The game of baseball has a growing problem. Not the umpiring, which has been horrible in the post-season. Not performance enhancing drugs, which keeps rearing its ugly head with every name leaked from tests conducted several years ago. It’s the growing disparity between the big market teams and everyone else, and the sport doesn’t seem concerned about it.
Commissioner Bud Selig likes to point out how only the Red Sox have won two World Series this decade (’04 and ’07), and that 22 out of the 30 MLB teams have made the post-season since 2000 as signs that competitive balance is alive and well in baseball. That’s creative math in my eyes.
The problem is not how many cities have seen their teams in the playoffs over the last ten years, it’s that certain ballclubs are there every year. The Yankees have qualified for the post-season in all but one year since 1995. Boston and recently, the Los Angeles Angels are playoff regulars. That’s the problem. There is no down year for the big market teams.
Supporters of the current system will point to Minnesota’s consistent success and Tampa making the World Series a year ago. However, for all of the Twins winning, there are many more mid to small market teams struggling to be good on a yearly basis, such as the Cleveland Indians.
And the Twins are the only smaller market team making the playoffs on a regular basis during this decade. The Indians did the same thing from 1995-2001, but at that time the Tribe had one of the larger payrolls in the game.
In the next couple of years, great players such as Minnesota’s Joe Mauer, Seattle’s Felix Hernandez, and Tampa’s Carl Crawford are going to hit free agency. All of those teams have the same dilemma that the Indians had with C.C. Sabathia, Victor Martinez, and Cliff Lee. Is it better to trade these guys a year early and get more in return or play out the free agent season and risk getting nothing in return?
It would be a shame if these players had to go elsewhere because their contract offers will be so bloated that only the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, and Angels can afford them.
Having a strong farm system is very important for smaller market teams, but teams with money have an advantage in the draft because they can pick amateur players who are viewed by some teams as unsignable, and they can supplement their choices by signing high-ticket international free agents. And the large market teams can use these prospects to trade in salary dumps by smaller market teams who can’t pay their star players.
Last year, the Yankees missed the playoffs. They “rebuilt” by signing a former Cy Young Award winner, another serviceable starter, and a 40-home run guy. Must be nice. Imagine if the Indians could go out this winter and add Tim Lincecum, Prince Fielder, and Kyle Lohse. Do you think they would be significantly better in 2010?
In the past, I sided with the players in baseball’s labor issues, because the owners were making way more money that the players, and competitive balance wasn’t a huge issue. Think back to the early 1990’s. Pittsburgh, Toronto, and Oakland were three teams making the post-season on a regular basis. Heck, Montreal might have been the best team in baseball during the strike year of 1994.
This is also not to excuse the poor performance of the Indians’ organization over the past ten years. The farm system has not been productive, and when they have spent money, it has not been spent wisely. Being in a middle of the road market is not the only reason for the Tribe going to just one post-season since 2001, and only contending one other time in that span.
If things don’t change in the next collective bargaining agreement (can you say strike), the gap between the haves and have-nots is just going to get larger. And if that happens, the chance for any team outside of the major media markets to have sustained excellence will be slim and none. That’s not good for baseball.
MW
Cleveland Sports Perspective 