JP Morosi- MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL: THE STANDARD BEARER OF PARITY IN PRO SPORTS

[ledzepp8]

Yea its also tough to talk about parity when the Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals, and Giants seem to win the WS every year.

Not to mention over those 15 years there have only been 3 times when a team other than the Red Sox or Yankees have won the AL East.

Pretty much. I cringe when anyone wants to try and claim MLB has parity. Leagues with parity don't have particular teams not make the playoffs from 1985 to 2014, or teams lose for 14 years in a row, or have the same 5 teams out of 30 win 10 of 15 World Series.

[ledzepp8]

Or have only three occurrences in the last 20 years of a team not from Boston or New York winning the AL East. There might be more parity in MLB than we realize, but it's hard to see that playing in this division. So it's hard to hear people argue that.

[DrungoHazewood]

Congrats baseball, you have achieved your version of parity which is not the result of a balanced playing field but instead due at least in part to the mismanagement of heavily unbalanced revenue streams. Kudos.

Baseball has a long history of locally generated revenues, rigidly enforced territorial boundaries, minimal revenue sharing, and no salary restraints. That's the model that was set up over a century ago. That led to some teams generating more dollars and more success than others, which led to purchase prices and franchise values set at a level based on that model. It's very difficult for the owners to tell other owners that they're changing that model to be more "fair" and one result of that would be that big market teams would see their revenues and franchise valuations fall. That would be a protracted battle that would certainly spill over into the courts and most definitely be a huge story in the news for a long time. That's the only way a new financial model could happen, one that incorporated some version of across-the-board revenue sharing or salary caps or more free franchise movement.

So, Bud and his pals saw the near-impossibility of installing a more NFL-like model in MLB and took the path of much less resistance - expanding the playoffs and essentially randomizing the Championship. And it's more-or-less worked. In the 1950s the Yanks were in the World Series almost every year, today they're in the Series much less often even with a payroll that's six or eight times that of the Astros or Marlins.

[LookitsPuck]

I think we can all agree that having wildcards assure that multiple teams get hot and can advance that would not be figured to do so.

Exactly. And how often do mediocre teams (based on record) or terrible teams (based on record) make the playoffs in the NFL? I don't call that parity, I call that mediocrity. Short schedule, luck plays. A lot of playoff teams....easy to get in.

I don't understand why people applaud the NFL outside of their salary cap/floor. The league is a joke.