Don’t look now but parity might be returning to Major League Baseball. Seven of the eight teams that qualified for the postseason this year didn’t make the playoffs in 2006, and I even see signs of life in perennial cellar dwellers like Milwaukee (with baseball’s best infield) and Seattle.
Looking at payroll, it’s unbelievable to see the rank of underachievers at the top and the surprising surge of good teams closer to the bottom. It’s also interesting to see something else in the payroll stats – a middle class. Are owners finally ponying up for good free agents or is the luxury tax finally evening the spread across the board? Or is good scouting and the new trend of small-market teams not trading emerging stars when they can’t afford them finally paying off? Perhaps the answer is all of the above.
The end result is a better, fairer game for all involved. I’m genuinely excited to watch Arizona and Colorado, two teams I know nothing about, fight hard to get to the World Series. It’s almost like politics. The folks with more money usually win, but money alone does not guarantee victory. Sometime money can reach a saturation point, and that’s where the intangibles tend to kick in. It’s the intangibles that make other sports like football more exciting, and baseball might finally be learning its lesson.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment