MLB revenue disparity and its impact on competition

[jjgott]

Relevant column on ESPN: https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/39465574/baseball-payroll-gap-mlb-polarization-index

 

Baseball has never really been a sport in which you'd enter a season by saying "everyone has a chance," and it never will be. But it's closer to that than it ever has been, especially if you widen your lens from any one season to that of a decade.

The longest playoff drought in the majors is just nine years, a mark held by the Tigers and Angels. While those have surely felt like nine long years for fans of those teams, think about what that means: Every single MLB franchise has made the playoffs during the past decade. Whatever you think about team spending or the playoff format, that's something.

This offseason has been a little weird, one that has featured the landmark contract in sports (Shohei Ohtani) but has also seen defending division champs tightening their proverbial belts. If you feel like the game has become a little more polarized, it has. But that polarization is not historically extreme, not yet. Even better, as things progress, it might not last.

[Ignitor 4ever]

That is definitely one thing that baseball has figured out, i.e. expanding the playoffs.  I think back to the 1992 season and how hot the Brewers were down the stretch.  Under the modern playoff format that team makes the playoffs and who knows what happens.  It was very frustrating at that time as a small market fan to watch your team have a good season and still not have the satisfaction of seeing your team in the playoffs when the NFL allowed (at that time) 6 teams per conference in and the NBA and NHL allowed 8.  

The large market teams that have all the cash and sign most of the stars will usually rise to the top over the course of a 162 game season, but the expanded playoffs allow a small market team to get in now too and (possibly) catch fire in the playoffs and win it all.  It at least has given hope where they used to be almost no hope.

[Samurai Bucky]

4 hours ago, jjgott said:

The longest playoff drought in the majors is just nine years, a mark held by the Tigers and Angels. While those have surely felt like nine long years for fans of those teams, think about what that means: Every single MLB franchise has made the playoffs during the past decade. Whatever you think about team spending or the playoff format, that's something.

This offseason has been a little weird, one that has featured the landmark contract in sports (Shohei Ohtani) but has also seen defending division champs tightening their proverbial belts. If you feel like the game has become a little more polarized, it has. But that polarization is not historically extreme, not yet. Even better, as things progress, it might not last.

If the goal of MLB is to "[make] the playoffs," then there should be no complaints.  If the goal is to have a chance to win a World Series or, maybe, appear in one, then there is understandable frustration.

[Playing Catch]

9 minutes ago, Samurai Bucky said:

If the goal of MLB is to "[make] the playoffs," then there should be no complaints.  If the goal is to have a chance to win a World Series or, maybe, appear in one, then there is understandable frustration.

Or even, what if the goal was to provide an entertaining product on the field featuring a couple of big stars on your team? Obviously, that isn't possible.

In both the NFL and NBA, regardless of the size of the media market, a team can pay their homegrown stars competitively. In baseball, this isn't practical for teams to do. You can't have one or two players eating up 75% of the payroll without that having a very negative impact on your team's competitiveness, which is part of the overall entertainment package.

[Baldkin]

If you change the context from "Making the playoffs" to "Winning a playoff series" (non wildcard game) or "Winning a division" the landscape looks much different. 

We're looking at 3 teams with 30 year droughts of winning their division, 7 total with more than 12 years since a division title.

1/3rd of the league hasn't been into the League Championship series for more than a decade. 

[owbc]

4 minutes ago, Baldkin said:

If you change the context from "Making the playoffs" to "Winning a playoff series" (non wildcard game) or "Winning a division" the landscape looks much different. 

We're looking at 3 teams with 30 year droughts of winning their division, 7 total with more than 12 years since a division title.

1/3rd of the league hasn't been into the League Championship series for more than a decade. 

In the last decade, the Astros have dominated the AL and the Dodgers have dominated the NL. 

Besides those two teams, nobody has been to the LCS more than twice in the last decade. 

I don't really know what to say about the franchises that are either poorly managed or not really trying or both. All sports have such franchises and no system is going to help them. 

So the biggest issue is perhaps with the Astros and Dodgers, who have both been mowing down decent teams in the early rounds of the playoffs. In other sports, they might have found themselves in salary cap hell by now, but in baseball they have been able to build off of their success and gain even more of an advantage. 

But for every Astros and Dodgers team, there are a bunch of others who made two LCS appearances in a short span and then faded back to mediocrity. That's probably the ideal setup from a fan perspective. 

So I guess the question comes down to whether superteams are going to continue to eat up like half of the LCS spots or not...