Detroit Tigers (who spent 116% of their revenue — they lost almost $30 million in 2009

That’s unsustainable, especially considering their debt load and it suggests Detroit is headed back to the pack. They dealt away a lot of prospects recently and might have to rebuild in a couple seasons.

AL Central rankings in revenue
White Sox $194M
Tigers $188M (but dropping)
Indians $170M
Twins $162M (and rising)
Royals $155M

There are no financial limitations on contention for any team in the AL Central. That’s as close to financial parity as you will find in any division.

It is pretty shocking that the Yankees have about as much revenue as the Angels and Phillies combined. Good thing they can only have a 25 man roster. Their revenue stream virtually guarantees they will never have a rebuilding year.

Perhaps NY has the advantage winning their division and the series, but last time I checked, the Royals, Reds, Brewers, Pirates, A’s all play outside of the AL east. I don’t see how you put losing seasons and no playoff appearances on the Yankees.

Don’t the Mets play in New York? Shouldn’t they be dominant too?

Didn’t Boston win its first series since trading Ruth away in 2004? Now all I hear is whining about how dominant they are…but not about the Atlanta run of 14 consecutive postseasons…because that doesn’t fit the paradigm.

Why aren’t the Cubs juggernauts? The Dodgers?

I hate the Yankees, but they are well run these days, and many other teams that could maximize their financial advantages aren’t.

I don’t see anyone demonizing the Yankees in these parts, or questioning their front office and organizational performance over the last few years. This discussion is about a structural inequality. The concern is simply the size of the advantage they have, not that they have it and/or other teams may have similar advantages over truly small market teams and fail to capitalize on them. Look at those Forbes numbers – the margin between the Yankees and second place in annual revenue is $160 million, on the order of 40%. And that’s to say nothing of the bottom half of the markets.

Yes, the Yankees are well run for the most part these days, but they don’t have to be with the $$ advantage they’ve got. The Yankees payroll as handled by Cubs management is still going to make the playoffs virtually every year. Well, maybe that’s a bad example. :^)But the point is evidenced by the fact that, despite some not-so-well-run years in the last decade since the dynasty ended, NYY were still in the ALCS seemingly every year. Frankly, it’s a miracle of ineptitude and bad management when they don’t manage to make the playoffs.

Your point about the Yankees revenue stream not directly making it more difficult for KC, Pittsburgh, etc. to compete in the regular season is a good one, although it doesn’t negate how unfair it is for Toronto, Baltimore and Tampa. And, in one sense at least, it does still impact the little guy teams in a direct way every time one of them loses solid talent or even a franchise guy to New York because their revenue stream simply cannot be jacked up enough to retain them. It is difficult to be terribly sympathetic to the franchises that haven’t found a way to maximize the revenue they can find, especially now that we’ve managed to get a new stadium and are finding ways to keep Mauer, Morneau, etc. around as a core for a little longer than we could before. But Posnanski’s main point is that there are a lot of teams out there, including the Twins, who could expand their fan base as much as possible, squeeze every available penny out of it, and spend an unhealthy amount of that revenue on payroll, but still be waaaaaaay behind the Yankees on a year-in, year-out basis.

For what it’s worth, my opinion on most of the whining about how consistently good the BoSox are is that it has nothing to do with payroll and big free agent signings, and everything to do with how their fan base went from pitiable to loathsome in the span of just three years.

I would support something like a cap where teams could not spend more than 150% on median MLB revenue on player salaries…or something like that. And you’d have to impose a floor as well. The rest can go to profits for the team. Everyone is happy.

If its just revenue sharing, the Yankees will always have the advantage since their revenue will likely always be far greater than the rest of the league.

If you force the Yankees to give up X amount of money at the gate to every game at Yankee Stadium, a team like the Twins will have to give Y amount of money at the gate to every game at Target Field. Let’s say that there isn’t any salary cap and the revenue sharing total agreeed upon by the teams and players is 30% meaning that 30% of the revenue generated at Target Field will go to the opposing team which could be the Yankees. For the sake of arguement, let’s say the Yankees proposed the situation and everybody agreed. Even if cut is a million dollars a night, it only replaces what the Yankees or another team took when they came to town. In other words, we are back to square one.

What we need is a hard salary cap and floor. If we have that, teams like Pittsburgh, Florida, Kansas City, and Oakland will be forced to spend their way into contention, baseball will become more relevent, and more teams will be able to grow their revenue the way they see fit.