The Brewers' current TV contract is a disaster. They should be getting $60+ million per year from TV and instead they are getting ~$20-25 million. The Reds didn't just decide to spend more money out of nowhere, they signed a new TV deal that gave them $25-30 million more per year of spending money. Maximizing revenue for the sport depends upon the most popular teams being good. There is absolutely no incentive to change that. If the Yankees and Dodgers were perennial last place teams it would be disastrous for MLB's bottom line. The Dodgers' bad ownership situation lasted about 3 seconds when the fans got angry. Nobody cares if a few thousand people in Pittsburgh stop watching baseball. The issue is unique to MLB due to the importance of local TV, hard to compare to other sports.