Here is possible partial answer to. why PEDs are not given much thought for Andy Pettitte. He was soft throwing lefty whose mid to upper 80s fastball didn't seem to change after use. Makes sense?
The disparity between payroll is getting bigger as well, as teams are ignoring penalties. In 2015, (possibly the last year a smaller budget team won it all) the top ten spending teams spent $1.85 for every dollar the bottom ten spent. In 2025, it was $2.44. Keep in mind that those numbers do NOT include luxury tax penalties, just the money spent on players before the penalties.
This is a 69% increase in 10 years in the gap between the haves and the have nots. That is a significant difference
Joe- The Fairness thing... is right out of the movie "The Unforgiven"... "Deserve's got nothing to do with it!".
Someone here did write about the Miami Market and i wondered myself - there's plenty to be had down there in terms of a large city awaiting a winning team! So i've no feeling for Marlins losses (W/L or $)!
So it appears the Dodgers are the new Evil Empire! But the Dodgers also produce good farm talent. And like all teams, have some dead money invested on players. And somehow, they still make the best use of acquiring new talent! Baseball hasn't had a dynasty in quite awhile - maybe it's happening ... now!
I understand that revenue sharing and a salary cap won't necessarily solve the problem, but I think that they are vital first steps. They were the steps taken by Pete Rozelle as Commissioner of the NFL that transformed that league and helped it to grow and flourish across the U.S. and abroad. Baseball has hidden behind its unique anti-trust exemption to operate as it did in the 1950s.
The revenue sharing of the NFL encompassed television and gate receipts. I don't know if radio receipts were/are included, but those should be as well. In addition, I believe that the NFL owns the rights to branded merchandise, and nothing would please me more that seeing that the Guardians and Pirates are getting some benefit out of all those Yankee caps, jerseys, sweatshirts, and other swag that you see in every major city in the world.
The owners also need to be persuaded - even if it takes a diplomat like Vito Corleone to assist - to spend a minimum portion of their revenue on personnel (perhaps after they have paid a small percentage to the taxpayers who funded their palaces). I believe that Dodger Stadium, Wrigley Field, and Fenway Park are the only MLB stadia that were privately funded, so they shouldn't have to pay the levy.
This plan would require a strong Commissioner, a team of lawyers, and the support of lovers of baseball as America's "national pastime". Vito Corleone might not be available, but you and Kevin Costner might be able to persuade football fan Donald J. Trump that making baseball great again should play a key role in making America great again.
Joe, the fairness issue for me, comes down to this: when we grew up watching baseball, we loved our hometown team, but we loved the players on that team even more. As a kid in Cleveland in the 60's, you'd better believe I loved Sam McDowell, Luis Tiant and that group; that morphed into Len Barker, and, yes, Duane Kuiper, Joe Carter and Joe Charbonneau. Eventually, we zeroed in on Albert Belle, Carlos Baerga and Kenny Lofton. Where things started to go south was when Belle, Manny, and co. just LEFT. Why? Because the Indians could not pay them what the market said they were worth. When Francisco Lindor left, it all broke for me. The teams ask you to fall in love with the PLAYERS, not the team name (Tribe/Guards) or logo (the Chief or, now, statues next to a bridge). But the system is designed to ensure that players we fall in love with end up playing for other teams. Oh, it is possible that undervalued franchises can put it all together for a year, maybe two. And maybe the Indians/Guardians can play against the Cubs in a World Series. But that all seems so unlikely when every major star from Japan or other teams never even REMOTELY has a chance to land on the home squad. Imagine how Tigers fans feel now, about to lose Tarik Skubal? I don't have to imagine, I already know.
Fair point, but there is not much doubt that the coffer balances in Cleveland and Detroit, Pittsburgh and KC are not what they are in NY, LA and Boston. The current Guardians owner seems to think he owes no duty to the fans to operate at a loss.
We can talk about salary caps and revenue sharing until we're blue in the face, but at the end of the day, I just don't see how any serious person could argue against there being ten or so owners that just aren't making a serious effort to build a winning franchise. Whether that's because they themselves don't have the financial resources or they don't care or both, I don't know.
But until that's resolved, CBA discussions aren't worth much more than rearranging furniture.
The Marlins have a still-new, publicly-funded downtown ballpark in the sixth-largest metro area in the country. It's no one's fault but current and past ownership's that they have the lowest valuation of any franchise in the league. Their ownership needs to either get serious about trying to win baseball games or sell the team to someone who will. Similar things could be said about several other franchises.
