How’d you guess? Aaron Boone didn’t fool you?

With the way baseball talent is developed and the risk and uncertainty involved in it. There are many, many ways to build a winner, or maintain long term competitiveness. This quote pretty much hits at that point:

Despite the absence of a cap, seven different teams have won the eight World Series titles following the mighty Yankees‘ run of four titles in five years, including the small-market Florida Marlins in 2003

I’m not saying it’d be the worst thing ever, or that Drayton might not have legitimate grounds to stand on to call for it. However, in this instance, this what I read between the lines of his statements:

1) Everyone wants a salary cap, but the greedy players and their union won’t allow it.
2) Everyone needs a salary cap because the evil Yankees are spending irresponsibly and creating inherent disadvantages in the market (even though they’ve actually lowered payroll from 2008 to 2009).

Number one is bunk because if salaries were too high, people would stop offering too high of salaries. Baseball is obviously still a very profitable deal for Drayton, this is just his stab at skimming some more profits from the City of Houston.

Number two is bunk because if the Yankees have built cyclical proof revenue streams to support their spending (which is actually a payroll cut) then good for them. They should be rewarded. If Drayton has allowed piss poor management of his team to hamper his ability to spend in economic uncertain times, than he should be punished for it because that’s his fault. Drayton had two options this offseason:

1) accept the necessary increase in payroll to truly be competitive and treat whatever deficit spending he accrued as a tax on his organization’s previous incompetence
or
2) do nothing and try his best to maintain profitability

Now clearly he’s gone with option two, which is fine and probably smart in the long run, but this entire article is just a soapbox for him to spin his bullshit about competitive disadvantages and greedy players digging into his deep pockets. And that, is what makes me sick.

I don’t have any preference or insight as to how the system should be adjusted, so your suggestion sounds like it could be good. I know that Yanks and Sox draw viewers on TV as well as in person, but I wonder if the revenue from a game were divided evenly between participants, what the result would be.

I don’t agree that a salary cap will necessarily enrich owners to the detriment of players though.

From what I read there are problems with how international signings work and the draft is having some problems that benefit wealthier teams. Those should be looked at as well.