I am not a major league baseball fan. When I watch baseball, I root for the Minnesota Twins. I also like the St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies and Colorado Rockies. I cannot stand the New York Yankees...or as many people call them, "The Evil Empire." In fact, the Yankees and their championship buying ways, are the biggest reason I don't watch baseball.
The Yankees just won their 27th World Series, beating the Philadelphia Phillies in 6 games. Even though I'm not a fan, the Yankees win makes me sick. The Yankees don't develop talent, they buy it. There's no savvy involved in paying the most money for the best players.
Here's a stat I heard...the Yankees have the highest paid Starting Pitcher, Relief Pitcher, Catcher, First Baseman, Shortstop and 3rd Baseman in baseball. A Yankees fan probably thinks their outfield is underpaid. But even those of us only peripherally interested in baseball end up thinking, how can my team ever compete regularly?
The Minnesota Twins have a team payroll of $67 million (23rd in baseball), while the Yankees have a team payroll of $208 million, nearly $63 million more than the next closest team and more than 3 times that of the Twins. With that payroll, the Twins are competitive for the playoffs every year because they are a well run organization that knows how to develop players. But, they are always 1 or 2 players short of being able to make a run to the World Series. And, they can't hope to sign that player in the offseason because the Yankees typically sign all the top talent.
Now I'm all for capitalism, but when a sport is setup so one team can have such an overwhelming advantage, there's no reason to watch it. It's as if the fix is in. The Twins can never hope to sign the caliber of players the Yankees can. And, if the Twins develop a good player, when his contract is up, they can't afford to keep him, because they can't compete with the Yankees on payroll.
Until baseball figures out a way to achieve a more competitive balance, I have no reason to watch it. Every other major sport, to one level or another has figured it out. In the other sports, the best run franchises, not necessarily the richest, win the championships. In football, the Patriots are good every year, even though the salary cap only allows them to spend the same or less than every other team. In basketball, the Lakers, Celtics and Spurs seem to have it figured out.
If these sports can make it work...baseball can too. And if they finally figure it out, I'll watch baseball again.
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3 comments:
Jake!
Your post flies in the face of nearly everything else you post about! Since when is "competitive balance" the goal you advocate? The sport isn't "set up" to give anyone an advantage; it simply isn't set up to prevent those with the money to use it. And actually, those that spend a bunch of money are taxed and that money is redistributed to the other teams.
How far back in your blog would I have to go to find you strongly rejecting all such notions?
And that supposed advantage has bought the Yankees one World Championship in the past 9 years...hardly a fix.
+Peace,
Sean
I know, I know. I can't defend it...I just hated to see a team that essentially bought a championship by buying Mark Texiera and C.C. Sabathia. But you are correct, this post is a bit hypocritical.
Not that this makes me any less hypocritical on this issue, but I've thought about this more.
As a fan of sports, I want to see pure competition. In my opinion, we don't have that in baseball, or really any major professional team sport. However, baseball is by far the worst in trying to ensure pureness of competition.
But, yeah, I'm still a hypocrite on this one.
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