I think it was Joe or maybe another baseball writer I follow that suggested this, though it may have been tongue in cheek.
Any profit above the cap including ballpark mall zones is split between the city that provided tax breaks or public funds and the players and staff. We just need Rickey back to grant every last staff member a full share.
When exactly was the time when the rich MLB teams *didn't* dominate the poor teams? Why are people wringing their hands over the Dodgers, when they have not, and will not, dominate MLB to even close the extent as a certain team did in the 20s through 60s? When was MLB fair?
I think franchise valuations is a misleading figure, but I'm glad you touched on the real issue: revenue. All of these owners, in every sport, are just spending some percentage of the money that the team brings in. The NFL feels fair because teams share 100% of the revenue. It's not the salary cap; it's that everybody starts with the same basic pool of resources. In the NFL, a team from Cleveland can give out the biggest contract in the history of the sport (and have it blow up in their face). That would be functionally impossible in baseball.
The Dodgers don't spend more money than anybody else because they have benevolent owners. They spend more because they make far more money than anybody else (except the Yankees). Their owners are giving out these big contracts and STILL pulling in huge profits. If you want baseball to feel fair, we don't need a salary cap; we need to fix the revenue disparities and the institute a salary floor to make sure the small-market clubs spend it.
A higher percentage of MLB teams have reached the World Series since 2014 than the percentage of NFL teams that have reached the Super Bowl since 2014.
And ... either the Chiefs or Patriots have played in the AFC Championship game each year since 2011
People love to tout this statistic, but I don’t think it speaks to how fair the sports feel. I think it speaks mostly to how the margins between baseball teams is generally slim. The winning percentage gap between a 62-100 team and a 100-62 team is much smaller than the gap between a 3-14 team and a 14-3 team. Because this gap is smaller, MLB playoffs are more prone to randomness. It’s also way harder for one player to (a Mahomes or Brady to your point) to have an outsized influence on playoff results.
Do you honestly think baseball feels as fair as the other sports? I certainly don’t. So why do I feel that way even though the list of championship round participants is more varied? Here a few hypotheses: I would guess there’s less turnover year to year in who makes the playoffs in baseball than in other sports. The NFL famously has only about a 50% retention rate in playoff teams. I have no idea what baseball’s is.
Because individual players mean more in other sports, I think there’s always the hope of being one player away. Look at Drake Maye and New England this year. I don’t think bottom five baseball teams feel like they can be saved by just one team. It also probably matters that the draft is much more immediate in other sports than baseball.
Lastly, for small market teams I think there’s a special sense of despair knowing that homegrown players so often leave once their arbitration years end. In the NFL, and team can retain their young players throughout their prime. In the NBA with Bird rights, homegrown players are incentivized to stay. That’s simply not true in MLB.
Another factor that incentivises the poorer teams in the Premiere League is relegation.
There are clearly a handful of MLB teams that don't try to win and don't try to appease fans and don't try to hold onto players beyond service time.
Relegation may not work in MLB, but perhaps the last place team loses their first round draft pick.
It makes tanking a little harder as you have to at least try a little. Or they don't get a revenue share or they lose a share of the media deal. Gotta spend money to make money as they say.
I also think homegrown extensions shouldn't count against the luxury tax or whatever type of salary cap is being considered.
It seems the most crying is when the Dodgers or back when the Yankees signed everyone elses free agents. I look at the Dodgers roster and the big salaries are not homegrown guys. Even key guys like Teoscar and Muncy came from other teams.
Just maybe an owner will spend some money on their homegrown players if it doesn't cost them extra for rising over a salary threshold.
As a fan, if I have to care about my team’s ownership’s willingness / ability to spend money, you’ve pretty much lost me. Whoever is to blame for the structure in MLB that has led to this - and I think it’s mostly the owners - this is the problem. Fans of the Dodgers or whatever other big money team can say that the Pirates or Reds have more money but aren’t willing to spend it but that’s beside the point. Fans have virtually no way to impact who owns their team or how willing they are to spend money, unless a large number boycott the team, which isn’t happening. And if it did the owner would just move the team citing lack of fan support.
Do Steeler or Bengal fans need to care much about the net worth of the Rooney or Brown families relative to the Kroenke or Spanos ownership groups in LA? Not much if at all.
Can anyone imagine a board game like Monopoly having rules where all the players started off with different amounts of money, and the player with the most started off with 4x the player with the least? Sounds a lot like the real world, which I don’t think is what games or sports are looking to emulate.
