly of Jesus Montero, Slade Heathcott, Austin Romine, the newly resurgent Dellin Betances and Andrew Brackman as the crown jewels of the system.

The talent, said the GM, stems from the recognition in the mid-2000s that the team just couldn’t spend away its problems. In 2005, the Yanks began to invest in the draft, but Cashman recognized the limitations of that strategy. “I hope,” he said, “we never pick in the top ten of the draft.”

Young and old were the themes throughout the talk, and as Cashman discussed a decade bookended by World Series Championships, he wistfully spoke of a future many of us would prefer to ignore. One day, Mariano Rivera, the Yanks’ “Energizer bunny,” will hang it up. “It’s going to be hell replacing him. He has been the most meaningful Yankee during this stretch,” Cashman said.

With this public approach, Cashman and Levine are playing an interesting game with the near-term future of the organization. As Jeter’s and, to a lesser extent, Mariano’s free agencies loom, all parties have been mum, but the Yanks have quietly and not-so-quietly expressed the belief that they will “take care” of their superstars. As I wrote last September, this statement creates a conundrum. Even as the team says it isn’t negotiating publicly, it has handed significant leverage to a short stop suffering through one of the worst first halves of his career. That four-year, $100-million deal many think may be coming to Jeter after the season ends strikes me as a bad investment.

Still, the Yankee brass have a clear plan. They might be willing to pay for nostalgia, but they know that the future rests with the younger players. As Randy Levine reiterated the team’s approach toward reinvesting revenue in the on-field product, it seemed clear that club officials are eying another decade or two of Yankee dominance.

Beyond the talk of the future, the discussion hit on the issues a Yankee fan would assume they would. After the jump, a rundown. [Read more…]

Levine, Attanasio spar over baseball economics

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Randy Levine, with t-shirt and World Series trophy in tow. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

When USA Today released their annual salary survey yesterday, Brewers’ owner Mark Attanasio had some choice words for the Yankees. The Brewers, what one might consider to be a mid- or small-market team, make do with what they have, but what they have pales in comparison with the Yanks’ coffers, and Attanasio, a Yankee fan by birth, knows this.

?We?re struggling to sign [first baseman Prince Fielder], and the Yankees infield is making more than our team,? he said to Bob Nightengale and Scott Boeck yesterday.

Today, Randy Levine, the Yanks’ team president, fired back. While speaking with Andrew Marchand of ESPN New York, Levine had this to say:

“I’m sorry that my friend Mark continues to whine about his running the Brewers. We play by all the rules and there doesn’t seem to be any complaints when teams such as the Brewers receive hundreds of millions of dollars that they get from us in revenue sharing the last few years. Take some of that money that you get from us and use that to sign your players.

“The question that should be asked is: Where has the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue sharing gone?”

In one sense, Levine has missed the boat here. Since purchasing the team for $223 million in 2005, Attanasio has increased Milwaukee’s payroll from the meager $27 million the Seligs spent annually to $80 million. The team draws approximately 3 million fans a year, and in a weak NL Central, the Brewers can, more or less, contend deep into the season every year. Attanasio has put his money and the revenue sharing dollars to good work, and in that sense, Levine’s charge rings false.

But in another, the Yanks’ president is right on the money. The Yankees have access to a media market far bigger than that of Milwaukee’s, and the team virtually sells out its entire 81-game home stand. They have paid, according to Maury Brown’s Biz of Baseball, $175 million in revenue sharing and are playing by the rules, as Levine says. Until Major League Baseball changes the rules, the Yankees should continue to play by those rules. Spend if you can. Spend if you have the money.

This isn’t the first time Attanasio has targeted the Yankees. He was not a happy camper when CC Sabathia turned down the Brewers’ $100 million offer to sign an even richer deal with the Yanks, and he knows that teams in Milwaukee’s position can’t compete, on a dollar for dollar basis, with the teams in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Philadelphia. This clash might just be a media-driven war of words, but the big-market and small-market teams are gearing up to face off. I don’t know how they’ll fix what many perceive to be a competitive balance problem, but you can be this won’t be the last we hear from the Brewers or Yankees.

Could Trost, Levine be on their ways out?

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New Stadium Insider points us to a story on the 1050 ESPN Radio site regarding Yankees executives Lonn Trost and Randy Levine. According to a “major league executive,” one or both could be on the chopping block. Many Yankees fans would like to see this, I’m sure, but consider the source. One major league executive has speculated as to the jobs of two executives from another organization. I wouldn’t expect much to come from this. Still, it’s not like Trost and Levine are above criticism.

