Still on the subject of 2010 payrolls . . .

Inspired by Raven's payroll breakdown, which was awesome:

I actually really, really like thinking about payrolls and roster makeup and all of that -- WHO DOESN'T? -- but I think you will agree that it is almost indescribably fascinating that despite this interest, I don't care about payroll disparity as An Issue Facing The Game at all, like not even a little, because it's fake and dumb.  And my team plays in the AL East, which is an actual honest-to-god division and not some bullshit like the Central, so when I say this, you really have no option but to take my position more seriously than literally anyone else's position ever.  As Raven's post shows, there is no simple correlation between payroll and wins, but still all kinds of people who should know better won't shut up.

Competitive balance is no better in the other, worse, borderline communist sports that have salary caps.  It just isn't.  This can be arrived at using numbers and math but also just by thinking about it for a minute.  It's especially not better in the NFL, which for some reason is the counterexample everybody wants to point to, despite the fact that the dominant NFL teams are way more dominant than the best baseball teams and the awful teams are just as awful (arguably more awful).  When you say this to the people you work with who like to talk about how their fantasy teams are doing (why don't I like fantasy baseball? I play Baseball Mogul but hate fantasy baseball, explain that), they deny it, and then you talk about it a little more, and you get legitimately frustrated with each other for a minute before you realize you are both ridiculous people and you just go back to being bros because break is almost over and you should never go back to work angry man it's just not worth it.  

What it ultimately comes down to, I think, is that some people have a kind of moral objection, really, to the idea that the Yankees can spend so much more money on baseball players even though they have the most baseball fans and take in the most baseball money. That seems just inherently, morally wrong to some people -- and I get that, I'm not dismissing that outright as a baseball feeling, I'm seriously not -- and to other people like me it seems either (i) fine, actually, or (ii) just not worth thinking about in any case because lol yeah a salary cap in baseball ok sure thing no problems with the union on that one everybody will be cool.  


There exists this idea that it would be good for baseball if, say, the Royals were good again.  No it wouldn't.  It would be nice for people in Kansas City, just like its nice for anybody when their team is good, but that's it.  Nothing else would be even slightly better for anyone, except for boomer sports writers who get boners about the weirdest stuff.  Not that there is any risk of this happening for the Royals, and that's fine.  It's almost good. They have hardly any fans and their management is awful.  As such, the Royals will be terrible forever.  And that's fine, that's baseball.  And it's only been twenty-five years since they won the World Series (interestingly, I will always love the 1985 Blue Jays, but I will never forgive them), which in baseball years is really like a month.  Ask the Cubs or the Indians or the pre-really-annoying Boston Red Sox or the Giants before this year. 

Anyway the real reason I don't care about payroll disparity is actually just that every single year that the Yankees spend way more than anybody else and don't win, it's awesome.  And this of course happens most years.  So most years are, at least in this one limited but very real sense, awesome.  I definitely get more out of that than I would get out of the Royals or whoever having a microscopically better shot. But to even believe that they would have a better shot, I would have to ignore all the  evidence of competitive balance and imbalance from the leagues that already have salary caps and are dumb.  But even that would be too much work, and not really what I'm after here: I like that the Yankees are rich but don't always win and then all the hideous Yankees fans who have no geographical or historical reason to follow the team but do so instead because they are contemptible people are sad. That's the long and the short of it.  Here's a cool thing Craig Robinson made.


KS