I remember most discussions this time last year putting the Yankees 3rd in their own division. As an NL East fan, I remember most people thinking they’d finish 3rd in that division too, behind the Phillies and the Mets.

Given the article’s point about winning every so often but not always combined with playoff drama, I assume it’s now little different from being a Cards or Sox fan, who’ve had similar postseason experiences over the last decade. You know you’re going to contend, and you hope you dominate. Any fan of the top-tier teams has plenty to root for.

As a Nats fan, I’m not going to begrudge those fanbases and want them torn down to the level of my miserable team. Instead, I’m going to flog the Selig flunky of an owner we’ve got with fact-based criticism in hopes that he prefers spending some dough to being a laughingstock.

I’m a Nationals fan. (OK, you can stop laughing now.) The owner of my team, real estate magnate Ted Lerner, has more money than any other owner in baseball. He could not only spend on par with the Yankees, he could charge ticket prices within shouting distance of the New Yankee Stadium were the Nats a playoff contender. (For proof of this, check out not only the Skins’ history of high-priced ticket and luxury suite sales but the number of sellouts that occur when either the Caps or Wizards sniff respectability.) Yankees or no Yankees, the current baseball structure would allow the Nats to contend for a title. For instance, the Nationals could easily have afforded bettering all offers for John Lackey, Matt Holliday and Orlando Hudson, who along with some other vet depth and rotation help could take the team towards respectability while some of the minor league talent and recent draft picks like Strasburg continued to develop and emerge over the next couple of years.

However, Lerner was put into place as Nats owner precisely because his close personal friend Bud Selig knew that Lerner viewed his ownership solely as a diversification of his and his family’s wealth. Lerner said as much after buying the team, calling the Nats a “family legacy” rather than highlighting the chance to create a winning ballclub in Washington. Selig cut off bidding at $450 million despite multiple offers from other groups that were above $600 million and promised to climb higher, awarding the team to his handpicked friend. Lerner immediately showed his true colors after getting the team, griping about free agent salaries as if someone had held a gun to his head to buy the team. Selig received the power to name the owner (and avoid giving it to someone who might have run the team with a competitive payroll) thanks to MLB’s dubious stewardship over the Expos. It was the Expos’ relocation mess that allowed Selig to further mold ownership situations to his liking, many of which were in smaller markets looking for new stadiums.

In the mid 1990s, the Pirates had played out multiple ownership scenarios and couldn’t find an owner willing to pay market value to keep the team in Pittsburgh. Despite several offers from outside parties willing to buy the Pirates were they able to move the team if a new stadium wasn’t built, Selig chose to allow Kevin McClatchy to leverage the 5% of the asking price he put down in acting general partnership. McClatchy promised to keep the team in town, but he and subsequent ownership configurations have refused to open their wallets despite a new stadium being built. In KC, a multimillionaire was picked by Selig (under the same ‘no move’ conditions) to be the majority owner for an asking price tens of millions below other offers. Like the Pirates, the team has held payroll down to ridiculous levels as well, pocketing luxury tax dollars (paid primarily by the Yankees) and national TV monies meant to go back into the farm system. (Are you seeing any pattern develop?)

In Minnesota, we had what’s known as another small market team (more appropriately called a mid-market with a Nielsen rank of 15th in the nation and high disposable income demos) actually put its money into its scouting and farm system with good results. However, it wasn’t the Yankees or the market size that kept the team at bottom-feeding status, collecting luxury tax dollars and crying poor while contending for playoff spots. It was Carl Pohlad, an owner worth $1.8 BILLION at the time that he offered his team up for planned contraction by his good friend Bud Selig. This was after years of trying to get the 3rd publicly-funded stadium for the Twins in 4 decades built. Pohlad could’ve put up or cobbled together the money himself a la San Fran all along, yet the Twins went from one dubious scheme to another lest Pohlad be denied the sweetheart deal he wanted.

Any one of these teams could be competitive for multiple seasons at a time if they had ownership willing to build the right way. Vilifying the Yankees and wishing for more and more constraints on them is the built-in excuse by teams who claim to be major league operations but prefer to use their market status to mask ineptitude and cheapness. It’s not the Yankees’ fault that the league over-expanded before allowing relocation to occur and let some markets who’ve been unable to compete at a major-league level lose their teams. Which would’ve been better for Pittsburgh, which had the Pirates looking to move as far back as the 1980s: the current scenario, or losing the team for a time and then having to pull together a committed ownership group with major league dollars behind it and a plan for a new stadium deal and potentially rescue a team from a troubled market like Montreal?