The sensitive side of Randy Levine

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For the last week, the Yankees have been slammed by the press over the empty, high-priced seats at Yankee Stadium. All of the city’s papers and sports pundits have been talking about it, and even I got to appear on TV to discuss it.

But when the head of Major League Soccer raised the issue on Friday, well, Randy Levine finally lost it. The Yanks’ team president unleashed his inner beast on MLS, and I have to wonder if Levine would have been better off just keeping quiet.

Here’s how it started: On Thursday, Don Garber, MLS commissioner, said, “It’s incomprehensible that you watch a game, and there will be front-row seats empty.”

On Friday, when informed of the soccer head’s barb, Levine went on some rant. “Don Garber discussing Yankee attendance must be a joke,” Levine said to the AP. “We draw more people in a year than his entire league does in a year. If he ever gets Major League Soccer into the same time zone as the Yankees, we might take him seriously. Hey Don, worry about Beckham, not the Yankees. Even he wants out of your league.”

Later int he day, Garber defended his remarks. “The Yankees are one of the world’s strongest sports brands and the context of my comments about a few empty seats at Yankee Stadium was to illustrate the economic challenges we are all facing,” he said in a statement. Garber shouldn’t have backtracked.

With this silly spat, Levine hasn’t exactly endeared himself to a Yankee fanbase already skeptical of his role in the organization. Ross at New Stadium Insider called Levine’s attack classless and noted that it makes the Yanks look bad. His co-writer there noted the continued disconnect between the Yankee Front Office and fan perceptions of the team.

The Yankees are treading on dangerous ground right now. While a lot of fans have no problems with the high ticket prices, a good number feel slighted and scorned by the Yankee Front Office. Levine is practically spitting in those fans’ collective faces here. It would do him wonders to step back for a few days and listen to Bud Selig. Humility has never done anyone wrong.

The man behind the Yanks’ political clout

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A lot of RAB readers have taken to analogizing Yankee officials to characters from The Godfather. At issue is Tom Hagen. Which one of the Yanks’ various VIPs gets to fill that ever-popular consigliere role? Based on an article in tomorrow’s Times, Randy Levine can take pride in inheriting that mantle.

Richard Sandomir, The Times’ sports business reporter, tackles Levine in a profile a week before the Yanks’ president’s pet $2 billion project opens in the Bronx. Levine, as Sandomir puts it, has inherited the George Steinbrenner persona. He has, as Sandomir writes, “emerged as the strongest voice of the Yankees, baseball’s wealthiest team. He is their executive-as-prosecutor, a tough, short-tempered and smart protector of the Steinbrenner family and the Yankees brand.”

Levine has long been in the public spotlight. Prior to his term with the Yanks, he served in the Reagan Administration’s, as Rudy Giuliani’s deputy mayor and labor commissioner and as a personal lawyer to Steinbrenner. The Yankees brought him aboard in 2000 when they needed a figure well versed in the inane intricacies of New York City politics to shepherd a complex and comprehensive stadium plan through the political process.

“The Yankees wanted a leg up on the maneuvering that goes on in that system,” Giuliani said to Sandomir.

But over the years, his role has moved beyond that of a political powerbroker. He has become the blunt voice of the team. He defends the Yanks from their critics inside baseball but can come across as brash to those on his own team. He is largely blamed for the departure of Joe Torre, and it’s clear from Torre’s book that the former Yankee manager had little respect for a man who often negotiates through anger and brashness rather than through tact.

Sandomir’s article reveals little we don’t know about Levine, but he does offer glimpse into the important role he plays as team president. As Sandomir reports, Levine was integral in determining that Hal should be the Steinbrenner son to take the reins. I wonder, then, what the relationship is like between Hank and Levine.

In a way, Yankee fans long used to the presence of a George Steinbrenner should embrace Levine. He is an outspoken defender of the Yankees who isn’t above criticizing his players. At the same time, he seems like a bully.

Earlier this week, I was wondering if Levine’s power would wane now that the new stadium is completed. Based upon Sandomir’s account though, Randy Levine — the Yanks’ own Tom Hagen — won’t be pushed out any time soon. He is their war-time consigliere, and with the Yanks, it’s always time for war.