I dont believe baseball is doomed but imo its system is horrible compared to leagues with a salary cap. In the NFL with the teams salaries caped it really gets down to having a great coach, good drafting/free agents and the right mix of players both vets and rookies vs. MLB where teams like the Yankees can cover up in drafting mistakes/etc by paying top dollar for the top 3 free agents each year to fill those gaps. That leaves the teams who lost those players badly hurt in future years because they simply could not match the buying power of the better funded teams. This is how normal businesses beat their competition and become market leaders but has no place in a league where competitive balance is important.
While this year is shaping up to be the year that spending didnt matter, lets see in 1-3 years when most of these players are free agents and the teams cant afford to keep them. There is no way for a small market team to stay at the top when they cant keep their talent. I would like to see a chart for the last 10 years of payroll salaries vs wins.
I remember when the Pirates were the team to beat in the mid 80's but then they lost Bonilla, Bonds, Drabek and others to free agency and have not won since. The Pirates organization deserves a lot of the blame for the losing, they have sucked, thats for sure but they pretty much have to be perfect in order to succeed and even if they do have a year they make a run, they have little to no chance of staying on top simply by the fact they cant resign any stars they have. The amount of top talent the pirates have lost to free agency over the last 10 years is sad.
The only real chance the Pirates have of being a contender on a yearly basis is the day they get a new billion dollar owner who only cares about winning and can eat the losses to build up the team and farm systems.
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