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I'm not trying to be a dictator or anything, but it seems like a great deal of parity would be added to the sport if you didn't have a handful of teams that could just buy whoever they wanted while others can't.

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small market type teams have to seemingly pinch every penny.

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but it seems like a great deal of parity would be added to the sport if you didn't have a handful of teams that could just buy whoever they wanted while others can't.

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Looking back at the past 10 years of Super Bowls and World Series, both the NFL and MLB have seen the exact same number of teams -- 14 -- compete for the ultimate prize. The Patriots (four appearances) and Steelers (three) have set the standard in the NFL, and the Colts have appeared twice. Meanwhile, the Yankees (three), Giants (two), Phillies (two), Red Sox (two) and Cardinals (two) are all repeat attendees in MLB.

(The NBA, for the record, is barely worth mentioning in any discussion of parity. Over the past three decades, only eight different teams have won an NBA title. Compare that with MLB, where eight different teams have won the title in the past nine years.)

Continuing with the championship discussion, consider this: The Super Bowl has been held since 1967 and has had 18 different winners. Pretty panoptic, right?

Well, no fewer than 20 teams have won a World Series title in that same time period (and there wasn't a World Series held in 1994).

Since 1995, MLB's first year utilizing the Wild Card, 27 of the 30 teams (the D-backs and Rays joined in '98 and have both since reached the World Series) have made it to October. In the NFL, in that same time frame, only one team -- the Houston Texans, who formed in 2002 -- has failed to reach the playoffs.
In the past five years, that gap has been erased. The NFL has seen 24 of its 32 teams reach the playoffs since 2006, or 75 percent. In that same timeframe, MLB has seen 22 of its 30 teams make it to October, or 73.3 percent. As Jayson Stark of ESPN.com recently noted, only 15 of baseball's 40 playoff teams (or 37.5 percent) in that five-year span had reached the playoffs the year before. Compare that with the NFL, which saw 29 of its 60 playoff teams (or 48.3 percent) repeat.

Over the last 15 years, 120 postseason slots have been available in baseball, and 61 teams (50.8 percent) have made a back-to-back appearance in the postseason. The NFL's percentage of repeat postseason entries in that same timeframe is nearly identical. Of the 180 available playoff spots, 90 (50 percent) have gone to teams that returned to the playoffs in consecutive years.

As baseball has gotten younger in recent years, its competitive balance has improved. Eleven of the last 12 World Series clubs have gone to different clubs, and only two of the top nine clubs in terms of Opening Day payroll in 2010 reached the postseason last year. Three teams from the bottom 12 in player payroll (the Reds, Rays and Rangers) advanced to October.

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How is there such a disparity between what teams can spend?

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Salary caps have nothing to do with parity and everything to do with holding salaries down.

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What's strange is that even with a small playoffs and gapingly huge income disparity, MLB manages to have more parity than any of the Big Three sports. The sport with the tightest rules on salaries and largest playoff field, the NBA, is the one most prone to dynasties and a lack of parity.

One thing about baseball is that the big budget teams do tend to hamstring themselves with long albatross contracts. Really, only the Yankees have the income streams to absorb a crappy deal like the still $100 million plus owed to A-Rod.

Salary caps have nothing to do with parity and everything to do with holding salaries down.

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know some teams have no salary cap

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while other small market type teams have to seemingly pinch every penny. Why is that? How is there such a disparity between what teams can spend? Do the larger cap teams like NY just get more natural revenue from tickets, TV, concessions, merchandise, etc? Where does the money come from?

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It's not really strange at all given the nature of the baseball playoffs and baseball in general. Any team can get hot at the right time and streak through the baseball playoffs, just like the worst team in baseball can take 2 of 3 from the best team in baseball pretty easily during the course of the season.

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but the small playoff field and long 162 season make it nearly impossible for a mediocre team to make the playoffs and get hot. They get eliminated in August. Really, outside of the Yankees, which is a big exception, there is tremendous parity in baseball. And the Yankees usually find a way to screw it up except for that 1996-2000 dynasty.

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Though the Dodgers have been mimicing the Yanks with retarded moves so they may sink themselves.

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2013 Payroll Commitments
By Ben Nicholson-Smith [September 4, 2012 at 10:00am CST]
While teams like the Dodgers and Yankees have already committed to nine-figure payrolls in 2013, others have less than $15MM committed to the '13 roster. Cot’s Baseball Contracts has compiled each team’s payroll obligations for 2013. Here's the list, starting with the largest commitments:

Dodgers, $193.8MM
Phillies, $133.1MM
Yankees, $119.1MM
Cardinals, $92.8MM
Angels, $92.3MM
Tigers, $90.2MM
Rangers, $84.4MM
White Sox, $83.3MM
Giants, $81.0MM
Reds, $74.1MM
Twins, $68.3MM
Marlins, $67.5MM
Blue Jays, $61.3MM
Nationals, $58.6MM
Diamondbacks, $55.0MM
Mets, $54.5MM
Orioles, $53.2MM
Brewers, $52.4MM
Rockies, $46.5MM
Red Sox, $45.6MM
Cubs, $41.8MM
Mariners, $40.5MM
Royals, $34.9MM
Pirates, $27.9MM
Padres, $26.0MM
Athletics, $23.0MM
Rays, $18.6MM
Braves, $15.2MM
Indians, $11MM
Astros, $5.5MM

Read more at LINK

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ers payroll is 220 million and growing for next season....

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