How Losing Is A Profitable Game In Baseball

That does seem like a direction to go that might work, but I'm not sure it's the only possible way to run a successful league. That's essentially the "socialist" way of running a league, from the perspective of the league itself as an ecosystem: central planning, redistribution of income, limits on competition between teams (mainly on salary competition). The goal is to make an egalitarian society of teams where everyone has an equal playing field, unsullied by capitalist considerations, and nobody can "buy" success due to being richer, because that's more interesting for fans.

Europe's soccer leagues have gone in the exact opposite, hypercapitalist direction, though, where teams bid huge amounts for players, compete vigorously for media contracts, any tycoon can pour as much of their own money as they want into a team (just like, in the US, they can pour money into election campaigns and whatnot), and so on. In some leagues, teams can actually even "fail" if they fail to compete well enough (in the sporting sense), being relegated to lower leagues if they don't win enough, and replaced by the top teams from the lower leagues, who get to move up. That model also seems massively successful as a sport.

The same is probably true of 'soccer', especiall the English Premier League which is essentially a tower of debt at the upper end because only more borrowing (or billionaires buying clubs) can support the titles and growth that helps service the existing debt.

Of course, the EPL situation is made more complicated by the divisions and relegation possibility. There are probably plenty of fans - especially outside the big 4 - who would be happy to cycle through the top and bottom of the Premier League, but a cycle of relegation is not attractive. In fact, I wonder how a salary cap could be managed across different divisions, although it would probably still be better than the same clubs bouncing up and down most years.

Death spiral? MLB revenue was $6.6 billion in 2009. It was $7.6 for the NFL. According to this (outdated) article, MLB was actually growing sales at a better rate than the NFL over the past decade or so: http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/25/commentary/sportsbiz/index.h...

The recession seems to have hit both leagues pretty hard.

The MLBPA is the strongest union in professional sports, and there's no way that they'll allow a salary cap. After what happened with the last player's strike, I don't think the owners would be willing to take another strike.

The MLB still has some competitive balance issues, but they're getting better. And I'd bet that a perfectly competitive league would actually generate less revenue than a league with a team like the Yankees. You have to give it to them, they fill up the house wherever they go.

The NFL takes 12 out of 32 teams (0.375) to the playoffs, versus the 8 out of 30 (0.267) the MLB carries. That's already four more potential slots for a playoff team, including one more wildcard per league.

Yes, the Yankees have gone to far and away more World Series competitions and acquired more titles than any other team. They're also, historically (and I'm talking a history that spans a time greater than the entire NFL), the most competitive and storied team in baseball. That means talent and money naturally flow to it.

I would also point out that, since 2000, the Giants, Diamondbacks, Red Sox, White Sox, Rockies, Cardinals, Rays, Tigers, Angels, Mets, and Phillies have all gone to the World Series in addition to the Yanks. This year, the Twins, Giants, Reds, and Rangers(!!) are all expected to make the postseason with minimal difficulty. There is competitive balance, and introducing the shenanigans of a salary cap isn't the way to go in my opinion.

The NBA has a salary cap but that hasn't stopped a handful of teams from dominating while the others see a 2-year spurt of success followed by a drop into mediocrity.

A large part of the problem in the NBA is that most team managers do a crappy job of building a team (and the fact that expansion has diluted the talent pool).

The only teams that see continuous success are those that either have stellar management or have a huge market + a management unit that doesn't actively shoot themselves in the foot.

A salary cap is a good start but it won't be enough. Cheap team owners like those the Pirates have will always be reluctant to shell out money in order to advance the team.

Your understanding of the issue is a bit superficial.

1) MLB has been increasingly profitable for 10+ years now. Economically, there is nothing wrong with the game.

2) The Dodgers are 4th in club value, and 4th in revenue. Not sure where your numbers are from. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/33/baseball-valuations-10_T...

Now that we've dismissed the economic concerns, let's look at the other stuff.

Parity: baseball has much more parity than any of the other major sports in the USA. From a Peter Gammons article in 2009: "In those 30 years, 20 different teams have won World Series titles, and it would likely be 21 without the 1994 strike that cost the sport’s best team -- the Montreal Expos -- a chance to win it all. In those 30 years, 14 different teams have won the Super Bowl, 13 have won the Stanley Cup, nine have won the NBA championship."

Yes, the Yankees recent dominance is tiresome to everyone who doesn't worship satan. But the Mets aren't exactly doing well, even with #2 revenue numbers.

Finally, you simply state that baseball should implement a salary cap, like it's easy to do. The MLB players association is one of the strongest unions in the world. There's no way they could implement a cap. And, as a rabid consumer of advanced baseball analysis, I don't think the evidence suggests that they should.

I'm sorry if my reply seems harsh -- I'm not venting at you. Rather, I'm venting at ESPN and nearly every sportscaster that seems to have 3 very incorrect presumptions: 1) baseball is in decline because 2) there's no parity and 3) no salary cap.

All three are dead wrong.

Not serious winners, marginal winners. IE they made the playoffs every year and got promptly defeated. There's a big difference.

While every hacker loves to believe that scrappy upstarts with data will conquer the good old boys every time, the reality of baseball seems to be the opposite. Sabermetrics just hasn't delivered. (It was a great book though).