ESPN Radio’s Mike & Mike were in Pittsburgh earlier this week and had Pirates GM Neal Huntington on the show Wednesday morning.  If you haven’t heard it, et’s definitely worth checking out, here.  That link also includes an interview with MLB Labor Relations guyRob Manfred, and between the two interviews, there is a heavy focus on revenue sharing, especially in light of the recent media spat between Randy Levine of the Yankees and Mark Attanasio of the Brewers.

I’m not gonna recap what Mike & Mike said, you can listen to the interviews if you like.  But in light of those, I was thinking about the soft cap/revenue system MLB has in place, and the following seems obvious to me.  1) without the revenue sharing system, teams like the Pirates and Brewers would basically have no hope of signing any free agents.  2) Even with revenue sharing, low revenue teams, take a huge risk any time they commit significant ong term dollars to one player.  3)  Just because the low revenue clubs make the playoffs or win the world series occasionally, that doesn’t make the advantage the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, etc. have any less humongous.

You could probably argue any of those above 3 points, but you would be wrong.  Here’s what is debatable though.  Will Major League Baseball ever be able to modify the revenue system to the point where the inherent inequities aren’t there, or at least aren’t as large.  One way to do that would be a hard cap, and that will probably never happen.  But short of that, they would limit guaranteed contracts, increase the percentage of the luxury tax for going over the soft cap, institute a world wide draft.  All of these things would help, and until the owners and players take significant steps to improve the system, there will be stories like the Attanasio/Levine one this week.

Tags: , , ,