Salary Cap for Baseball

Another winter of “big-money free agents” is shifting the balance of power in both leagues somewhat, but there continues to be one constant in the free agency game; the domination of the large market franchises upon the game of baseball. This winter Mike Mussina, top pitcher on the free-agent market and the New York Yankees, baseball's most successful team, agreed to a six-year contract worth and unbelievable 88.5 million dollars. Manny Ramirez requested a 10 year 200 million dollar deal this past month. This would make him the highest paid player in baseball history. Whatever happened to playing baseball merely for the love of the game? Large market ball clubs such as the Yankees and Braves are dominating baseball with small market teams having no chance of competing or making it to the postseason. If this continues small market teams such as the Expos, Pirates, and Twins may have to move to new cities or even fold their franchises.

What Major League Baseball needs to do is establish a salary cap. A salary cap is a maximum dollar amount teams can spend on player contracts. A salary cap is necessary to maintain competitive balance in the league. Without a salary cap, large market teams, other wise know as the teams wit

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Baseball needs to establish a salary cap for the sake of competition; so all teams have at least some chance at competing for a world’s championship. With some of the games elite players such as Roger Clemens, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Dave Justice, Bernie Williams, and with the recent signing of Mike Mussina there is no surprise that the Yankees' annual payroll sits just below 100 million dollars, or roughly the gross national product of Uruguay. It is unfair that some major league teams can pay bigger salaries than other teams for the sake of competition. Can you imagine the Montreal Expos with the money to keep their former stars? Imagine a team with Randy Johnson, John Wetteland, Andres Galarraga, Moises Alou, and Larry Walker.

Major League Baseball is in desperate need of a salary cap because baseball player’s salaries are becoming extremely high. Do you strangle a person's ability to earn as much as they can for the sake of overall league competition, or do you allow the free market to perform and shy away from the might is right principles?

Baseball needs a salary cap to increase competition and that’s the bottom line. Where there isn't a team in the league that doesn't look for ways to manipulate the system to its advantage. In fact many teams go into spring training knowing they have no chance to win their division and in many cases their goal is not to finish last. The Marlins went from “big spenders” to “penny pinchers” in as little as a few months. Who is to say that big-revenue teams do not dominate, where spending money translates into winning baseball games, with the small market teams hanging on for dear life? In fact, of all the World Series winners in the '90s, only the Reds were not among the top five in payroll (Dorsey). There should be a salary cap so that all major league baseball teams have the same size payroll. According to Stan Savran, the co-host of SportsBeat on Fox Sports Pittsburgh, a salary cap is not a solution for baseball. When Kevin Brown signed a one hundred five million dollar contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers it brought an economic disparity to the forefront of baseball, separating the free-spenders from the small market frugal franchises (Dubow). What we have now in baseball, all sports really, is players don't trust owners, owners don't trust players' unions, and most importantly, owners don't trust their fellow owners.

Approximate Word count = 1782
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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