In a world of 10,000,000 Yankees fans and 500,000 Marlins fans, is more parity better?
Some degree of parity is necessary to make going to games fun. If every Dodgers/Marlins game was as predictable as a Harlem Globetrotters game, but with all the showmanship of your local CPA firm.
But baseball, as it is now, is famously hard to predict on a single game level. Without revenue sharing, the draft system, etc, maybe it wouldn’t be, and I don’t think we need less parity.
We’ve seen in other sports that two small-market team facing off in a championship and you can measure the yawns on the same scale as a jet engine.
Ultimately, all the money in baseball comes from the fans, whether directly through subscriptions, tickets, or concessions, or indirectly through eyeballs and attention. We should let the teams that more people are excited about do better, while still giving teams with smaller fanbases the opportunity to attract more fans and eyeballs to the game.
Kyle Tucker going to the Dodgers means a lot more people are going to get to enjoy seeing Kyle Tucker play than if he had signed with the Pirates or Marlins or Rays. That seems like a good thing.
In a world of 10,000,000 Yankees fans and 500,000 Marlins fans, is more parity better?
Some degree of parity is necessary to make going to games fun. If every Dodgers/Marlins game was as predictable as a Harlem Globetrotters game, but with all the showmanship of your local CPA firm.
But baseball, as it is now, is famously hard to predict on a single game level. Without revenue sharing, the draft system, etc, maybe it wouldn’t be, and I don’t think we need less parity.
We’ve seen in other sports that two small-market team facing off in a championship and you can measure the yawns on the same scale as a jet engine.
Ultimately, all the money in baseball comes from the fans, whether directly through subscriptions, tickets, or concessions, or indirectly through eyeballs and attention. We should let the teams that more people are excited about do better, while still giving teams with smaller fanbases the opportunity to attract more fans and eyeballs to the game.
Kyle Tucker going to the Dodgers means a lot more people are going to get to enjoy seeing Kyle Tucker play than if he had signed with the Pirates or Marlins or Rays. That seems like a good thing.
Here is possible partial answer to. why PEDs are not given much thought for Andy Pettitte. He was soft throwing lefty whose mid to upper 80s fastball didn't seem to change after use. Makes sense?
The disparity between payroll is getting bigger as well, as teams are ignoring penalties. In 2015, (possibly the last year a smaller budget team won it all) the top ten spending teams spent $1.85 for every dollar the bottom ten spent. In 2025, it was $2.44. Keep in mind that those numbers do NOT include luxury tax penalties, just the money spent on players before the penalties.
This is a 69% increase in 10 years in the gap between the haves and the have nots. That is a significant difference
I have often said (perhaps even here) that Pettitte is just Buehrle on a better team.
Joe- The Fairness thing... is right out of the movie "The Unforgiven"... "Deserve's got nothing to do with it!".
Someone here did write about the Miami Market and i wondered myself - there's plenty to be had down there in terms of a large city awaiting a winning team! So i've no feeling for Marlins losses (W/L or $)!
So it appears the Dodgers are the new Evil Empire! But the Dodgers also produce good farm talent. And like all teams, have some dead money invested on players. And somehow, they still make the best use of acquiring new talent! Baseball hasn't had a dynasty in quite awhile - maybe it's happening ... now!
I understand that revenue sharing and a salary cap won't necessarily solve the problem, but I think that they are vital first steps. They were the steps taken by Pete Rozelle as Commissioner of the NFL that transformed that league and helped it to grow and flourish across the U.S. and abroad. Baseball has hidden behind its unique anti-trust exemption to operate as it did in the 1950s.
The revenue sharing of the NFL encompassed television and gate receipts. I don't know if radio receipts were/are included, but those should be as well. In addition, I believe that the NFL owns the rights to branded merchandise, and nothing would please me more that seeing that the Guardians and Pirates are getting some benefit out of all those Yankee caps, jerseys, sweatshirts, and other swag that you see in every major city in the world.
The owners also need to be persuaded - even if it takes a diplomat like Vito Corleone to assist - to spend a minimum portion of their revenue on personnel (perhaps after they have paid a small percentage to the taxpayers who funded their palaces). I believe that Dodger Stadium, Wrigley Field, and Fenway Park are the only MLB stadia that were privately funded, so they shouldn't have to pay the levy.
