They have $100 million coming off teh books in the next two offseasons, and they are not planning to lay out nearly that much. They’ve been making a deliberate effort to get younger and more athletic (and thus cheaper) and to rely on their homegrown talent.
The Yankees pay a 50 percent luxury tax rate and have for a while. The 1996 World Champions had the #10 payroll in baseball. They’ve publicly said, “You don’t need to have a $200 million payroll to win.”
So they’ve started going to homegrown players like Severino, Bird, Heathcott, Mason Williams, Romine, Sanchez, and others, with others such as Aaron Judge and Jorge Mateo on the way. They’ve surrounded that core with an “outer core” of younger, more athletic, cheaper players like Didi Gregorius, Starlin Castro, Aaron Hicks, Nathan Eovaldi, Tanaka, Pineda, and others.
If they can get under $189 MM in 2018, they reset the luxury tax rate from the current 50 percent back to 17.5 percent, which makes a lot more money available as their players win, gain experience, and grow into higher salaries.
They aren’t planning to NOW, because they don’t have the players to spend the money on. But once those younger more athletic players get old enough for their second and third contracts the Yanks will be 100 million over the “cap” in a jiffy.
Never believe the words. The words are a lie. Believe the actions. The actions are that the Yankees don’t give a damn about the cap and as soon as they have players they feel are worth spending the money on they spend it. They can afford the luxury tax, so they don’t worry about it. Saying they won’t do that now is just hoping to catch other teams off guard later. Even you admit it, the players WILL grow into the higher salaries, and those salaries WILL be over the “cap”.