King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Trade deadline stunner: The Yankees get big star Bobby Abreu for some magic beans. So the system's working, right?

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July 31, 2006 | What a shock! The New York Yankees have made the biggest deal at the trading deadline, snagging the expensive All-Star who could have helped any number of contending teams.

The biggest deal so far, that is. With about four hours to go until the 4 p.m. EDT non-waiver trading deadline, teams are still talking, rumors are still flying, small deals are still being made -- Sean Casey to Detroit! Kyle Lohse and Rheal Cormier to Cincinnati! -- and Alfonso Soriano is still a Washington National.

The Yankees got outfielder Bobby Abreu from the Philadelphia Phillies Sunday, and also right-handed starter Cory Lidle. In return, the Phils got Matt Smith, a 27-year-old career minor leaguer who appeared in 12 games for the big club this year, plus three minor league players, none of whom is a top prospect.

And more important for the Phillies, Philadelphia freed up almost $20 million it would have spent on Lidle and Abreu the rest of this season and next.

This is pretty much a classic case of what's wrong with baseball's economic system. The Yankees, breaking no rules, have a monstrous advantage over everybody else because the franchise is a well-run business that's capitalized on its opportunities for huge profits and is willing to plow all of those profits back into the on-field product, unlike a lot of teams. Most teams. Maybe all teams.

Baseball can deal with this by coming up with an economic system that better evens the playing field. It can do that by increasing the percentage of revenue shared and basing the payouts on market size, a team's handicap in potential income, rather than revenue, a team's ability to mismanage its opportunities into lower revenue and more revenue-sharing payments.

It could introduce a third team to the New York market to cut down on the Yankees' -- and the Mets -- tremendous market-size advantage. Or it could even help matters by taking smaller steps, like allowing teams to trade draft choices as they do in other sports. Without that ability, the Phillies had to settle for B and C prospects from the Yankees, rather than draft picks that might have had a better chance of turning into big-league stars.

All of these solutions face either political obstacles among the owners, collective-bargaining obstacles with the players or both. But it doesn't really matter. Major League Baseball isn't particularly inclined to deal with this problem because as the Yankees -- and, lately, the Boston Red Sox -- go, so goes MLB, businesswise.

So what baseball has is enough revenue sharing to keep the Kansas City Royals of the world in the cellar unless they're run perfectly, brilliantly, and a luxury tax designed specifically to keep the Yankees from lapping the field in payroll.

"Here's your luxury tax," Yankees owner George Steinbrenner says to commissioner Bud Selig, derisively flipping wads of $100 bills at Selig's chest.

Next page: On the field, the Yanks just got a whole lot better