Here is the list of major league free agents signed this offseason by the New York Yankees:

This is not a terribly overwhelming list. It is very pale. On the bright side, it has cost the Yankees exactly $0. No other team in Major League Baseball this offseason has spent the winter not even spending a plug nickel. If somebody truly believes the apocalypse is nigh, perhaps it's because the team worth $4 billion sat out an entire free agent period while the rest of the baseball industry lavished $2.5 billion on players.

View photos Bryce Harper will be a free agent after the 2018 season. (Getty Images) More

And yet for the chuckles of executives who see the freest-spending franchise in the world suddenly finding austerity like it was born again, there is a plan here, one that speaks to baseball's tectonic plates shifting and the Yankees readying themselves for a future that looks different from today.

Maybe even a future with Bryce Harper.

Now, we'll get to that, though first it's imperative to understand how and why the Yankees are looking years down the road when deciding to sit out this offseason. And it's best to start with two numbers: $508 million and $8.1 million. The Yankees' yearly revenues in the most recent franchise valuations by Forbes were $508 million, and their operation income – money in the black – was $8.1 million. That is not a lot, not when New York's revenues exceed the second-place Dodgers' by more than $100 million.

The incentives to change, then, are quite obvious, and it so happens a number of events are conspiring to help the Yankees do just that and position themselves remarkably well going forward. The long play started last season, when the Yankees steered clear of Max Scherzer and Jon Lester, and continued this winter with their left swipes of David Price and Zack Greinke. It showed a remarkable amount of restraint from a team that in the past would rather gnaw through steel links than chain itself to any financial preconditions.

If reason No. 1 was minimal profit, No. 2 is every bit as important: the fear of the unknown. And with baseball ready to begin negotiating a new collective-bargaining agreement soon, the unknown is palpable. New York has no idea what percentage of its revenue it will be sharing with lower-revenue teams. Currently, the tax rate assessed to every team is 34 percent of local revenue, and that pool is split evenly among the 30 teams. High-earning teams pay what amounts to another 14 percent on top of that. The Yankees give more in revenue-sharing dollars than every other team, and it's not particularly close. With the gap between the richest and poorest teams as significant as ever, they could give even more, something they'll surely resist.

On the other hand, the new CBA stands to benefit the Yankees considerably. Multiple sources told Yahoo Sports the expectation is the luxury-tax threshold will jump from the current $189 million to more than $200 million. The extra leeway should allow the Yankees to avoid paying it for the first time since it came into existence, significant not only because the Yankees have spent nearly $300 million in overages the last 13 years but because dipping beneath it would reset New York's luxury-tax standing and ensure their inevitable jump back over the threshold is taxed around 20 percent instead of the current 50 percent.

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