Search Observer-Reporter

Search Archive

10/29/2009 3:33 AM

Email this article • Print this article  

Observer-Reporter

This article has been read 1554 times.

As the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies were set to take the field last night, weather permitting, for the opening game of the 2009 World Series, fans of the Cleveland Indians - and many other teams, for that matter - could only wonder if things might have worked out differently if Major League Baseball had an equitable salary system in place.

The two starting pitchers - CC Sabathia for the Yankees and Cliff Lee for the Phillies - played last year for Cleveland. Sabathia was dealt midway through the 2008 season to the Brewers and then signed a seven-year, $161 million contract with the Yankees in the offseason. The Phillies acquired Lee at the trading deadline this year and can retain his services next year for an "affordable" $8 million. And just in case Sabathia didn't work out, the Yankees doled out $82.5 million this year to sign away Toronto Blue Jays' star pitcher A.J. Burnett.

Sabathia won the American League Cy Young award with Cleveland in 2007, and Lee won the honor with the Tribe last year. Teams typically would try to retain players such as those two, but Cleveland, under the present salary system, simply can't compete with the Yankees, New York Mets and Chicago Cubs of the baseball world.

The Yankees, as even casual followers of baseball know, are the 1,000-pound gorilla of the sport. Their payroll this year topped $200 million, which was more than $50 million ahead of the second-place spender, the Mets. The Phillies also spent freely, putting together a roster that was paid a collective $114 million, and the two teams the Yankees and Phils defeated in their respective league championship series, the Los Angeles Angels and L.A. Dodgers, both spent more than $100 million on talent.

Rate This Story:
1 the lowest - 5 the highest

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Current rating:

By comparison, the Pirates, after dealing away pretty much every veteran player who resembled a major-leaguer, ended this year with a roster making a total of about $25 million. That's $8 million less than the salary the Yankees paid to a single player, third baseman Alex Rodriguez. The collective salaries of New York's three megastar infielders - Rodriguez, Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira - outpaced the total player costs of about a dozen major-league teams.

One could forgive fans of the bottom-feeding teams if they see little hope of winning a World Series, let alone become regular contenders for the championship. Some small-market teams - the Minnesota Twins, for example - manage to make a run for the title periodically, but they typically fail to find sustained success because of the uneven financial playing field.

The culprit in all this is baseball's lack of a salary cap, a mechanism that has leveled the competition and created some measure of parity in the other major sports. Baseball owners' failure to demand - at whatever cost in terms of walkouts and lost income - that its players operate under a common salary framework has created a growing chasm between the haves and have-nots of the sport. Teams such as the Yankees that exceed a ridiculously high upper limit on total salaries have to pay a luxury tax that is then doled out to the financial also-rans, but it's only so much pocket change to the big boys and doesn't do nearly enough to lift the fortunes of the unfortunates.

Thanks in large part to its salary cap, the NFL has become known as a league in which a team can go from worst to first in the span of a single season, giving hope to teams and their fans in every market from mighty Gotham to tiny Green Bay. It's probably not a coincidence that pro football has left baseball in the dust as America's favorite sport.

Of course, a salary cap, by itself, doesn't guarantee success. As in the NFL, some teams could still afford to pay more than others, and some would do a better job than others of allocating their resources. And a salary floor might also have to be established to force some franchises - the continually "rebuilding" Pirates come to mind here - to spend a minimum amount of millions on their players.

But if nothing else, placing a restraint on salaries would give teams such as the Pirates a fighting chance to compete with the big-market, big-money franchises, rather than serve as their farm teams.

Home

2 comments

Money Stupid : 10/29/2009
Everyone makes money in baseball. They have it right and this editorial is off the mark.

The Mrs

---

TV Money : 10/30/2009
Baseball will change when people stop tuning-in.

Time Will Tell

---

All comments will be reviewed by administrators and posted to their respective articles within 24 hours. Comments deemed inappropriate will not be posted.

Subject:
Body:
Poster:

Enter text seen above: