Dejan Kovacevic's post on Pittsburgh Pirates | Latest updates on Sulia

Why Major League Baseball remains a joke, and why the national media continues to ignore it ... READ MORE:

There were nine teams in Major League Baseball with payrolls of $100 million-plus. Four of those -- Yankees, Tigers, Cardinals, Giants -- are the ones left in the League Championship Series. And from the national (New York/Boston) baseball media, you will neither read nor hear a peep about this. It's completely acceptable to them. It's the norm. It's the natural order of things, that the Yankees and Red Sox and others start out with an incredible financial advantage. It means their owners care. It means their fans care. It means they're doing their best, unlike those freeloading bottom-feeders awaiting welfare checks. Let me make this very clear: THIS IS NOT ABOUT THE PIRATES. The Pirates have been and continue to be run poorly. The Pirates' greatest failing in recent years hasn't been that they've spent too little. It's that they've WASTED the little they have. This is much more about the Rays, Brewers, A's, even the Royals to an extent, that have done things the right way, but still START OUT with an INHERENT DISADVANTAGE. Apologists will point to the variety of teams that get into the playoffs, or how that differs from the cap leagues. They'll also point to losers like the Mets and Dodgers that overspend and underperform. That's utterly missing the point that teams such as the Yankees and Red Sox START OUT with an INHERENT ADVANTAGE. That goes against every imaginable tenet of fair play. The other three leagues have figured that out. Baseball just stays satisfied that the Yankees help pull in big money and that, in turn, helps the broader product be profitable. But they barely consider how much MORE money could be made by capitalizing on ALL markets. You know, like how the Packers are one of the country's most successful franchises. No one will say anything. No one raised so much as a tiny fist when the Brewers offered CC Sabathia $20 million to stay, only to be outdone by the Yankees offering $25 million. And when the Yankees needed someone to put down those upstart Orioles, they turned to a guy who -- in a fair system -- probably would still be pitching in Milwaukee. No one in the national baseball media finds it the least bit odd that MLB plays favorites with the largest markets, even when it's something as glaring as arranging special interleague series between the teams in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, while Seattle plays Arizona or some other nonsense. It's a joke. And it's all the funnier that no one seems to want to get it.

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