Chipper breaks it down

Here’s Chipper Jones on the Yankees’ spending, via Sporting News:

It’s never happened to me personally, but I think anybody who hits the free agent market is going to wait and see what the offer is from the Yankees. Because everybody knows that they’re going to inflate the price. Whether they get you or not, they’re going to hike the price up.
Scott Boras and some of these other high-profile agents, they’ll use New York as a measuring stick. If New York is going to offer 5 percent or 10 percent or 20 percent more than anybody else, why not? They feel they have to offer a New York-style signing bonus on top of what a player is actually worth to the rest of the league just to get them to come play in New York.
Ten or 15 years ago, we could lure people to Atlanta strictly on reputation. You knew we were going to win, and we had a bunch of good players. Players would shun money from New York and take less to come here. For the past three seasons, we’ve kind of been on the downslide and not making the playoffs, so you can’t do that anymore. We can’t compete monetarily, so the only way we’re going to get players in here to play and win is to force them–and that’s done by trading.
The downside to trading is that it weakens your minor league system. But the only way that we are going to win now is through trades. We just don’t have enough money to compete with the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago teams.

Chipper is a smart guy. But hey, maybe he’ll get to experience it (Yankee spending) first hand, next year, when he’s a free agent and the Yankees need a DH. Okay, I know, I know, he’ll retire a Brave, but he doesn’t sound too optimistic about Atlanta (and he shouldn’t be).

I refuse…

…to even get into this debate (again).

This man is a starter. Until he Kerry Woods himself, I think we should recognize him as such. That is all.

Quick Bits: Stadium, Gammons

A few notes:

1. Rich Brodsky, the state assemblyman that has been investigating the Yankee Stadium project, is attempting to postpone a vote that would provide the Yanks (and the Mets) with additional public bonds (to the tune of $370 million) for their ballpark. The Yankees are going to have a difficult time from now on, as the recession has certainly widened the magnifying glass on state spending. If they had tried building the Stadium in 2009, it would have probably been worse.

2. Peter Gammons has a nice writeup on how the economic times have and will change the game and how teams are focusing more on affordable youth and run-saving defense.