Steinbrenner said that he will be foremost led by a desire to build a championship clubGETTY IMAGES
Yankees Managing General Partner Hal Steinbrenner said staying under the league’s luxury tax threshold, standing at $206M for the ’19 season, remains on his mind, though he acknowledged it is not as much of an ardent goal this season. The Yankees last year stayed under the threshold, significantly reducing their tax liability in subsequent seasons. However, Steinbrenner said he will be foremost led by a desire to build a championship club. “We’re going to keep adding pieces until we’re sure we are where we need to be,” he said. Steinbrenner has long maintained that you don’t need a $200M payroll to win a World Series, a maxim broken by this year’s $234M Red Sox club. He said, “It’s only one team. ... It comes down to the player development system. And I think anything’s possible with payrolls that aren’t $250 million to $300 million.”
TURNSTILES KEEP TURNING: The Yankees this year posted MLB’s second-largest attendance increase, reaching their highest level since ’12, and Steinbrenner said there is a chance for a further uptick in ’19. “We have to put together an exciting team,” he said. “That’s a combination of marquee players and veterans and it’s also the young kids. And we still have talent coming [from the minor league system].”
QUIET ABOUT YES' FUTURE: Steinbrenner refused to discuss in much detail the club’s option to buy back a majority stake in YES Network amid the ongoing sale of 22 Fox Sports RSNs. It is widely expected the Yankees will exercise that option, and Steinbrenner did say maintaining those right-of-refusal rights has been critical. “We obviously have rights and a say who we are sold to or not sold to. Those are rights we made sure we had so we could always maintain the integrity of the network and the quality of what we put out,” Steinbrenner said. “More important than the points of equity we own is the ability to maintain control of the broadcast and the content, everything we’ve always had and everything that Fox was great at accepting.”
