Originally Posted by BMW
I'm a reformed Derek Jeter hater. Still, Jeter fell to the Yankees in the 1992 draft. An Astros scout (Houston had the first overall pick) quit when the they didn't take his advice to draft Jeter with the #1 overall pick. Supposedly, the Scouting Director chose Nevin based on signability and bonus demands (Phil Nevin got 700K).
Jeter was rumored to want in excess of a million dollars in bonus, which would have been more than double the record at the time - with the sole exception of Brien Taylor, who the Yankees signed the previous draft for nearly three times the previous record. (Bo Jackson and Todd Van Poppel also signed in excess of 1 million, but those were technically major league contracts, not bonuses. It's a bit splitting hairs - money is money, whether it is a bonus or a bonus + major league contract. But in any case, asking for 1 million+ as a bonus was rare territory back in 1992.)
Jeter had a scholarship to the University of Michigan, and was considered a near-impossible sign. Except, it turns out, by the Yankees. It's possible that Jeter did everything that he could to work his way to being drafted by the Yankees; and the Yankees drafting him almost certainly wasn't because their scouts saw something that everyone else missed.
Still, I'd sign up right now if that was the most egregious level of shenanigans that occurred in baseball over the last half century - what an unparalleled reputation the sport would have.
Alfonso Soriano was a pure money signing. He was actually property of the Hiroshima Carp. He staged his retirement so he could go to the highest bidder in the US, which turned out to be the Yankees. To put it in perspective, they paid Soriano a 22 year old prospect slated for that season for AA, a salary of 3.1 million over 4 years, which was pretty much the average salary for a major league player on the Devil Rays, A's, Reds, Tigers, Marlins, Pirates and Expos that season. (Actually it was roughly worth two average Pirates and doled out 1/2 the 1998 Expos payroll to Soriano in guaranteed money).
Rivera and Bernie were absolute coups. Panama has always been a somewhat lightly scouted country over the years and the Yankees got the only two hall-of-fame level talents (Bernie may never be voted in, but he's a legit candidate) in the span of a few years.
The Yankees scout as well as anyone, but their vast resources allow them to make mistakes that would cripple smaller market teams for years or decades. Brien Taylor, Drew Henson, Hideki Irabu, Jose Contreras (Henson and Irabu are also examples of guys who would only play for the Yankees) are colossal contract gaffes that would have altered the shape of their respective franchises. The Yankees simply had a safety net that helped them shrug off these mistakes.
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