Hal Steinbrenner pockets Rays rent money while Tampa poaches perfect Yankees target

Hurricane Milton tore the roof off of Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays, in October, making that stadium unusable for the Rays ahead of the 2025 season. With that in mind, they had to pivot quickly and find a new home. Fortunately, one of their biggest rivals provided that for them, with New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner allowing the Rays to play their home games at Steinbrenner Field. The Yankees are projected to earn around an additional $15 million in revenue thanks to this agreement.

With the Yankees not needing that ballpark for their own MLB team in the regular season, this kind of agreement seemed like a no-brainer for Steinbrenner. The thought at the time was that the Yankees were going to have even more funds at their disposal this offseason, which would seemingly come in handy with Juan Soto on the open market.

Well, Soto signed with the New York Mets, and while the Yankees have done a nice job pivoting from that miss, they still have holes on their roster. Their bullpen feels at least one reliever short, and their lineup could use another infielder. They don't appear to be better than they were in 2024, and that team wasn't good enough to achieve the organization's ultimate goal.

Rather than use that $15 million to add an infielder who would've been a perfect fit for the Bronx Bombers, Hal Steinbrenner allowed the Rays of all teams to sign Ha-Seong Kim to a two-year, $29 million deal, according to ESPN's Jeff Passan. The AAV for that deal is just a shade under $15 million. This feels like a major opportunity blown for New York.

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Hal Steinbrenner has no excuse for pathetic Ha-Seong Kim whiff

He might be missing the first month of the season, but Kim would've been a very nice fit in the Bronx. He doesn't offer much upside with the bat, but hit 17 home runs and stole 38 bases in 2023. He's roughly a league-average hitter with Gold Glove-caliber defense. That, compared to the likes of Oswaldo Cabrera, DJ LeMahieu, and Oswald Peraza, is a massive upgrade.

If the Yankees pivot off this miss and sign, say, Alex Bregman, all will be forgiven, obviously. With that being said, a Bregman deal is nothing more than a pipe dream. The Yankees could make an under-the-radar trade, but barring that, the next-best option they're looking at is a guy like Jose Iglesias. He might be better than what they've got, but Kim's fit cannot be overstated.

The Yankees let Gleyber Torres walk to the Detroit Tigers on a one-year deal (for essentially the same AAV as Kim), likely because they wanted better defense and base running than what Torres could provide. Well, that's Kim's game in a nutshell, and despite the fair deal, they still passed.

Steinbrenner might not have the pockets of teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets do, but the Yankees are a money-making machine. Steinbrenner will not fool anybody if he says he could not have done this deal, especially with the small-market Rays, who are losing out on a substantial amount of revenue and are giving money to the Yankees.

At the end of the day, whether Steinbrenner got that money from the Rays or not should not have even mattered in a deal like this. Kim signed a deal that, on paper, looks more than reasonable, and he did it with a division rival. The notoriously frugal Rays would not have handed out this deal if it wasn't more than fair for the team. The fact that he did get the money that could've been used to fund a deal exactly like this one is a terrible look for Steinbrenner, who continues to show that he isn't as invested in trying to build a winner as he should be.