A while back I mentioned that if you’re a baseball fan, you should be rooting against the Tampa Bay Rays because any brief success that the Rays enjoy will perpetuate the myth that parity exists in Major League Baseball and that there’s no need for a salary cap. The Rays, with their $43 million payroll, reached the World Series, while the mighty New York Yankees and their $209 million payroll missed the playoffs entirely. This is excuse enough for many people to claim that money doesn’t always win championships, and that the little guy always has a chance.

And that’s true, I guess. Money doesn’t always win championships, and the little guy always does have a chance, but money spent against that chance diminishes it a little bit with each dollar spent. With the gauntlet having been thrown down in Tampa, everyone expected the Yankees to respond. They’ve responded not with a gauntlet of their own, but by nuking the entire site from orbit, as they say.

It’s the only way to be sure.

The main reason the Yankees failed to make the playoffs last season was pitching. Their number one starter, Chien-Ming Wang, was lost for the season, and while Mike Mussina went 20-9 for the Bombers, the rest of their starting pitching was either hurt or, not to put too fine a point on it, terrible. In response, the Yankees dropped $161 million on C.C. Sabathia and followed it up with another $82.5 for A.J. Burnett. Some folks have questioned the Burnett signing, citing his history of injuries, but the fact remains that the Yankees spent nearly one quarter of a billion dollars for the best two pitchers on the free agent market.

Today the Yankees went a step further, signing the best hitter on the market, Mark Teixeira, to an eight-year deal worth around $180 million. That brings their spending total to over $420 million this off-season (in second place are the New York Mets with around $37 million committed), making The Onion’s fictional story “Yankees Sign Every Player In Baseball” somehow more plausible. Rolling into a new stadium next season funded in part by the city of New York (don’t worry, the mayor got a luxury box out of the deal), the Yankees are in the unique position of batting their lifetime .303 hitting All-Star second baseman ninth in the lineup.

Don’t hate the Yankees for this. They’re only working within the system established by Major League Baseball and allowed to continue by people who own baseball teams because they like to look like big shots and couldn’t care whether their team has a legitimate chance to compete so long as the checks roll in. The Red Sox would do it too, if they could, as would the Mets, the Mariners, and even the lowly Pirates.

Hope you enjoyed your time at the top, Tampa Bay.