MLB’s egalitarian capitalism

There is a persistent myth that you just have to spend more than other organizations to “buy” a championship in the MLB. However, this is not entirely the case.

The three teams with the most expensive rosters in major league baseball, the New York Mets, the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers, reached the championship series this fall. Among these big players, the Cleveland Guardians, who have the 23rd payroll in the MLB, play the role of the guy who arrives at a gala evening dressed in jeans and a checkered shirt.

On the surface, the connection between an owner’s dollars spent and his team’s success on the field is easy to make. Obviously, a team’s ability to consistently hire the best players available does not detract from the quality of a team. But at the end of the day, you still have to win matches when it matters most.

In the fall of 2020, when New York billionaire Steve Cohen acquired the Mets, a strong wave of panic blew among the owners of the 29 other MLB teams. Everyone feared that Cohen, whose controversial career inspired the television series Billionsshattered the economic system of baseball by starting to spend even more excessively than the biggest spenders in the brotherhood.

Indeed, the Mets’ payroll gradually increased from $146.8 million in 2019 (13th) to $343.6 million in 2023 (1st), before being reduced to $317 million this year. However, unless his players prove otherwise in the coming weeks, Steve Cohen still does not have a title in his pocket and his team has not yet participated in the World Series.

There is no salary cap in the MLB (although a luxury tax has been imposed on the biggest spending teams since 1997). For this reason, many sports fans believe that capitalism that occurs in baseball creates a greater disparity than the systems socialists of the NFL, NBA and NHL, where organizations must comply with salary caps.

However, this is not at all the case.

Considering that the goal of a professional league is to sell the dream of a championship in as many cities as possible, one could argue that in the dream situation, different teams would reach the finals each year. If this is the case, then it can be argued that the MLB is the fairest of the four major North American professional leagues.

Over the past 10 years, in an ideal scenario, proponents of a perfectly balanced league would have seen 20 different teams face off in the finals. And by the same token, 10 different champions would have been crowned. However, the reality on the ground produced this instead:

• In the NBA, only 10 teams have made the Finals in the last 10 seasons. And the same team, the Golden State Warriors, has won the title on four occasions.
• In the NFL, 11 different teams have participated in the Super Bowl. And during these 10 years, two organizations (the New England Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs) stood out by winning three titles each.
• In the NHL, where general managers are subject to the most restrictive salary cap in North American professional sports, 14 different teams have made the Stanley Cup Final and two organizations, the Pittsburgh Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning, have won the title more than once.
• In the MLB, even though fewer teams make the playoffs than in the other three leagues, they have still managed to produce 14 different finalists over the previous 10 seasons. And only one team, the Houston Astros, has managed to be crowned champion twice. It should be noted that the New York Yankees, who are systematically among the biggest spending organizations in the MLB, have not participated in the World Series for… 15 years!

Open in full screen mode

Everyone agrees that the Pittsburgh Pirates will never make the playoffs as often as the New York Yankees, whose fame and market size are literally the equivalent of owning a money printing machine.

But in the end, the skill and creativity of managers of smaller organizations still very often manage to supplant the spending capacity of the biggest guns in the MLB.

This is particularly why over the last 10 years, the Tampa Rays (5 times) have participated in the playoffs more often than the New York Mets (4 times) and the Boston Red Sox (4 times). ).

And that’s why the Cleveland Guardians, even if they’re not very glamourare in their 6th appearance in the playoffs in 10 years and their 4th participation in the American League final.

There is something beautiful and comforting about that.