CC Sabathia.....................24.4M Mark Teixeira....................22.5M Jacoby Ellsbury.................21.8M Brian McCann...................17.0M Hiroki Kuroda...................16.0M Carlos Beltran..................15.0M Derek Jeter......................12.8M Ichiro Suzuki....................6.5M Alfonzo Soriano................4.0M Matt Thorton....................3.5M Alex Rodriquez.................3.1M Kelly Johnson...................3.0M Brian Roberts...................2.0M Brendan Ryan..................1.6M Total = $153.2M Now lets take into account David Robertson (3.1M in 2013) and Brett Gardner (2.8M in 2013). Then theirs Shawn Kelly, Ivan Nova, Edwardo Nunez, Michael Pineda, Francisco Cervelli, David Huff & Adam Warren. Believe it or not all these players only accounted for approx 10M last season but you have to figure a few raises here. So were up to just over $163M (23 players) Stay tuned.
I'm sure Hal would rather write a luxury tax check than the $61M breakup check to ARod. Oddly, he could be spending that kind of qwan this year. But that kind of money can't sting as much as watching the Saux hoist another trophy.
...$153.2 Mil does not account for everything...the Yanx have roughly $12 Mil left to spend this year before passing the $189 Mil figure.
...yeah, it seems pretty obvious that the $189 figure was a pipe dream...no way it happens. I think they'll still be well over $200 Mil.