This plan would require a strong Commissioner, a team of lawyers, and the support of lovers of baseball as America's "national pastime". Vito Corleone might not be available, but you and Kevin Costner might be able to persuade football fan Donald J. Trump that making baseball great again should play a key role in making America great again.
Joe, the fairness issue for me, comes down to this: when we grew up watching baseball, we loved our hometown team, but we loved the players on that team even more. As a kid in Cleveland in the 60's, you'd better believe I loved Sam McDowell, Luis Tiant and that group; that morphed into Len Barker, and, yes, Duane Kuiper, Joe Carter and Joe Charbonneau. Eventually, we zeroed in on Albert Belle, Carlos Baerga and Kenny Lofton. Where things started to go south was when Belle, Manny, and co. just LEFT. Why? Because the Indians could not pay them what the market said they were worth. When Francisco Lindor left, it all broke for me. The teams ask you to fall in love with the PLAYERS, not the team name (Tribe/Guards) or logo (the Chief or, now, statues next to a bridge). But the system is designed to ensure that players we fall in love with end up playing for other teams. Oh, it is possible that undervalued franchises can put it all together for a year, maybe two. And maybe the Indians/Guardians can play against the Cubs in a World Series. But that all seems so unlikely when every major star from Japan or other teams never even REMOTELY has a chance to land on the home squad. Imagine how Tigers fans feel now, about to lose Tarik Skubal? I don't have to imagine, I already know.
"Because the Indians could not pay them what the market said they were worth"
I think you meant to say "Because the Indians chose not pay them what the market said they were worth."
Fair point, but there is not much doubt that the coffer balances in Cleveland and Detroit, Pittsburgh and KC are not what they are in NY, LA and Boston. The current Guardians owner seems to think he owes no duty to the fans to operate at a loss.
The good thing about what the Dodgers do is it has no effect at all on the Angels.
We can talk about salary caps and revenue sharing until we're blue in the face, but at the end of the day, I just don't see how any serious person could argue against there being ten or so owners that just aren't making a serious effort to build a winning franchise. Whether that's because they themselves don't have the financial resources or they don't care or both, I don't know.
But until that's resolved, CBA discussions aren't worth much more than rearranging furniture.
The Marlins have a still-new, publicly-funded downtown ballpark in the sixth-largest metro area in the country. It's no one's fault but current and past ownership's that they have the lowest valuation of any franchise in the league. Their ownership needs to either get serious about trying to win baseball games or sell the team to someone who will. Similar things could be said about several other franchises.
Profit cap for owners.
I think it was Joe or maybe another baseball writer I follow that suggested this, though it may have been tongue in cheek.
Any profit above the cap including ballpark mall zones is split between the city that provided tax breaks or public funds and the players and staff. We just need Rickey back to grant every last staff member a full share.
When exactly was the time when the rich MLB teams *didn't* dominate the poor teams? Why are people wringing their hands over the Dodgers, when they have not, and will not, dominate MLB to even close the extent as a certain team did in the 20s through 60s? When was MLB fair?
I think franchise valuations is a misleading figure, but I'm glad you touched on the real issue: revenue. All of these owners, in every sport, are just spending some percentage of the money that the team brings in. The NFL feels fair because teams share 100% of the revenue. It's not the salary cap; it's that everybody starts with the same basic pool of resources. In the NFL, a team from Cleveland can give out the biggest contract in the history of the sport (and have it blow up in their face). That would be functionally impossible in baseball.
The Dodgers don't spend more money than anybody else because they have benevolent owners. They spend more because they make far more money than anybody else (except the Yankees). Their owners are giving out these big contracts and STILL pulling in huge profits. If you want baseball to feel fair, we don't need a salary cap; we need to fix the revenue disparities and the institute a salary floor to make sure the small-market clubs spend it.
A higher percentage of MLB teams have reached the World Series since 2014 than the percentage of NFL teams that have reached the Super Bowl since 2014.
And ... either the Chiefs or Patriots have played in the AFC Championship game each year since 2011
People love to tout this statistic, but I don’t think it speaks to how fair the sports feel. I think it speaks mostly to how the margins between baseball teams is generally slim. The winning percentage gap between a 62-100 team and a 100-62 team is much smaller than the gap between a 3-14 team and a 14-3 team. Because this gap is smaller, MLB playoffs are more prone to randomness. It’s also way harder for one player to (a Mahomes or Brady to your point) to have an outsized influence on playoff results.
