Baseball Journal--Yankee Rant Take 2

[Three months later, I got set off again on this subject.]

8-31-12

This bugged me. A couple of Fox Sports Radio hosts were discussing the big Dodger/Red Sox trade. They agreed with the consensus of sports reporters that think that it was good for baseball. [Certainly it wasn't good for the teams involved.] Probably mostly because it was a good, reportable story more than anything, but their ostensive reasoning is that it puts a big spending team on the West coast to balance the East coast teams. But did this action just highlight the payroll disparities between the big market and small market teams? Heavens no! Just look at the great small market teams, and further more look at all that money they get from the luxury tax on the big spending teams.

Now here's what irritated me. It was then mentioned that one team receiving luxury tax money was being forced to spend it on the team, instead of the owner just pocketing it. On some level, this is a correct and proper ruling. The MLB has had a revelation that increased competition between the teams is a good thing. Not parity like that overly popular NFL has, mind you. You see, the Yankees always need to make the playoffs, and preferably the Red Sox and an LA team as well. (If the MLB could force the Cubs to win ballgames, they'd do it.) Enough competition so that these teams aren't playing a baseball equivalent of the Washington Generals (the Harlem Globetrotters' foil). This has worked up to a point. As long as the big spending teams get in, MLB doesn't care who wins the World Series. If smaller payroll teams like the Rockies and Rays contend every so often, that's okay. Everyone is somewhat happy.

Back to why I'm annoyed [maybe I should have got to the point quicker in this], the MLB doesn't tell the Yankees how to spend their money or how much profit they can make. [Did I read somewhere that the Yankees didn't actually make money?] Obviously they don't need to, but it's been acknowledged that some teams are going to need welfare in order to compete with the Yankees. If you're going to be an owner in Major League Baseball, you've got to be able to compete and if you're going to take welfare, we're going to tell you how to spend it. This has an internal logic, but not an overall one.

It has been established [once again] that the MLB (like all sports leagues) is selling competition, and that the competition has to have some measure of equality in order to be interesting, otherwise it's an exhibition. Certainly some teams will be better than others due to management, coaching, and players. Over time, all teams should have their up's and down's. However, these differences should not be overwhelmingly financial. Yeah, some teams are worth more and draw much better than others (TV and attendance). If they can't all play competitively, it doesn't matter. Eventually the value of the bad franchises will have to drag down the value of the perennially good ones and their gate. [Wow, that point is questionable.] Even terrible franchises in the NFL are worth an enormous amount of money. [Actually true. Every NFL franchise is on the list of the top 50 most valuable sports franchises in the world.] Meanwhile, the MLB can't find worthwhile new owners at any decent price. [This is how shysters like Jeffrey Loria can acquire and milk the Expos and Marlins, and how Frank McCourt ended up with the Dodgers.]

How are smaller market teams achieving any success? The Fox Sports Radio hosts [remember them? The people who started me up on this] were somewhat critical of some of these teams using their luxury tax money to build up their farm system. This is what I'd expect from a former player [though I'm not naming names]. They want the money spent on free agents, in order to drive up veteran salaries. The small market teams need to focus on developing their own talent and hope for a good crop. Lock up the best ones at a decent price. Maybe add a couple of mid-range veteran free agents for their experience. Make a run at it for a few years. If any of your expensive picks goes bust, you're dealing off the rest and having to start over. Likewise, win or lose, all your good young talent will eventually dessert you, or you'll have to trade them off in order to get something for them.

Let's say you're the Yankees. How do you run that team? You invest in the farm system and hope for a couple of real gems to appear, but everyone else is trade bait. Your team is stacked with former number one pitchers off other teams, superstar free agents, and future hall of famers, also developed by other teams. If any of these big salaries don't pay off, no problem, you can just buy more. The size of the roster is probably the Yankees biggest problem, they can't grab as many great players as they want to.

[Regrettably or fortunately, the rant finally rambled into complete incoherence at this point. Something about the Yankees and Red Sox doing a travelling show around the country instead of playing the Royals and such, and some comparison with highly unequal college football programs. Thank God this ended before somebody got hurt. I hope I've gotten this out of my system, but no guarantees.]