By Mark Halpern
I think it was said best in the movie Moneyball “The problem we’re trying to solve is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams. Then there’s fifty feet of crap, and then there’s us. It’s an unfair game.” This quote isn’t really far from the truth. When you look at Baseball today the most popular teams are the ones with biggest payrolls. Those teams are The Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, Astros, Boston and Cubs. However just because you have the biggest payroll with the top stars in the game and you not guaranteed winning a world series.
Then you haves the teams that fall right in the middle and that’s really covers 80% of the league who make every attempt to put a winning team on the field. A team that fits this is The Toronto Blue Jays. The Blue Jays play in one of the Toughest divisions and that is the AL East. This division a powerhouse division with the Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles and Toronto. This is a division where we could see two wild card spots taken because of the caliber teams in this division.
Then as the quote says under 50 feet of crap lies the rest (no offense to these teams) The Marlins, Rays, Royals (but having a good year), Oakland (soon to be Vegas) and White Sox. Now there are plenty of players on these teams to win as we are seeing in Kansas City but when your ownership can’t afford to spend $400 million on a player (it is a lot of money) it’s understandable but when these teams Nickel and Dime their way through the league and with exception to the Royals and they end up at the bottom with little or no fan base showing up to the games it begs to ask a question on what can be done to give certain teams a leg up?
Television rights is one of the biggest money-making platforms next to gambling. We know teams like the Mets and the Yankees both have their own network. I am sure there are other teams in the league have their own channel dedicated to certain teams. The ones who lose out spend $$$ on MLB T.V. to be able to see all their out of market teams etc. I am focusing on the Marlins right now; they aren’t playing well and that would be a good reason for a fan base not to come. However, when they were winning people would barely come anyway. The Marlins draw the least number of fans to a game. The only way they have a big attendance is if they are playing a super power team and then their stadium is hearing chants for the other team that they are playing. This is not a good look for any franchise.
Between T.V., Mobile Apps streaming games and radio broadcasts, there needs to be a way of sharing this money to give the weaker ball clubs a fighting chance to put a fun team on the field to draw fans and have a team. The other idea is to create a salary cap and we at the network have gone back and forth on this coming to same conclusion and that is a Salary Cap could never work because of players that are signed to extravagant contracts and then trying to get under the threshold you be talking another strike. That all being said I feel bad for certain teams that have the talent to be directly competitive but the owner ship “HAS NO MONEY” and they put what they can out on a field to try and be competitive
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