When We Get Rid Of "Competitive Imbalance", Every Team Will Finish .500 (Yay!)

Major League Baseball wants its fans to believe in parity, that every team begins the season with a chance to win the World Series. The ever-expanding playoffs help promote that belief; 12 teams will make the postseason this year — three division winners and three wild-card teams in each league. More teams in contention late into the season might provide the illusion of competitive balance.

But careful observers — including players — know only a handful of teams are competing for championships and that some, by lagging far behind in payroll, are virtually eliminating themselves from contention before the season begins.

That's how Washington Post sportswriter Neil Greenberg begins his April 1 article headlined: "Baseball's Competitive Balance Problem Is Getting Worse".

Articles like this are far from rare. Sportswriters bemoan the state of the modern game: Teams that "spend lavishly on payroll" are "the teams likely to compete for the World Series title". And "small-market clubs" (the definition of which changes depending on who is making the argument) cannot keep up and now "the gap between them and their free-spending counterparts is wider than ever".

Yes, well, when has that not been the case? Has there ever been a season in which teams with more money and a willingness to spend it are less likely to improve? Forget about baseball. Apply that to life. Does someone with a lot of money have more options that someone with no money? (Could I have typed out a dumber, more obvious, question?)

Greenberg has various factoids showing how "competitive imbalance" in baseball is bad (and getting worse):

The gap between the highest and lowest spenders in MLB is more than double that of the NBA and more than triple that of the NHL and NFL. Each of those other leagues uses a salary cap (and a cap floor) to encourage parity. . . .

Since the Florida Marlins won the 2003 World Series with a payroll that ranked 25th in the majors, every subsequent champion has ranked 18th or higher, with 11 of the past 18 winners spending enough to land in the top 10. Over the past five seasons, the World Series champions have ranked 11th, second, seventh, first and 17th. . . .

Last season, the teams in the top half of MLB payroll averaged 87 wins; the bottom half averaged 75. Eight playoff teams [out of 10] emerged from the top half . . .

So seven of the last 18 World Series winners (almost 40%) has had a payroll no higher than 11th? That's actually pretty impressive.

Greenberg closes with this: "It won't be hard to figure out which teams are in contention — and which are out of it — before the first pitch of Opening Day."

You don't have to be what Greenberg calls a "careful observer" to know "only a handful of teams are competing for championships" while some clubs are "virtually eliminat[ed] . . . before the season begins". (I mean, is anyone putting money on the Orioles to win the World Series?)

Again, how does this situation differ from every other season in major league history?

There was a stretch of 39 years (1926-1964) when the Yankees finished lower than third place in the American League only once. A fan of a rival team could have just become a teenager (13) when that streak started and be a grandfather (52) when it ended. Christ, those fuckers won 14 pennants (and nine championships) in a 16-season period (1949-64).

On the other side of the slate, the Athletics finished in the top half of the AL (what was called "the first division") twice in 35 years (1934-68); both times, they were 4th in the eight-team AL, still not exactly in contention.

Starting in 1922, the Red Sox finished (again, among eight teams) 8th, 8th, 7th, 8th, 8th, 8th, 8th, 8th, 8th, 6th, 8th. How many people do you think considered them a serious contender in 1933? Hopefully, not too many, because they finished 7th.

So exactly when was this time of competitive balance that Greenberg et al. want to go back to?

Before every single season, you can point to many teams that clearly have no chance of being in contention. If all teams had an equal shot in 2022, you'd see as many people picking the Diamondbacks to win the NL West as the Dodgers.

Major League Baseball is far from perfect. It has always suffered from myriad problems and imperfections (many of them self-inflicted). Some "small-market" clubs are in that category solely because their extremely wealthy owners refuse to put money into their teams, not because of any geographical or population reasons.

But the people wishing the sport could go back to an earlier period in which competitive balance did not exist (or was not such a glaring issue) are like the people who long for a leader to make America great again, who believe the country would thrive if it got back to the "good old days". It's a fantasy. Those days never existed.