Because they feel they need to spend twice as much as the average team and a hefty percentage over the #2 just to feel like they have a competitive team?. Are they that bad that they feel that if they 'only' spent $100 million instead of $130 (while other competitors is spending $60-$70-$80 million...what are the Mariner & Red Sox payrolls, anyway?) that they would outright suck?
They are free, under current rules, to spend as much as they want. I might point out that they didn't pay 13 million to Kevin Brown. They didn't pay 18 million to Manny Ramirez. They didn't pay 250 million to Arod.
If you're going to bring that up, than I have to agree. They've been very wise in who they give their money to, but the point still stands that they're the only team who can afford to sign every player they bring up and still add more via free agency. Nothing wrong with that, but they're not going to get any respect by winning that way, and when they lose like last year, it looks even worse. Mike Tyson could probably smash a pretty good featherweight fighter, but if he did, why should we care?
Someone is going to have the top payroll. How is that abusing the system? You don't know what the self-imposed cap ought to be, yet you blame the Yankees for spending more than their competitors. No wonder they abuse the system if you can't even explain what the parameters are.
As for the top payrolls, baseball almanac has the numbers for 2001:
Red Sox: $109,558,908 Yanks: $109,791,893Mariners: $75,652,500
Dodgers: $108,980,952
DBacks: $81,206,513
Mets: $93,174,428
Braves: $91,851,587
Nothing wrong with that, but they're not going to get any respect by winning that way, and when they lose like last year, it looks even worse.
Well, they might not get respect from you, but when you listen to what the other players say, the Yankees get a lot of respect. And if you think that losing a Game 7 to the heroic performance of Shilling and Johnson made the Yankees look bad, well, that's your opinion. It seems to me it made the victory so much sweeter for the D-backs because it was the Yankees, because it was Rivera. You dream of beating the best. The D-backs did it. Most teams still have a lot of respect for the Yankees. But I am sure you could beat them all by yourself.
Anyway, I believe there should be more balance. But you can't stop trying. There needs to be a set of rules for all teams to follow. Incidentally, go check out the salaries for 1998:
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/yearly/yr1998n.shtml Do you know that team payrolls for the top teams have almost DOUBLED since then? All of them.