What does $200 million dollars buy you?

What can you buy with $200 million dollars? For starters, you can buy 200 million jr bacon cheeseburgers. It also gets you tee times on the golf course if you play for the New York Yankees.

I know that everyone in America picked the Yankees, including myself, to beat the Tigers this series. But Detroit did it. They beat the “Evil Empire” in 4 games. Absolutely phenomenal pitching by Detroit’s Jeremy Bonderman, who was perfect thru 5 innings, having thrown 35 pitches, 29 for strikes. Leading the way hitting wise for the Tigers tonight was Magglio Ordonez and Pudge.

Some interesting numbers to look at from the Yankees in this series:

• AROD had another great postseason going 1 for 14 (.071)
• Johnny Damon was 4 for 17
• Jason Giambi was 1 for 8
• Gary Sheffield was 1 for 12
• Yankees starting pitching was good the first two games but awful the last two including today’s starter Jaret Wright who went 2 2/3 innings, 4 runs with 3 of them earned.

I could go on with this as the Yanks hitters could do nothing to muster any offense other than in Game 1 when the probable American League MVP, Derek Jeter went 5 for 5 and Bobby Abreu had 4 RBI’s.

As a Red Sox fan, I absolutely love this. Ever since the Red Sox were eliminated, the talk was that the Yankees were going to win the World Series this year. Well guess what….y’all were wrong. Now it will be another offseason of crying by the Yankees fans as well as us Boston Red Sox fans.
As a comparison for the payrolls, the Yankees were at $200 million dollars. The Tigers at $80 million dollars. What does this prove? Well that you can’t buy championships. If you are going to spend that kind of money, you really should get some starting pitching and bullpen help. The salaries of the middle of the Yankees lineup was a combined $66.7 million dollars and contributed 3 hits. That’s $13 million dollars less than the entire Tiger’s lineup.

I think what you will see next year is a totally different lineup for the Yankees. If they were smart, they’d bring up some younger guys to play as they have had success with some guys from their farm clubs. Wait a minute, the Yankees have traded away most of the talent they have. One thing to look for is the Yanks to trade AROD. Personally, I don’t think he’s cut out for New York.

So to the New York Yankees, I wish you much luck on the golf course with some of your Red Sox breathern.