There’s no crying in baseball!
Just petulance, apparently, if you’re a highly-paid superstar who can’t endure the last grueling two months of your $180M contract. Not that I’m talking about anybody in particular, mind; I’m just sayin’.
Speaking of money, I was talking to Dave the other day, and he was complaining about baseball’s financial policies making it impossible for poor teams to contend with rich teams. Setting aside for a minute whether or not that’s bad, I gotta say I just don’t see a lot of evidence that it’s even true. Dave’s a Red Sox fan; I think a lot of it comes from his unique view of baseball as The Struggle Against The Yankees. To be sure, the celebrated Red Sox — Yankees axis is definitely a case of "my Goliath can beat up your Goliath," and frequently boils down to a situation where the two teams engage in an intense skirmish to see which one gets to go to the postseason as division champion and which one has to settle for being the wild card.
But this isn’t the case this year. This year, both Red Sox (#4 salary in baseball) and Yankees (#1) are fighting just to stay alive in a division dominated by an unexpected powerhouse from the cheap seats (Tampa Bay, #29), while at the same time dealing with a strong wild card threat from a Minnesota (#25) team supposedly in a rebuilding year. There is a very real possibility that this year’s ALDS won’t contain either the Yankees or the Red Sox, both Goliaths having been slain by some of the lowest-payroll Davids in the majors.
In fact, you have to go down the payroll chart to #5 (Chicago White Sox) before you find a team that’s leading its division — and it’s just barely holding on to a half-game lead over aforementioned Minnesota. Numbers 6 (Los Angeles Angels) and 8 (Chicago Cubs) are doing very well, to be sure, but #3 (Detroit) is barely .500, while #7 (Los Angeles Dodgers) and #9 (Seattle) are hovering at "a bit below .500" and "on track for a hundred losses," respectively.
What’s the bottom 10 look like? Two division leaders: #29 (Tampa Bay) and #23 (Arizona). Two teams in very close contention: Minnesota and #30 (Florida), trailing by .5 and 1.5, respectively.#22 (Texas) isn’t terrible, though impossibly far behind the sure-we’ll-get-120-wins Angels, and #28 (Oakland) had a good first half and then gave up and sold all of its players. Everybody else is pretty bad, but, hey, let’s not forget that the worst team in all of baseball — the dreadful Seattle Mariners — is in the top ten by payroll.
So I’m just not seeing this grand corrolation between payroll and success. The Yankees, at the top of the chart, have a few players who cost more individually than the entire Florda Marlins payroll. And the Yankees are beating the Marlins by, oh, two games or so. And losing by 5.5 to the next team up the money ladder. Sure, money’s definitely one tool that a team has available to it. But if there’s one thing that the Yankees’ zero championships so far this century should tell us, it’s that it does not trump all else.
(Payroll figures from espn.com)
The point isn’t that payroll is a direct indicator of success in any given year. But can you deny that the Red Sox and Yankees can contend every single year because of their massive payrolls, while teams like the Marlins have made a living stocking up for one run, then selling everybody off, sucking for several years, then stocking up again?
Nobody watches Marlins games, even when they’re good. This is partly because nobody in Miami gives a shit about baseball. But it’s also, I contend, partly because the Marlins simply can’t build a fanbase out of what they have to work with because they can’t be contenders every year. Certain teams in certain cities can lose for, oh, say, 100 years and still have a ton of fans. But most teams need to be at least competetive year in and year out to build and maintain a fanbase.
Certainly some teams bring it upon themselves. The Royals, for instance, don’t even spend all the money the league gives them under the current socialist policies (revenue sharing and the luxury tax). They’ve got nobody to blame but themselves if they can’t compete if they won’t even spend the free money they get from Uncle Bud to improve their team.
Just throwing money at your problems won’t solve them (unfortunately, Democrats never learn this lesson). The Yankees are, as you say, living proof of this. Highest payroll in baseball, no titles since 2000. Just buying up all the best players doesn’t guarantee you’ll win. But it pretty much *does* guarantee you’ll contend and be exciting, which many teams can’t ever seem to do. When was the last time the Pirates were contenders, the early 90s? How about the Rangers? They had a few years where their owner tried to pretend he was George Steinbrenner and bought up guys like A-Rod, but that didn’t work for him–it wasn’t until after he got rid of A-Rod and his huge albatross contract that the Rangers contended for a year or two, just out of spite.
Then you have the teams that do manage to compete on limited budgets, but never have quite enough to actually win. The A’s and Twins are the poster children for this category. The A’s have been perennial contenders for most of the decade–but they never manage to quite have enough to get out of the first round of the playoffs. They can never quite make the big trade-deadline signing they need to make, or can never quite manage to hold on to all of their talent long enough to break through.
