This is a column I did for digitalsportsdaily.com about the recent tiff between Mark Attanasio, the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, and Randy Levine, the President of the New York Yankees. I thought it was a topic piece for the Phillies, as they have gone from being a team that can’t compete financially to a team with the fourth largest payroll in the major leagues.
It’s baseball’s version of the boy who cried wolf.
Small market team complains that they cannot compete with big market team (usually the New York Yankees) when trying to sign the better free agents, or keep their own star players. It happens every year. It stopped being interesting or newsworthy a long time ago.
Until the big bad wolf decided to finally speak up and say, enough is enough.
That is what Yankees’ President Randy Levine did in response to comments made by Milwaukee Brewers’ owner Mark Attanasio on Monday in a USA Today story. Attanasio said, “We’re struggling to sign (Prince Fielder) and the Yankees infield is making more” than the entire Brewers roster.
The comments by Attanasio, whose team plays in the second smallest media market in the majors, apparently struck a nerve with Levine.
“As I’ve said, Mark’s a good friend, but he needs to stop whining and complaining about our player payroll,” Levine told the New York Daily News. “We play by all the rules, and we always have. We’ve contributed hundreds of millons of dollars in revenue sharing and no one complains when they get the money.
“But use that money to sign your players. Period. As you notice, the complaining always comes from others, not from us.”
The flip side complaint to the argument that the Yankees get all the girls is that they pay a lot of money to the smaller clubs through revenue sharing, and that those teams should spend that money on their roster, and not things like paying down debt on new stadiums (ala the Pittsburgh Pirates).
The Yankees have reportedly paid almost $175 million in luxury taxes since it went into effect seven years ago. According to the Daily News, that is more than 90 percent of all revenue sharing that’s been paid by major league teams.
I’m not trying to make the case that the Brewers, as a result of revenue sharing, operate on a even playing field as the Yankees or Boston Red Sox, or even the Chicago Cubs, who play in their division. But I don’t get the complaining about the Yankees. The only thing that will ever level that playing field is a salary cap, which the MLB Player’s Association will never agree to. So now what?
Are the Yankees supposed to not go out and sign CC Sabathia or Mark Texieira because they feel bad for the Brewers? The Yankees are at a huge financial advantage, absolutely, and that stinks for the Brewers and Kansas City Royals and Minnesota Twins, no doubt. But money isn’t everything.
The Philadelphia Phillies, who now have the fourth largest payroll in the majors, won the World Series in 2008 with a team largely made up of homegrown talent. Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Carlos Ruiz, Cole Hamels, Brett Myers and Ryan Madson were all drafted by the Phillies. Other important players, like Jamie Moyer, Shane Victorino, Jayson Werth, Greg Dobbs and J.C. Romero, were all acquired without spending much money. The only two big money free agent signings were third baseman Pedro Feliz and closer Brad Lidge.
The trendy symbol of how money isn’t everything these days is the Phillies’ 2008 World Series opponent, the Tampa Bay Rays. This is a team that is chock full of homegrown talent. The only reason they aren’t more competitive is because they play in the toughest division in sports right now. If the Rays played in the weak NL Central, they would compete for the division every year, and certainly for the Wild Card.
Now keeping your homegrown talent is certainly a problem for the small market teams and the Phillies have certainly spent some money to keep theirs in place, as well as to supplement it with the best pitcher in baseball. But it is possible to be successful and not spend a ton of money.
Just ask the Florida Marlins, who have won the World Series twice since entering the majors in 1993. And by the way, that is the same number of World Series titles as the Phillies and the Chicago Cubs, both of whom are original National League teams. Yea, the Marlins were widely ridiculed after they held fire-sales immediately after each title, but it’s hard to argue with their success.
My point is that while the Brewers may not be able to re-sign CC Sabathia when he is looking for record money, and the Yankees are, they don’t necessarily need to. What they should do is spend their money on scouting and the draft, and save a little for those important free agent signings (Victorino, Werth). They should draft Sabathia in the first place. And then when he decides he wants more money than they can afford, trade him for a bundle of draft picks, and draft the next Sabathia.
I don’t know what the Brewers spend their money on, nobody does. Revenue sharing figures are not public knowledge. In response to Levine, Attanasio retorted that, “We do get a piece of revenue sharing. We appreciate it, and we need it, and we use it. We use pretty much all of our revenue-sharing dollars every year within our budget to put our team on the field. Our payroll is in the high 80 [million-dollar range].
“If you had access to the records, you would see that this organization spends its revenue-sharing dollars.”
Regardless of how they do spend their money, complaining about how the Yankees spend their money is not going to help the Brewers win their first World Series championship in team history.
It’s just going to anger the big bad wolf.
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