The Boras Factor May Point to Even Bigger Trouble on the Horizon

"The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime."
-Babe Ruth

Players and agents take notice, in today's market there is a cap on what teams are willing to spend and/ or give up to acquire a single player. That hasn't always been the case, but given the disastrous effect of the Stienbrenner model of the early part of this decade and last months A-Rod debacle, it seems that general managers and owners are finally starting to see the forest for the trees. Even the teams that can afford to spend exorbitant amounts of money on top talent are becoming more and more hesitant to give up the farm and the keys to the safe. I say this because it seems that Santana is in danger of pricing himself out of the market. That's bad for him, but I'm afraid that it could be indicative of an even greater problem that may be once again looming the horizon for baseball, another round of disputes between the players union and the owners over market share.

For all of his greediness Boras made a good point, baseball revenues are at a historical high and are continuing to go up every year as the game experiences a renaissance in popularity. The players should see a part of that increased revenue. But how much is enough? On the one side the owners argument is true that while revenues are up as a whole, to own a baseball franchise is not a truly lucrative endeavor (albeit you have to be pretty rich to own one in the first place). Profit shares are relatively small and for those teams that are profitable there is the luxury tax issue to deal with. On the flip side the players make the game what it is. People don't go to the ballpark to see Hank Stienbrenner put up a power point presentation about market share and revenue versus the price of the Yen. What I fear from all of this is a whole new round of cat fights between the players union and the owners about who should get what percentage in the form of salaries. Any fan who remembers 1994 and the subsequent clashes between the two parties will tell you that baseball just can't sustain another strike, especially right after dealing with the steroids issue.

In a perfect world baseball would share a higher percentage of the revenues and give smaller market teams a bigger cut and better access to top prospects similar to football's model. In this imaginary Utopia MLB would also give players a percentage of the profit based on performance in exchange for......dare I say it....a salary cap. I'm no mathematician but it seems that a reasonable cap could be figured out by creating some sort of algorithm that keeps the market competitive for even the most cash strapped team. Unfortunately if the owners were even to realistically hint at a salary cap the players union would chase them down the streets with torches and pitchforks, but even more baseball is a business, not a socialist entity. So for the foreseeable nothing is going to change much and the teams with thin purses will be forced to trade off top talent for whatever they can get. Nothing proves that point more than yesterday's deal between the Marlins and the Tigers. It's really a shame, you would thing that MLB would realize that as teams other than the usual suspects make it deep into the post season, interest in the game and in turn revenues go up. Well, that's just my two cents anyway....in the meantime go Yankees go.