Home Grown?

Over at Sox And Pinstripes they go through the Yankees and Red Sox rosters to see I guess, who's is more homegrown:

So get over it, the only difference between the two teams is the Yankees have bloated salaries on former homegrowns and just went on a spending spree to replace: right field, two starting spots, and a position in the field along with most of the bench. Those guys figure to be part of the long term plans in New York. Either way, if you eliminate: Posada, Jeter, and Rivera's salary alone (as in, they weren't so good they just kept getting raises), the Yankees would already have around $50 million less in payroll, which would put them, you guessed it, within 20 million of the Red Sox, who are bound to have a rising payroll when guys like: Beckett, Papelbon and Bay are ready to strike a deal.

Yea they are pretty equal, but the Red Sox homegrowns are young and just entering their primes while the Yankees homegrowns are all years removed from their primes and overpaid.

They basically make the same case I did, except they quickly throw it aside:

They are very similar, the difference is the Yankees have a combination of players from their farm a decade ago and now assisting their team, while the Sox have made up for lost time with all recent talents.

Nobody had any problems with how the Yankees created their teams during the 90s run. Those teams are basically the Red Sox now. Pettitte=Lester, Jeter=Pedroia, Bernie=Ellsbury, Tino=Ortiz, O'neill=Bay, Posada=Varitek, Brocius=Lowell, Cone=Beckett. Essentially 90s Yankees and current Sox are a perfect mix of young players in their primes and older players picked up on the cheap or signed during free agency.

The problem people have with the current Yankees is that they are now mostly FA signings. Therefore you can't really count the layovers from the 90s that were homegrown and call the Yanks and Sox even in that regard. Because in 2 years when Jeter is bad, Posada is on the way out, Pettitte is retired, and Mo is retired, the Sox will still have all of their homegrown players and the Yankees will only have a few left.

When people give credit to the Sox for their recent player development it's in comparison to the recent Yankees, not the 1996 version. To quote Yankee homegrowns like Jeter, Posada, Pettitte, and Mo as reasons why both teams have equally used the farm is just ridiculous. Finally the Yankees have developed some newer players, but they don't compare with the young talent the Red Sox have, that's why the Yankees had to spend half a billion this year, while the Red Sox just picked up a few pieces in the bargain bin.