"Change is needed and that is reflected by the fact that over a billion dollars have been paid to seven chronically uncompetitive teams, five of whom have had baseball’s highest operating profits," Henry responded in an e-mail. "Who, except these teams, can think this is a good idea?"Besides the nonsensical whining about Boston having the 16th largest media market and how hard it is for those "small market" Red Sox to compete, I have to agree with some of Henry's points. And hey, at least he defended the Yankees, well sort of.
Henry added, "While the Red Sox are in the 16th largest media market we’ve found a way to be very competitive even though we are funding other teams. At the end of the day, the small market clubs still cannot begin to compete with the Yankees and have a very hard time competing with the teams that are struggling to pay them so much. Consequently, a system that directly impacts competition has to replace the current system, that hoped to, but ultimately did not cure competitive imbalances."
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"We've seen a number of teams that are just sitting back," Boras told the Globe at the General Manager's meetings in Chicago last month. "We have clubs who aren't successful getting $80 million before they ever sell a ticket. The question is always going to be in the end, what are they doing with that money? For most of them, they're paying off their debt to purchase the franchise. So they become owners, debt-free but they have not done a lot to contribute to the success of the game. Those are the things as an industry, certainly the fans have to look at it and realize that kind of revenue is available. The other part of it is I think we've proven time and time again that investment in players produces revenue streams and success points for franchises. Even in an economy where many businesses are struggling in our industry, as I said last year, we've been able to keep revenues at a record level."
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“Baseball has determined that the best way to deal with the Yankees is to take as much of their revenue as possible. I see that in direct opposition to the ideals this country was built on. Baseball is a business and should be treated as such. Baseball is also a sport that needs competitive balance in order to prosper. Taxing their revenues and other “large markets” in the way it is presently done, is simply confiscation on an order of magnitude never seen in any industry in America,” Henry said.
Another factor in all of this is spending the money wisely, and that's something certain small market teams haven't been doing a lot of lately. (Royals wasted $48.35 million on Kyle Farnsworth, Jose Guillen, and Willie Bloomquist.)
Henry also has a suggestion on how to fix the current system.
"It’s a very simple approach in which payroll tax dollars replace revenue sharing dollars and go directly to the clubs that need revenues in order to meet minimum payrolls that should be imposed on each club receiving revenue. Further, players would have to be protected with a guaranteed minimum percentage of overall revenues. This would be a very simple and effective method in reducing top payrolls and increasing bottom payrolls with no tax on revenues," Henry wrote.Like I said before I do agree with Henry that there are problems with the system, but why is it that whenever the Yankees win the whole competitive balance nonsense comes up from the folks in Beantown? I'm sure they had no problems with the "competitive balance" in baseball when they won the 2007 World Series with the second highest payroll.
