I see both sides of this issue.
Joe Torre says it was an insult to reduce his pay to 5 million and to add incentives to the contract offer.
The Yankees say, "hey, Joe, we hired you to win World Series, not just get us to the playoffs."
If Joe took the offer, his salarly would be reduced to $5,000,000. The next highest paid manager is Tony LaRussa at $3.5 million per year. So even with a reduced salarly, Joe would've made one and half million dollars more than the next highest paid manager.
The contract offer that Joe rejected also provided for an additional $1,000,000 for reaching the playoffs; an additional $1,000,000 for reaching the League Championship Series; an additional $1,000,000 for reaching the World Series.
So, he would've made $8 million if he made it to the World Series in 2008, without even having to win the World Series.
Without question, Joe Torre was a key ingredient to turning the Yankees around and bringing them to the playoffs 12 straight years. But I think he and most of the rest of the baseball world knew that the expectations for his performance were World Series wins.
IF that's the expectation and you don't reach that plateau five years in a row, why wouldn't management have the right to scale down your salary as a result?
When a player gets 100 million dollars based on 3 or 4 great years, he feels he deserves the big bucks, right? Understood. So what do we do when that same player fails to perform anywhere close to that previous level and is now earning mega money? Can we come back to him and ask him to give some of the money back?
I think expectations can be fairly factored into this contract offer that Joe rejected. Joe felt it also should be a longer contract. Understood. But once again, expectations for a team that is commanding $200 plus million dollars in player salaries are going to be enormously higher than a team with a fraction of that payroll.
But there is the other side of the ledger:
Did the Yankees handle this contract offer in a way befitting of Joe's 12 years of service? Definitely not. I agree with Joe that if the Yankees wanted him back, they could've offered something different and with some rational negotiations back and forth, we'd have Joe in the Yankee dugout next year.
But it seems the Yankees did use a bit of business "low-balling" and it didn't work. Or maybe they just offered something they knew would blow Joe off but also give Joe a chance to leave without "being fired."
So, there are certainly some parts to this story we may never know.
But I am here to tell you that Joe knew what the expectations were and being given a salary offer that is one and a half million dollars MORE than any other manager with the opportunity to earn another 3 MIL in the same year — well to many fans, that seems a no-brainer.
But pride did enter into this equation and expectations and pride don't always see eye-to-eye.
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