Welcome to Saturday Scorecard. In 50 years, a colorized version of this column will be available for your viewing pleasure.

On to the topic du jour, which is Economics 101.

Heading into baseball's winter meetings this week in Las Vegas, two things seemed certain to occur:

The Yankees would sign CC Sabathia.

And, a bunch of seemingly intelligent sports fans / professional analysts would look at Sabathia's deal and squawk about how baseball needs a salary cap.

Bullfeathers.

Hating the Yankees is something of a national pastime. With the rest of the economy sputtering, their opulent new stadium and lavish free agent spending spree - which started with Sabathia's $162 million deal, continued with A.J. Burnett's $82.5 million pact and could continue in the coming weeks -- makes them an easy target for sniping in the sports blogs and columns, where the logical leap looks like this:

The Yankees are rich. They are signing top players to ridiculous contracts. We need to stop the madness. We need a salary cap.

Their intentions may be noble, but people who think a salary cap will restore competitive balance to baseball really have not been paying close attention. Which team represented the American League in the World Series two months ago?

Go ahead, say it... it's OK.

That's right - the TAMPA BAY RAYS.

They didn't beat Philadelphia, but the budget-conscious Rays played for baseball's biggest prize while the Yankees sat out the tournament.

The Yankees have not won the World Series since 2000. They've had the highest payroll every year since then. They've had the best player in the game, Alex Rodriguez, since 2004. Nevertheless, they haven't won the big one.

People who scream about the lack of "competitive balance" in baseball ignore the fact that the sport has produced eight different champions in the past nine years. Since baseball instituted revenue sharing, clubs like Arizona, Florida, Houston, Colorado, Detroit and Tampa Bay have competed on the game's ultimate stage.

True, the Yankees are on a ridiculous spending spree this winter. However, it comes after they shed nearly $90 million in payroll consumed last season by Jason Giambi, Bobby Abreu, Mike Mussina, Carl Pavano and Andy Pettitte. With a massive investment in their new $1.3 billion stadium and much of their revenue tied to sponsor dollars, attendance (4.3 million last year) and ratings for the YES Network, the Yankees really had no choice but to spend a lot of cash this off-season.

Let's look at some numbers.

The Yankees make about $400 million in revenue, a figure that could rise when they move into their sparkling new stadium. They spend about $200 million on payroll. That's not grossly out of whack. In sports with salary caps, players generally receive about 55 to 60 percent of gross revenues.

In baseball last year, that figure hovered somewhere around 45 percent.

Given the track record of Don Fehr and the player's union, it's highly unlikely that baseball owners would share less of the pie than owners in other sports. Therefore, it's quite likely that a baseball salary cap would actually lead to an increase in the average player's salary and a reduction in owner's profits.

Put it this way: not only would clubs like the Brewers, Twins and Royals be out-bid for superstars like Sabathia, they'd have to pay more for guys like Joe Dillon.

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7 comments about this article. Post a comment / write a review.

Recent Talkbacks ...

Posted by ChateauDweller on Dec. 15, 2008 at 7:16 a.m. (report)

MKELover: partiy isn't measured by how many different teams won a championship in a set time period; it is how many different teams were competitive during that time period. You can throw out that stat about how many different teams won a championship in the last 8 years, but you could say the same thing about the early-mid 90's. Surely you don't believe that there was the same amount of partiy then as there is now.

Posted by msheller on Dec. 14, 2008 at 5:15 p.m. (report)

In baseball, money doesn't buy championships; but it does buy long-term competitiveness. It will be interesting to see how well Tampa does in a few years when management will not be able to afford Crawford, Longoria, etc. I'm sure the Yanks, the Red Sox, the Cubs, and the Mets will buy up the good players that the small market teams won't be able to afford with their low broadcasting revenues.

Posted by Hainer on Dec. 13, 2008 at 10:31 p.m. (report)

Econ 101 but no Larry King Lounge??

Posted by mkelover on Dec. 13, 2008 at 7:04 p.m. (report)

The parity the NFL seems to have? Let's see...since 2001 the Yankees haven't won a World Series. In the NFL since 2001 one team has won 3 Super Bowls. Parity indeed.

Posted by LouManske on Dec. 13, 2008 at 5:45 p.m. (report)

The NHL has found itself in the position it's currently in because the salaries they were paying a few years back were as comparatively high as baseball salaries. Soon enough, no one could compete with the Avalanche and Red Wings that they had to enact a salary cap. The NBA? It's a joke to even call it a salary cap. So with examples of how to improve a cap, why not do it better than the other leagues? If Doug Melvin or Billy Beane had a $200 million payroll, I think they'd do better at putting a team together than Cashman...and just because the occasional small market team goes far into the post season, that should make everyone feel better about the "have" teams? I think it speaks to the organization itself. Even the playing field, give us the parity the NFL seems to have and then tell me about how the Yankees "giving back" through revenue sharing was so great.