So your statement “The past 10 years (or 20 if you like) have been the most competitive in the history of baseball by any measure you use,” offers nothing to disprove the studies cited by Zimbalist and as far as I am concerned, your dog don’t hunt. If you have numbers please share them. As I stated, balance seems to have improved since revenue sharing, and last season when Tampa Bay and Milwaukee–two of the smallest markets–made the playoffs, they provided the first reasons for hope since the new century began. But if you define small market teams as those fifteen teams whose market and revenues are at the bottom, then they make up the bottom tier of each league consistently. Saying that ain’t so, don’t make it so.

What might prove entertaining would be an explanation as to how the Yankees signing of Mark Teixeira benefits the Florida Marlins. Again you provide not even anecdotal evidence to support your rather bold concept that running young players through certain teams for a few years before they are lured away by large market teams is a good thing for the team that loses their services.

A player’s peak years are between 28 and 32 and small market teams have the services of the highest caliber players for only five years before the market lures them to the wealthy teams. That provides at most a year or so of peak preformance. I am certain that any GM from the smaller markets would express nothing except frustration at paying the costs to develop young talent only to lose it for exactly those peak years.

Branch Rickey created the farm system to address competitive balance issues years ago and it worked for several decades. He raided the Negro Leagues for the same reasons–lower priced talent. Rickey had the reserve clause to keep players at his beck and call. Free agency put all of that into a cocked hat and it is only in the last few years that anything has been done to address it.

To his credit, Bud Selig–from the smallest market of all–sought to level the playing field and progress has been made. But if you want to sell me your “bridge to no where” my friend then let’s see some numbers.

The past 10 years (or 20 years if you like) have been the most competitive in the history of baseball by almost any measure you use. You can consider the % of teams making the post-season, the % of teams that endure long periods of non-contention, the % of teams that have sub-.400 or sub .300 records or practically any other meaningful criteria and you will conclude that payroll disparity has little if any effect on the ability of teams to contend.

It is true that at the extremes, especially the upper end, it allows NY to remain competitive (which has nearly always been the case anyway), but otherwise there is little correlation between payrolls and final standings. It is also true that there are other advantages teams enjoy besides payroll. Weather, baseball history, front office creativity, state laws (such as tax structures) and much more influences where players sign. Perhaps not to the extent of salary, but checking rosters makes clear there is plenty of talent available to everyone.

In fact, it might be useful to ask whether signing the big free agents is not a benefit to the less affluent clubs. With rare exceptions, those contracts come as players enter their decline phase, or continue into that phase, while it is the clubs focused on developing young talent that get their value at its peak. So allowing the expensive players go clears space for better talent while burdening other clubs with onerous contracts.