Herby
Thank You, Team 144
I actually stopped watching baseball because of this. I love the premier league, but one of the turnoffs is that some teams will just buy whoever they want. FFP has helped that a bit, but it's the usually suspects at the top.
Baseball is turning into buy your championship. The Dodgers are successful, but to me compared to expectations they are somewhat of a failure. When you spend that much money and put together those types of rosters, winning the championships is an expectation. They've won one recently despite outspending other teams drastically. Now they have a guy whose yearly salary is more than other teams entire payrolls.
They've priced a lot of people out, unless you want to watch a team get pounded every night. Engagement is still down historically and the absence of an even playing ground is one of the reasons. The NBA has surpassed them in viewership and it's showing no signs of slowing. And I'm saying this as someone who grew up in the LA area.
That is exactly what MLB is now, it's EPL (or name your favorite European soccer league). It's wild how much of the top talent is concentrated in a couple of places.
The one saving grace is, much like hockey the days of guys taking years and years to develop are largely gone and the small market teams are able to at least have arbitration control for awhile. But a lot of times those teams end up moving those guys to larger market teams, and many times for undrafted international prospects who were signed by the big spending teams, and round and round we go. It would be like if before the NHL had a salary cap that the Rangers and Red Wings were able to spend more than anyone else **and** be able to spend more on academies in Sweden and Russia.
It's just a terrible system.