Good post. My opinion, non-existence of parity is bad for MLB. The NFL and NBA got it right with salary caps.

Nice job Jeff.

I don’t think it’s as much $$ driven in baseball. I think a large payroll and resources allows teams to screw it up (Bradley, Zito, Penny) and get right back on the horse and not miss a beat, but I think these teams that continually win in baseball have strong foundations (scouting, drafting and player development) to their organizations that allow them to stay at the top. See the Twins. When the Yankees were dominating from a title perspective, it was the home developed players that led the way, supplemented by very smart, inexpensive (oneill, tino, Scott B.) veteran pickups that fit their model. When they really started throwing huge sums of $$ at the thing, they continued to win regular season games but began to fail in the playoffs (I think Clemens was there for just 1 of the titles). Those championships were on the backs of Jeter, Bernie, Rivera, Posada, Pettite.

Little known fact – guess who had the most wins in the decade of the 80s? The Yankees. But that was largely considered a failure of a decade for them as they didn’t win a single title and wasted a ton of money, depleating their farm in the process.

The Angels burst onto their recent prominence on the backs of strong player development (lackey won game 7 as a rookie) and only supplemented with F.A.s after they had established their core. Weaver, Lackey, Santana and Saunders were all developed (as was FRod). Their big pitching signing was Escobar and he has been a bust.

Look at the Atheletics. Smart organizations can lay a foundation without a top 7 payroll. It does help to have the $$ too though!

Money allows a team like Boston to give a guys like Byred $20/3yrs to be a 4th OF. But if the Rangers hopes of competing are on bringing back Byrd at all costs, than the core isn’t as strong as we have been led to believe. A smart organization should be able to compete year in, year out with a $75MM payroll. It just has a smaller margin for error.

Thanks for posting something related to baseball. I was having the urge to post a comment and this is only forum that I enjoy doing so.

@Mavs Man: Thanks for mentioning the Bobcats. I also fixed their numbers since they haven’t been around the entire 10 years.

@Jeff: No problem. The Bobcats are pretty easy to overlook. We’ll see if Larry Brown can work his magic and make them into something relevant.

@Jack Daddy: Totally agree with your last sentence. I hope the baseball posts continue somewhat during the offseason, as I cannot bring myself to return to the other place. Still far too many inmates running the forum asylum for my taste.

The NFL is the model of parity and is also the most popular sport in America. Coincidence? I think not. Baseball may be called “the national pastime,” but the NFL’s attendence, TV ratings, and revenues blow MLB away. When more teams have a realistic chance of making the playoffs, more fans will be interested in those teams. While an international draft and a rookie slotting system would help, I do not think that MLB can approach the NFL’s level of parity until MLB joins the other major sports and institutes a salary cap. While getting a salary cap in place would obviously be an extremely arduous process, I think that it would be worth it to prevent the Yankees from spending the GDP of a small country on free agents.

Keep up the great work, Jeff.

dodgers win…..dodgers win……oh yeah baby vicente in the playoffs……..driving around the ballpark in his lamborghina yelling “remember the alamo”………..i love it…….yee-hah!