Hal Steinbrenner is not naming the price of his 2026 payroll.
But the Yankees owner insists he is not set on lowering the number from the $319 million at which his club finished this year, another season gone by without winning a World Series.
“Would it be ideal if I went down [with the payroll]? Of course,” Steinbrenner said on a Zoom call Monday. “But does that mean that’s going to happen? Of course not. We want to field a team we believe could win a championship.”
Steinbrenner has said in the past that a payroll of $300-plus million was “unsustainable” and that it shouldn’t take a $300 million payroll to win a championship. Of course, he used to say the same thing about a $220 million payroll.
But in the early stages of the offseason, as general manager Brian Cashman tries to build a roster that can finally capture the first Yankees title since 2009, they are already at roughly $278 million (for luxury tax purposes) for their 2026 payroll, per Cot’s Contracts. And if they are able to re-sign Cody Bellinger, which is their top priority, that number would vault to over $300 million without further changes to the roster.
“We can talk before [Cashman] goes into the winter meetings about a range, but because it’s a fluid situation, that range can go bye-bye in two seconds if there’s a deal that arises that I feel would be very beneficial to some area of need that we have,” Steinbrenner said in his first comments since February. “So it’s hard to give you a number, that’s what I’m trying to say. It’s a different deal.”
New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner leaves the MLB owner’s meeting earlier this month. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST
Steinbrenner also disputed the suggestion that the Yankees made a profit this year despite reportedly raking in more than $700 million in revenues. He declined to get into specifics about the franchise’s finances, but said it was “not fair” to assume the Yankees came out in the black.
“Everyone wants to talk about revenues, they need to talk about our expenses, including $100 million to the city of New York we have to pay every February 1 [for Yankee Stadium], including the COVID year,” Steinbrenner said. “It all starts to add up in a hurry. Nobody spends more money, I don’t believe, on player development, scouting, performance science.”
Re-signing Cody Bellinger is a top priority for the Yankees. Ray Stubblebine/UPI/Shutterstock
Go beyond the box score with the Bombers
Sign up for Inside the Yankees by Greg Joyce, exclusively on Sports+.
Thank you
The problem, though, is that the money Steinbrenner and his family have poured into the franchise has not resulted in a championship over the past 16 years. And now the Dodgers, whose payroll has surged past the rest of baseball, have won back-to-back World Series titles and three in the past six years.
Steinbrenner acknowledged that “of course it’s a concern” when asked about the potential of the Dodgers pulling away from the pack, but refused to draw a line between having the highest payroll and winning titles.
“If there’s a correlation between spending the most money and winning a championship, I still think it’s a weak correlation,” Steinbrenner said. “Sample size of data is not very big. But they earned every bit of it. … There was nothing low about my payroll and the Mets payroll and look where we ended up.”
So is it about how the Yankees are spending their money then, rather than how much they are spending?
“Well, the intent was certainly there and the research and the homework was certainly there,” Steinbrenner said. “I can’t complain about that. You’re always looking in hindsight, and hindsight is 20/20. Certainly some things haven’t worked out, but it’s not for not doing the research and homework and everything else. The team on paper, on the back of the baseball cards, is one thing. And then how they perform, particularly in the postseason, which is a bit of a crapshoot, is two different things.
“You got to wait to find out the second, but make sure on the first you’re getting guys that should make sense and should perform in this market and should fill these areas of need, whatever the need is.”