MONEYBALL, BRONX STYLE

Yanks are back in business of big business

So the Yankees are back in the big business of being the Yankees again, bigger than ever, now that they are making this kind of big deal for Giancarlo Stanton. Once, almost a hundred years ago, they got Babe Ruth here from Boston, and Ruth would eventually hit 60 home runs in a season, and first make the Yankees the Yankees and put them on the top of the world. Stanton hit 59 for the Marlins last season, and chased 60 all the way to the last at-bat he will ever have for the Marlins. Now Stanton is supposed to put the Yankees back on top of the world.

This is what the Yankees do. In South Florida, where Derek Jeter is in charge of the team that gave Stan- ton away, they already think Jeter has no idea what he’s doing.

But here, and in so many ways, and just because the Yankees have only played in one World Series since 2003, this deal becomes one of the biggest in their history once it is official. The Yankees had made six World Series in eight years before they brought Alex Rodriguez, and his home runs, to the old Stadium in ’04. This is different. The Yankees want more than the rising we saw this October with Aaron (All Rise) Judge. They want it all.

So Jeter helps them get closer to doing that. And the Yankees make one of the biggest trades they have ever made in their history. Now we all wait to see if putting Stanton with Aaron Judge will work out better for the Yankees than putting Alex Rodriguez, and all of his home runs, with Jeter himself once did.

So the Yankees don’t wait around to see what would happen with Bryce Harper after the upcoming season, or Manny Machado, now that Stanton and his 10-year contract falls out of the sky and into their laps. The Marlins wanted to unload that contract the way the Rangers wanted to unload Rodriguez’s nearly 14 years ago. Stanton didn’t want to go play in San Francisco, or St. Louis. He ends up here. The Yankees put his 59 home runs with Aaron Judge’s 51, and do that with Gary Sanchez in the room.

They figure they can find enough pitching to make this work. Maybe Stanton can pitch and hit the way Shohei Ohtani is going to for the Angels. First the Yankees wanted Ohtani. He told the Yankees he didn’t want them. Ohtani ends up on one coast, Giancarlo Stanton ends up on 161st St.

There really have only been three other star, home run plays like this in all of Yankee history: Ruth. Reggie. Rodriguez. They won big with Ruth and Lou Gehrig in the 1920s and into the 1930s. They won two World Series once Reggie hit town in 1977, and probably should have won more than that. It was Reggie who said he’d bring his star with him to New York. Now Giancarlo Stanton, 28 years old, tries to bring his own star with him to New York. And suddenly, just with him and All Rise Judge in the batting order, they have a big enough front line to match up pretty nicely with the Knicks. Couple of right fielders with Stanton and Judge. Couple of shortstops with Jeter and A-Rod once. They will figure it out.

Of course there is an irony here that all this time later the Yankees would absorb the same kind of contract with Stanton they once willingly absorbed with A-Rod, and then extended after the 2007 when A-Rod, bless his heart, announced he was opting out during the ’07 World Series. By the time Rodriguez became the captain of the Biogenesis All-Stars, the Yankees not only hated him, they hated that 10-year, $270 million contract even more. No one is comparing Stanton to A-Rod, and all the stupid, lousy choices A-Rod made in his career; all the ways he hurt himself. The only way Stanton has been hurt is with injuries, including a pitch that hit him in the face.

Still: Ten years after they gave Rodriguez a 10-year extension worth $270 million, they take on Stanton, who had 10 years and $295 million on his own contract. They do it for the same reasons they did it with Rodriguez: Because they think Stanton, and all of his home run possibilities, is too good to pass up. At any price. And because they are the Yankees, and the truth is, they have always believed, even when they talked so much about the luxury-tax threshold you thought they would give the threshold a Luxury Tax Day at the Stadium next summer, that they will spend as much as necessary to get on top of the world and stay on top of the world. It was Reggie who also once said that the only thing that matters for the Yankees in the modern world is “winning those 11 games in October.” It would have been 12 this season, because of a wild card game, if the Yankees had made it to the World Series after leading the Astros three games to two in the American League Championship Series.

Only for all the hitting the Yankees did this season, they couldn’t hit once the ALCS went back to Minute Maid Park. They stopped hitting in the ’03 World Series a few months before they brought A-Rod, who had hit 50 home runs twice in Texas, to town. Now they are bringing Giancarlo Stanton and his 59 to town. Money was no object then, money is no object now. They are the Yankees. At the end of October they came up small. Now they go for a real big home run hitter. And hope it works out better with him over the next 10 years than it did when the big deal in the big town was A-Rod.