Taking baseball owners at their word

If competitive balance is the main issue in the contract talks, why does their main proposal address payroll imbalance?

By King Kaufman

July 23, 2002 | Let's do something I pretty much never do. Let's take what baseball's owners are saying at face value.

"All of our proposals are directed at the issue of competitive balance," says Bob DuPuy, the president and chief operating officer of Major League Baseball and commissioner Bud Selig's right-hand man.

There are various and sundry issues on the table as baseball's labor negotiations drag toward Sept. 16, which has reportedly been targeted by the players association as a strike date: drug testing, a worldwide amateur draft, even contraction. It's safe to say, though, that these issues can be negotiated away if the big issue is resolved, and the big issue is money.

The owners say that baseball is going broke and teams are in danger of going bankrupt, and that the big problem in baseball is that low-revenue teams can't compete with high-revenue teams. (This is sometimes stated as small-market and large-market teams, though teams have a way of moving from one group to the other based on rhetorical need.) Low-budget, small-market teams, the argument goes, have no way to compete with rich, free-spending teams -- here the New York Yankees are always cited -- and fans of those less fortunate teams therefore have no hope of seeing their boys succeed, and no incentive to hang around as fans.

The argument of the players association can be reduced to: We don't negotiate salaries, which are between the teams and individual players. What we want is to make sure that no artificial upper limit is placed on how much players may earn. Let the free market set player salaries, just as it does the profits of the owners, who charge fans and television and radio outlets what the market will bear for their product.

But what about this competitive balance thing? "In the last five years -- since the last [collective bargaining agreement] -- you've seen the numbers," DuPuy told Baseball America this month. "Two hundred twenty-five playoff games, and only five won by teams in the bottom half of payroll. Not a single World Series game has been won other than by teams in the top quartile of payroll."

First of all, I'd argue that even with the extra round of playoffs that were added in 1994, baseball's playoff system is small enough and its regular season long and meaningful enough that citing playoff wins is not an accurate measure of determining which teams are competitive. Unlike in basketball or hockey, where more than half the teams make the playoffs and even mediocre clubs win a few playoff games most years, you can be competitive in baseball without winning many, or any, postseason games.

For example, look at the San Francisco Giants, a team that was fifth in the 16-team National League and 10th in the 30-team major leagues in Opening Day payroll this year, which is about where they usually are. The Giants have won one playoff game since 1989. But over the last five years, they've won two division titles and finished second three times. They've finished first or second in their division eight of the last 13 years. As of Monday morning, they were second in the N.L. West, one game out, in a three-team dogfight with Arizona and Los Angeles, the loser of which will likely be the Wild Card playoff team. In short, they're consistently competitive. Their fans reasonably expect them to compete for the championship each year and are rarely disappointed. It's pretty fun to be a Giants fan. I ought to know because I am one.

Next page: Does payroll matter more in October?