Michael_Morris said:
No. When the Yankees are spending 8 times as much as the expos and some 5 times more than the Reds (my team, I suppose) the World Series becomes nothing more than a spending contest between Ted Turner, Bill Steinbrener, etc.
Team with the highest salary is 95% likely to be the champion. Flukes ('02 Twins) happen, but not enough to keep it interesting anymore.
Read Bob Costas Fair Ball: A Fan's Case for Baseball to get a clearer picture of both the problem and a possible solution that players and owners alike overlook over greed.
I won't read Bob's book. Bob is an idiot. His views on baseball are so stuck in the mud that his opinion carries NO weight. Bob needs to just stick to announcing what he sees and stop thinking his opinion is any more valuable than anyone elses.
team with the highest salary is 95% likely to be the champion?
Lessee... last year the Marlins won from the bottom third of the payroll ranks.
Year before that was the Angels from the middle of the pack.
Year before that was the D-backs and they were in the top third but not #1.
3 years before that the Yanks won, but I'm pretty sure they didnt have the highest payroll all 3 of those years.
the 97 Marlins were a "bought" team, but I'm not positive their payroll was highest either.
the 96 yankees didnt have the highest payroll.
And before that, the arguement didnt exist until you get back to the Yanks of the late seventies.
Stretching the arguement to all of the postseason teams. the twins, a's are at the bottom of the barrel while the yanks and the sox are at the top. the marlins are at the bottom, the braves are at the top and the giants and cubs are in the middle.
Seems your theory is 100% wrong.
The world series is won by the team that plays the best in october, after playing good enough to make the playoffs. The third round of playoffs has made itr IMPOSSIBLE for the "best" team to win. And as the Red Sox (1918), the Mets (last place), and other top-tier-spending teams show you....MONEY CANT BUY HAPPINESS.
Its simple. The owners make tons of money of the players, the players want their share since they are the "product". The owners refuse to open their books and prove theyre losing money. The owners continue to sign players to ridiculous contracts and then blame the Yankees when they pay market-value for other players.
(Look at the the list of the top 20 salaries in baseball last year... Only two of those contracts were started by the Yankees. And both of those players have FOUR world series rings. The yanks arent the team who signed Manny to a 20mil/year and Arod to a 25/mil year contacts when the previously highest paid player was still making 15. The yankees didnt give ridiculous contracts to Chan Ho Park and Darren Dreifort and Kevin Brown and Shawn Green like the Dodgers did. But look, they turn around and HELP the Dodgers by offering cash and taking Browns contract off their hands)
Back to my point.. if the ther owners couldnt afford players why would they sign them? dont believe their cries of poverty. Then look at a team like Oakland, they build a good young team, their business sense sucks, they dont market their team correctly apparently because no fans show up, so they let their best players go. Where did the extra income from the playoff stretch go? They could easily have kept Giambi and Tejada if the business was run right. Or if they had done what they did with their pitchers and sign them to extensions when theyre young. (Toronto did this with Vernon Wells and Halladay. This is SMART)
Spend money, make a good team, make money, DONT POCKET THE PROFIT, pour it back into your team, get better, make more money, get even better, make more money and you too can be a winner. if your market is sooo small that you can't get to a budget of 80 million when your team is good...MOVE. theres no law saying backwater towns deserve a baseball team.
I'm tired of listening to people say you can only win if you buy a team and that small markets cant compete. Its been proven wrong time and time again.
