Stark: Looking for a lower tax bracket

the new labor deal has created millions of dollars in incentives to get under the threshold when it rises to $189 million in 2014.

What are those incentives? From the Yankees’ point of view, they come in three forms:

1) The top luxury-tax rate for four-time repeat offenders (in other words, THE YANKEES) will rise to 50 percent from 40 percent beginning next year. (That rate phases in at 42.5 percent for 2012.)

2) For the first time, under this labor deal, a team that drives its payroll below the threshold, even for one year, can hit the reset button. So if it then goes back over that threshold in a future season, it’s treated as a first-time offender and taxed at only 17.5 percent…

[3)] a new rule preventing teams in the 15 biggest markets from receiving ANY revenue-sharing handouts. So if any of those teams generate so few dollars that they ordinarily would have gotten revenue sharing, that money instead will get rebated to the teams that pay into the pool. At the moment, this rule, which also will be phased in, would affect only the Nationals, Braves, Blue Jays and Astros. But who knows what the impact will be down the road?...

the Yankees have been telling people in the game that if they play their contract cards correctly, avoid big, dumb long-term contracts for the sake of giving out big, dumb long-term contracts, and structure future deals right, it could be worth up to $40 million a year… The Yankees have no hope of getting below the current threshold ($178 million) this season or next. But by 2014, when the goal is to nudge below $189 million, they conveniently have more than $50 million in guaranteed money disappearing off their books…

But is this abrupt attack of frugality really inspired primarily by the labor deal? There are skeptics around baseball who aren’t so sure.

For one thing, they say, The Boss, the all-powerful George M. Steinbrenner III, is no longer ruling their universe… For another thing, the cynics claim…the Yankees started working to reduce their payroll—and their luxury-tax bill—even before this labor agreement came around…

maybe the labor deal fine print explains what’s going on in this market. And maybe it doesn’t. Either way, if we’re charging toward a world in which NOBODY is going to pay a luxury tax in a $7 billion industry, recognize what that means for this sport.

If this where we’re heading, we’re looking at a revolutionary shift in the landscape of baseball… When the Yankees and Red Sox—of all people—turn thrifty, the entire sport feels the ripple effects.