Murphy: A defense of the Phillies' offseason plan, citing the 2009 Yankees

While Matt Klentak's philosophy heading into the offseason might sound counterintuitive for a  team that is flush with cash, and while it might prompt another batch of Scott Boras interviews that decry their reluctance to make the winter meetings rain with long-term contracts, the hard truth is that it is the only sensible route for the Phillies' general manager to follow. We are at a point right now in baseball's economic landscape where that disparity doesn't give a team like the Phillies as much of an advantage as it once did. That's true of this offseason in particular. As Matt Gelb noted in Wednesday's Inquirer, the current free agent crop is among the weakest we've seen in recent history. Sure, the Phillies could theoretically throw a bunch of money at the best of a bad crop, but a player won't suddenly become something he isn't just because a team pays him a salary commensurate with what it wants him to be. And he might actually sandbag that team's ability to build a contender in future offseasons.

Take, for instance, that 2009 Yankees team that beat the Phillies in the World Series. Brian Cashman built a large part of that team in one offseason, Among the players he threw big money at were Mark Teixeira, who hit free agency at the age of 28 with a career .919 OPS and an average of 34 home runs per 162 games, and C.C. Sabathia, who was also 28 and had averaged 207 innings with a 3.66 ERA per season for the previous eight years, and A.J. Burnett, who had a career 3.81 ERA and no-hit stuff.

Thing is, each of those players signed deals of at least five years, and by the end of them, each became an albatross. Sabathia fell off a cliff after Year 4. Teixeira had an abysmal Years 4-6, averaging just 87 games and a .751 OPS per season while taking up $22.5 million of payroll space. Look at that 2013 Yankees team, which paid Teixeira, Sabathia and Burnett (who had been traded to the Pirates)  a combined $55 million for 211 innings of 4.78 pitching and 15 games of first base. That's more than a quarter, nearly a third, of the current luxury tax threshold tied up in sunk costs. For the Yankees, the contracts made sense at the time they were signed. They already had a core that included Derek Jeter, Robinson Cano, Alex Rodriguez, and Mariano Rivera, and the ramifications of exceeding the luxury tax were far less punitive than they are now. In other words, they were a few moves away from a title, and they made the moves.

How many moves away from a title are the Phillies? What year might they realistically compete? Certainly not next year, and probably not the year after, given the lack of anything remotely resembling the core the Yankees had in place. Could they surprise? Sure. If they do, then it might make sense to start throwing money around. But there is zero reason to do it this offseason, when they'd essentially be paying a huge up front cost on a depreciating asset that, given the underwhelming level of talent on the market, might not be any good to begin with. It'd be like buying a 2017 model car when you don't even currently have a job that requires you to commute. Why rush into a contract now that has a better than even chance of being dead money by the time the Phillies are ready to compete? Why not wait until Maikel Franco and J.P. Crawford and Nick Williams and/or whoever else establishes himself as a legitimate core?

The Yankees made another key addition that pre-2009 offseason, one who better represents the type of player the Phillies should and likely will be targeting this offseason. Nick Swisher was coming off a down year with the White Sox in which he hit just .219/.332/.410 as a 27-year-old. His track record in previous seasons suggested he had upside, and he was still three years away from free agency, but he was entering his second year of arbitration and Chicago decided to shed him. The Yankees acquired him for 28-year-old outfielder Wilson Betemit and a couple of minor league pitchers, neither of whom came close to amounting to anything in the majors. In 2009, Swisher hit 29 home runs with an .869 OPS, numbers he'd replicate in each of the following three seasons in the Bronx.