Here is Hal Steinbrenner reading from the script his father left him:

“All I can continue to tell everyone is our commitment to the fans is never going to change,” Steinbrenner said. “We will always field a championship-caliber team. Is our goal 189 next year? Yes. But only if I’m convinced if the team I see, that we’ve put together, is a championship-caliber team.”

A-ha. Okay. If you want the best objective measure of whether or not a team is championship caliber, go check the betting markets. Here are the Yankees’ pre-season odds of winning the World Series from the past several seasons (and their rank relative to all other MLB teams’ WS odds):

ws_odds

The NoMaas interns got tired of researching after a while, but we can tell you that the Yankees were the favorites in 2004 (after acquiring Alex Rodriguez) and were among the top dogs all the way back into the late 90′s.

Here are current the Yankees World Series odds for 2013:  14/1.

According to the best knowledge we have, there are 9 other teams ahead of, or tied with, the Yankees. The Yankees are not a championship-caliber team. They are a team positioned to fight for a wild card spot. This is the worst Yankee team in a very long time. And it is only going to get worse in 2014. Ownership’s commitment to the fans has changed.

Hal Steinbrenner Vegas NoMaas
According to Vegas, Hal is committing franchise suicide.