Have the Yankees priced themselves out of the trade market?

[MRKARNO]

After a little bit of thought and discussion on Gammons' comment that Buehrle was a possibility to be traded to the Yankees, I started to wonder whether the Yankees have effectively priced themselves out of the trade market.

The one thing the Yankees have is cash, but no one is going to just sell players to the Yankees without their fan bases abandoning the team.

No one is willing to take on the Yankee's contracts because they are so big and overpriced that only the Yankees could possibly pay them and unless Steinbrenner wants to pay his former players to play on another team, it's going to be difficult for other teams to take on the Yankees' huge contracts.

The Yankees have no farm system anymore. They already traded all of their prospects to other teams or have developed them fully. After years of trading prospects to other teams for bona fide MLB talent, the Yankees have now run out. They have THE worst minor league system of the 30 and probably by a big amount too.

The Yankees dont really have much talent riding the bench. Their best players are already on the field. If they wanted to acquire a big name player, they have no one to trade without creating another hole, unless they were to do a 2 for 1 deal.

Based on these points, I have concluded that the Yankees have priced themselves out of the trade market.

[jeremyb1]

Good points. One possibility I can think of that probably won't come to pass is that at this point the Yankees biggest strength may be their ability to take other clubs salaries. For instance, we trade them Buehrle if they'll relieve us of Koch and Konerko's deals.

[SoxxoS]

And realize, although Steinbrenner is crazy, even he has to have a limit of funds. We are talking a payroll, that including the luxury tax, is absolutely OUTRAGEOUS. There is going to be a point when George can't add any more contracts, and nobody is going to want to deal with the Yankees unless they themselves can unload bad contracts (i.e. Konerko and Koch) b/c the Yankees have no minor league talent. I should be an interesting next couple of years...and remember, nobody gives up young cheap pitching.