Chris Bassitt makes argument against salary cap in baseball

Does MLB have better parity than other sports?

The key to Bassitt's argument, and that of many other opponents of a salary cap, is the idea that parity is actually better in baseball than in the other major sports.

On the surface, that might be hard to believe given the spending spree that the Los Angeles Dodgers have been on that has resulted in back-to-back World Series wins. However, based on championship success, there's some merit there. 

Since 2011, or over the last 15 World Series, there have been 10 different World Series winners. Four different winners have multiple World Series wins in that time. In the last 15 seasons, the NFL has had nine different champions, the NBA has had 11, and the NHL has had 10. That puts MLB somewhere in the middle for parity at the championship level.

The problem becomes the bottom half of MLB consisting of the teams that either can't or refuse to pay to acquire and/or retain stars. The group that has effectively no chance on Opening Day. There are 13 teams with a 1.0 percent or less chance to win the World Series as spring training begins. That includes six teams at 0.1 percent or less, per Fangraphs. So, while there is at least some parity at the top, there isn't at the bottom.

"We will make changes to try to help the so-called bottom teams out," Bassitt said. "But a salary cap and suppressing salaries and taking from players to try to help the so-called bottom teams spend more? That’s not the answer. Because if you’re trying to make a competitive league across the board, we have proof that every single league [has] less parity than ours. So how can you sit there and say a salary cap is going to fix this when every single salary cap sport has less parity than ours? It makes no sense. Again, the root of the answer is not the salary cap, and the root of why owners want a salary cap is not for competitive balance.”

As it stands, MLB looks like it's headed for an ugly labor dispute. The potential salary cap and how it relates to parity in the sport are central to that.