Do you honestly think baseball feels as fair as the other sports? I certainly don’t. So why do I feel that way even though the list of championship round participants is more varied? Here a few hypotheses: I would guess there’s less turnover year to year in who makes the playoffs in baseball than in other sports. The NFL famously has only about a 50% retention rate in playoff teams. I have no idea what baseball’s is.
Because individual players mean more in other sports, I think there’s always the hope of being one player away. Look at Drake Maye and New England this year. I don’t think bottom five baseball teams feel like they can be saved by just one team. It also probably matters that the draft is much more immediate in other sports than baseball.
Lastly, for small market teams I think there’s a special sense of despair knowing that homegrown players so often leave once their arbitration years end. In the NFL, and team can retain their young players throughout their prime. In the NBA with Bird rights, homegrown players are incentivized to stay. That’s simply not true in MLB.
Another factor that incentivises the poorer teams in the Premiere League is relegation.
There are clearly a handful of MLB teams that don't try to win and don't try to appease fans and don't try to hold onto players beyond service time.
Relegation may not work in MLB, but perhaps the last place team loses their first round draft pick.
It makes tanking a little harder as you have to at least try a little. Or they don't get a revenue share or they lose a share of the media deal. Gotta spend money to make money as they say.
I also think homegrown extensions shouldn't count against the luxury tax or whatever type of salary cap is being considered.
It seems the most crying is when the Dodgers or back when the Yankees signed everyone elses free agents. I look at the Dodgers roster and the big salaries are not homegrown guys. Even key guys like Teoscar and Muncy came from other teams.
Just maybe an owner will spend some money on their homegrown players if it doesn't cost them extra for rising over a salary threshold.
As a fan, if I have to care about my team’s ownership’s willingness / ability to spend money, you’ve pretty much lost me. Whoever is to blame for the structure in MLB that has led to this - and I think it’s mostly the owners - this is the problem. Fans of the Dodgers or whatever other big money team can say that the Pirates or Reds have more money but aren’t willing to spend it but that’s beside the point. Fans have virtually no way to impact who owns their team or how willing they are to spend money, unless a large number boycott the team, which isn’t happening. And if it did the owner would just move the team citing lack of fan support.
Do Steeler or Bengal fans need to care much about the net worth of the Rooney or Brown families relative to the Kroenke or Spanos ownership groups in LA? Not much if at all.
Can anyone imagine a board game like Monopoly having rules where all the players started off with different amounts of money, and the player with the most started off with 4x the player with the least? Sounds a lot like the real world, which I don’t think is what games or sports are looking to emulate.
In a world of 10,000,000 Yankees fans and 500,000 Marlins fans, is more parity better?
Some degree of parity is necessary to make going to games fun. If every Dodgers/Marlins game was as predictable as a Harlem Globetrotters game, but with all the showmanship of your local CPA firm.
But baseball, as it is now, is famously hard to predict on a single game level. Without revenue sharing, the draft system, etc, maybe it wouldn’t be, and I don’t think we need less parity.
We’ve seen in other sports that two small-market team facing off in a championship and you can measure the yawns on the same scale as a jet engine.
Ultimately, all the money in baseball comes from the fans, whether directly through subscriptions, tickets, or concessions, or indirectly through eyeballs and attention. We should let the teams that more people are excited about do better, while still giving teams with smaller fanbases the opportunity to attract more fans and eyeballs to the game.
Kyle Tucker going to the Dodgers means a lot more people are going to get to enjoy seeing Kyle Tucker play than if he had signed with the Pirates or Marlins or Rays. That seems like a good thing.
In a world of 10,000,000 Yankees fans and 500,000 Marlins fans, is more parity better?
Some degree of parity is necessary to make going to games fun. If every Dodgers/Marlins game was as predictable as a Harlem Globetrotters game, but with all the showmanship of your local CPA firm.
But baseball, as it is now, is famously hard to predict on a single game level. Without revenue sharing, the draft system, etc, maybe it wouldn’t be, and I don’t think we need less parity.
We’ve seen in other sports that two small-market team facing off in a championship and you can measure the yawns on the same scale as a jet engine.
Ultimately, all the money in baseball comes from the fans, whether directly through subscriptions, tickets, or concessions, or indirectly through eyeballs and attention. We should let the teams that more people are excited about do better, while still giving teams with smaller fanbases the opportunity to attract more fans and eyeballs to the game.
Kyle Tucker going to the Dodgers means a lot more people are going to get to enjoy seeing Kyle Tucker play than if he had signed with the Pirates or Marlins or Rays. That seems like a good thing.