We could start another discussion just on what markets could vie for currently troubled teams, but the main point is this: if enough markets were forced to step up and carry their own weight, their fans would have a chance to see on-field success a lot sooner than if more measures to cut the Yankees payroll are implemented.

My last conversation with a Yankees fan…

So you’re a Yankees fan? You must have been born in NY?
No.
So you just like to root for a winner because you’re only casually interested in baseball?
No… my dad rooted for the Yankees.
So your dad didn’t really like baseball?

That summed up a lot of the Yankee fan dynamic. Disgust with front-running casual fans who think its ‘cool’ to root for the Yanks. Childhood nostalgia for non-NY native fans of the Yanks.

Still, I don’t know how anyone could root for that team. If they win, what’s the payoff? They bought the best players, they should win. Who roots for goliath?

The Yankees never have to start a pitcher who is not at least good in the playoffs. If necessary, they pay a zillion dollars at the trading deadline to have that good #4 or #5 pitcher. They always have that zillion dollars if necessary.

What’s more, before the trading deadline the Yankees have more to spend on player development. They can scout more places. They can compete for players from Cuba, from Japan, from wherever players are signed but not drafted. They always have some prospects in the minor league system, because they have more money to spend there. Maybe they don’t always have the best prospects, because they’ve brought some guys up or had to overpay to get somebody at last year’s deadline, but they have prospects. And when a team is out of contention, and going to fall short of sales projections because (say) Brandon Webb missed the whole season, and the Yankees are offering a bunch of cash and enough prospects to satisfy the fan base (even if they’re not great prospects) then teams will deal rather than lose money on the season and maybe lose the GM his job.

And lets talk about the uncertainty of prospects. A few years ago, the Dodgers traded Milton Bradley for Andre Ethier, and it was generally felt in LA that the Dodgers did so to get rid of personnel problems, not because Ethier was such a great prospect. Good, but definitely no five tool. Two years ago, he was considered to be definitely behind Loney, Kemp, and Martin. Last year and this, Ethier was the outfielder most likely to platoon, at least when Ramirez was on the roster (and after two good RHB outfielders went on the DL while Ramirez was out). Funny thing, though: Ethier won the Silver Slugger, led the team in homers and RBI and doubles, led the majors in walkoff hits. I don’t think it’s that Ethier was ever a bad prospect. It’s just that Ethier kept on getting a little better each year, and Loney didn’t (he possibly moved backwards). I bet most folks would still draft Kemp (who won a Silver Slugger and a Golden Glove, and I spit on all you Victorino voters for the All-Star game) ahead of Ethier. But I somehow suspect Ethier will continue to improve. But I digress.

So the Ethiers of the world show that anybody *can* be a prospect, at least until they’re aging (on the bad side of 28, I’d guess). So having a lot of prospects works. How do you get a lot of prospects? Lots of scouts, lots of signing bonuses, year in, year out. The Yankees have that. They may not have as many sure fire prospects as teams that are always drafting early, but the Yankees don’t lose too many draftees back to college because they didn’t like the contract offer.

In professional sports, the NFL does it right. They cap salaries and they floor salaries. Both numbers are based upon shared revenues. Weaker small market teams can make a profit and have payroll near the floor; if they draft and coach exceptionally well, they can have some winning teams. Bigger market teams can live near the cap, and have generally better players. But any year, there is uncertainty. Tom Brady was a sixth round draft choice. Great players miss some or all of the season from injury. There’s almost as much luck in player development in the NFL as in MLB and there is a lot more injury risk. The one thing that really differentiates the two sports, actually differentiates the NFL from every other team sport, is that a great QB almost guarantees a competitive team. If not competitive, at least exciting to watch. Ernie Banks will make everybody’s short list of best shortstops of all time (while he played shortstop) but he never even reached the World Series. There were a *lot* of great Cubs players in the 1960s who never reached the WS, even though they were all on the team at the same time.

I’d love to see baseball implement a floating ceiling, where everybody gets $X in revenue, and must spend at least Y% of $X in player salaries, and must not exceed Z% of $X. But some revenue can be spent on salaries above and beyond Z% if it reflects effective local marketing. I mean, if baseball puts in revenue sharing, it will mostly be shared from the Yankees to the smaller clubs. That says the Yankees deserve more money in order to continue being the cash cow for the league.