Right now the Yanks really aren’t dumping salary so much as they’re dumping overpriced aging stars that should have retired years ago. Once they’re gone the Yanks will start playing in free agency again, and resigning their current players to extremely high contracts so other teams can’t afford them.
They WILL be 100 mill over the cap by the end of the decade. It’s the Yanks, it’s how they do business. They have the money to spend, they have the money so that the “cap” doesn’t bother them, so they WILL spend it. Any prediction otherwise is ignoring history.
No, they probably won’t start being heavy players in free agency. They really are trying to dump some salary. As I said, if you can get under the cap, even for a year, it reduces the luxury tax rate significantly.
The Steinbrenner boys seem to have learned from teh 1990s run, and they want to try to replicate it with a new homegrown core surrounded by younger, more athletic acquisitions. They will try to use the farm system either to provide or acquire depth, in the lineup, among the backups, and on the pitching staff. You can finish that off with free agency, but it doesn’t require being in on the big, expensive names.
Their business model has changed from George’s days.