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This whole offseason is starting to rattle my taste for baseball, particularly when contrasted with football and hockey and the salary-cap world they inhabit.
 
I know the argument that you can't buy a winner, and people point to the Yankees as proof (particulary the non-early 2000's versions) of that point. And then further espouse the "moneyball" A's and Rays as another way to compete.
 
How is this fun for the fans? Seinfeld famously compared sports fandom to "cheering for laundry", but in baseball are we now put in the position of "cheering for wallets"? Best bank account wins? ...and the Oscar for Best Deployment of Future Television Revenue goes to...??
 
Bleah. I'm starting to pine for an even playing field, rather than hoping that the home squad can leverage or cook up some under-developed or under-utilized strategy to compete. Baker's been pushing for ownership here to spend more money, to join the "big boys" of the game, but really, where's the skill in that? My owner can write bigger cheques than your owner? Bleah again.
 
Look to football, where the salary limitations create delicious opportunities to be creative - in fielding a team, in negotiating contracts, and in truly evaluating opportunity costs in both signing and keeping players. Can you imagine if WAR actually meant something in baseball? It only sort of does right now, because if any team wants to exceed a "budget" (self imposed), it simply does. WAR goes out the window.
 
If football was run like baseball, the Packers wouldn't even exist. In hockey, if your favourite team is consistently awful, the best place to look is at management, likely screwing things up.
 
Baseball is losing fans because some teams (not saying the M's are in this group) are climbing a mountain so steep compared to their peers. Would you join a roto league if the player next to you got to start with $720 rather than $360 at auction? It's supposed to be fun, right? I'm not saying that owners are feeling this way (and Baker has done a masterful job lately at beating the drum that owners are making money regardless of the product on the field)...it's the fans...how is it supposed to be fun rooting for a team that has fewer resources at its disposal than it's competitors?