Basically, if you’re not the Yankees or Red Sox, you basically have two choices. Contend every year ala the A’s, but require the stars to all align perfectly for you to ever actually win a World Series (hasn’t happened for the A’s yet in the Billy Beane Moneyball era). Or, play it like the Marlins and, to a lesser extent, the Diamondbacks. Build the farm system, cultivate some homegrown talent, then buy up what free agents you can afford, make one desperate push for the brass ring, and hope you don’t come up short. Either way, at the end of that one season, you sell off all the talent to the Yankees or Red Sox and start again. It’s worked well for the Marlins, but again, it’s hard to build a loyal fanbase in most cities if you suck six out of every seven years or so.
I’m not normally one to argue in favor of socialist bullshit like wage or price controls, but sports is sort of naturally socialistic anyway–we level the playing field as much as possible to make it a fair competition. We don’t allow the Yankees to hit with aluminum bats but make everybody else use wood, for instance. Certain teams in certain cities are always going to have financial advantages over other teams in smaller or less baseball friendly cities. But that doesn’t mean we have to allow them to use the Kansas City Royals as their AAAA affiliate.
Now, a city like Atlanta, which had the best team in the NL for more than a decade but still couldn’t manage to fill their stadium for playoff games can go to hell imvo. The same with those awful Diamondback “fans”. There’s no way the league should have to prop up a team in a city that clearly does not give a shit about baseball. But I know when I go see a Rockies game here in Denver these days, what I see out on the field are a bunch of scrubs, plus a bunch of guys who will be playing for the Red Sox or Yankees in a few years. And that kind of sucks. Yeah, Rockie’s ownership sucks balls and has consistently fucked up over the years, but knowing that even when they get lucky and bring a bunch of guys up through the farm system who turn out to be really good, there’s no possible way they can keep even most of them around is a real bummer. Eventually Matt Holliday and Troy Tulowitzki are going to get called up to Boston or NY–that’s just the way baseball works.
Comment by Dave | 6 August 2008
I still don’t see the problem. As you say, it wouldn’t be reasonable to let the Yankees swing aluminum bats and force everybody else to use wood. And I’d agree with you if you said that it wouldn’t be fair for the Central Baseball Payroll Authourity to give the Yankees $200M and the Marlins $25M. But that’s not the situation. The situation is that the Steinbrenners sank a huge amount of money into developing the Yankees (not just player salaries, to be sure; they’ve also merchandised the shit out of it, built a whole new ballpark, built themselves a TV network, and so forth), and I’m failing to see why they shouldn’t expect return on that investment. As, of course, are the Steinbrenners, which Joe Torre discovered this past offseason.
I just don’t agree that the rich teams can contend every season. The Cubs have never been a poor team, but sure have had an awful lot of last-place finishes. The Yankees aren’t really contending at the moment; they’re still hanging on, but by a thread. The Braves are done, the Blue Jays are done, and the Mariners have been done since time immemorial. These are not poor teams.
But if you want to call the split at Red Sox, okay. Let’s take a look. That gives us Yankees, Mets, Tigers, and Red Sox (in that order) that have the money to contend every season. And do they? The Red Sox spent a fair few years completely failing to contend, though that’s a bit hard to remember nowadays, what with their being the powerhouses of the AL. The Mets are a perpetual also-ran, and usually end up not even making the playoffs. The Tigers are, as a rule, the most underwhelming team in baseball; they made a run to the Series a few years ago (2006 was it?) but outside of that they struggle to stay at .500, just like they are now.
That just leaves the Yankees, and, quite frankly, I think even they have to be starting to think that maybe it wasn’t the money that won them all those championships, but intelligent, tenacious leadership. Frankly, since George got senile, they’ve started to slide. Then they gave Joe the boot and now they’re sliding harder. The money hasn’t gone anywhere, but the brains have.
Incidentally, it’s not accurate to label the Marlins a team that sucks six of every seven years. The Marlins are in contention more often than not, actually; they’ve won two World Series titles in their ten-year lifespan, and they’re not too far off the mark too often (they’re only 2.5 back of Philly right now, and dead even with the Mets). Sure, it’s hard for them to keep superstars around — and if it’s the case that fans come to see the star players, then, sure, that can make it hard to maintain a fan base — but the Marlins are proof that an intelligently-run organisation with a solid farm system and good coaches really can compete with Diamond Hank and his prefab boy band.
Comment by Darien | 6 August 2008