Tribe Competes for Best Record in A.L. with One of the Smallest Payrolls
This past weekend the Cleveland Indians clinched the central division title for the first time since 2001. Now they are playing for home field advantage in the playoffs, were the team stands to make more money on gate, merchandise, and concession revenue while still paying much less salary to their players compared to Boston, New York and Los Angeles. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/teams/salaries?team=cle ranks the teams in MLB by salary this year and the Indians are 23rd out of 30 teams. Only San Diego (24th) is contending for the playoffs with a lower payroll. However, it has been 5 years without a playoff appearance for the Indians while the teams with the highest payrolls such as the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, and Red Sox seem to always be in the race for a Pennant. There even seems to be a correlation with playoff appearances by teams and their salary. Yankees pay almost 4 times more then small market teams like Cleveland and San Diego, but as a result make the playoffs four times as much? Can a small market team compete year in and year out, or do they need to rebuild after a good run of 5 years or so? I think it would be better for MLB if every team made the playoffs equally to create excitement in these smaller markets and to stop “evil empires” from monopolizing the playoffs.
1 comment:
This relates to one of our problem set questions. Do team owners operate to make a profit or have a successful season? Some teams cut their payroll in order to create a larger profit. Usually a small market team has trouble paying big salaries for star players. As we learned, the main media coverage they get is local. Since they're such a small market, that doesn't help bring in a whole lot of money. Maybe they should look at larger amounts of revenue sharing, like the NFL, in order to create a more equal competitive environment.
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