Not exactly addition by contraction
By Jordan Webster
Sports Editor

I hate to say it, but it’s true. Baseball has thrown in the towel.

At a meeting on Nov. 6 in Chicago, the owners’ of baseball’s 30 franchises voted, 28-2, to eliminate two franchises, a decision that could easily take effect next season. According to ESPN, an individual within the proceedings named the Minnesota Twins and the Montreal Expos as the lone dissenters, which is not at all surprising — Minnesota and Montreal are likely to be the two casualties of the proposed contraction.
It’s less than a week since baseball has wrapped up one of its most memorable seasons ever.

The sport has diverted a nation’s attention from unspeakable and unexplainable atrocities. Barry Bonds broke the single-season home run record and put together the most prolific offensive display since Babe Ruth. The Diamondbacks edged the Yankees in one of the most memorable and well-played World Series in recent history.
Long story short, the last two months have been one perpetual baseball high. Now the owners are killing my buzz.

The owners have their grievances. Salaries are out of hand. The quarter-billion dollar contract that Alex Rodriguez signed last season is plenty proof of that. And under the current system, the league’s more anemic franchises cannot compete. Teams in Milwaukee and Kansas City cannot spend the GNP of Lichtenstein on a starting pitcher and a leftfielder with average range. According to the owners, the inability to field a respectable team and draw respectable crowds are grounds for elimination.
“It makes no sense for Major League Baseball to be in markets that generate insufficient local revenues to justify the investment in the franchise,” commissioner Bud Selig said following the meeting. “The teams to be contracted have a long record of failing to generate enough revenues to operate a viable major league franchise.”
Furthermore, the talent on the field is diluted. The offensive outburst of the past few seasons may be partly due to juiced baseballs, juiced hitters and ballparks better suited for T-ball, but much of the responsibility also falls to pitchers that should be working on their slider in Double A instead of trying to fire a 91-mile-an-hour inside fastball past Bonds, only to see it floating in McCovey Cove five seconds later.

But for the owners, it’s not about that. They lie like rugs, every last one of them. It’s all politics.
Here’s what’s really going on. With their decision to push for league contraction, the owners will not lock out the players now that the labor agreement has expired. Instead, they gain valuable pull when the two sides come to the negotiating table to hash out a new agreement. Fifty jobs hanging in the balance will give the players something to consider when making demands. Instead, Donald Fehr and the players association will threaten to strike in protest. Now the players look bad, while the owners can stick to their claims that they’re only doing what is best for the game.

Contraction would improve the level of play. Teams would not be forced to pluck players from the minors before they are ready. But on the whole, the abolition of teams in Montreal and Minnesota will not fix what is wrong with baseball. Not a chance.

First of all, if the current state of Major League Baseball is analogous to the inmates running the asylum, it’s only because the warden gave each one of them a key. Are player contracts inflated? Absolutely. But it’s the owners that sign those contracts and endorse those checks. Instad of being responsible for their role in the mess, though, the owners are contending that eliminating two teams that are struggling financially will spread more money to the remaining 28 franchises, and improve the overall health of the league. Because if there’s something that the Yankees, Braves, Indians and Dodgers need, it’s more money. Abolishing baseball in Montreal and Minnesota will not stop the haves from spending and the have nots from counting every penny. If anything, with two less small-market franchises to object, the rich will get richer.

Secondly, dropping just two franchises is not going to do the trick. Apparently there was some support for dropping four franchises. Why stop there? Go to six. Even eight. But it still wouldn’t help. Major League Baseball could contract to 16 teams, the size of the league before expansion took off in the 1960s, and it wouldn’t change a darn thing. Owners will still cut those ludicrous checks to career .260 hitters that have gloves made of swiss cheese. The talent level will improve. But middling talent on some of baseball’s worst teams is not baseball’s biggest problem. It’s that middling talent gets paid too much freaking money. And that won’t change. If you’re going to eliminate Montreal and Minnesota, then take and Florida and Tampa Bay, too. Kansas City is barely treading water. The Pirates were sinking fast before they grabbed onto a life preserver of a new stadium. San Diego and Anaheim, even Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Detroit and Oakland, have to pinch pennies to make things work. So just cut them all, since the owners are convinced that it will save baseball.

Finally, what happens to the players left over? A dispersal draft, that’s what. And who gets the best players off of two up-and-coming teams? The best teams, that’s who. Once again, the league’s elite teams stand to benefit most. Sure, the Pirates would select first, but they couldn’t afford Montreal’s Vladimir Guerrero. So they would either pick him and ship him to the Yankees for a handful of prospects and a box of baseballs, or pass on him and pick a more signable player. Either way, talent is not diffused, because money is not diffused. Can’t have one without the other. You want reform? Two words: revenue sharing.

Other potential problems include realignment – the dissolution of Minnesota and Montreal would leave both leagues with an odd number of teams. Ironically enough, the team that seems most likely to change leagues is the World Series Champion Arizona Diamondbacks. You just won the World Series! Here’s an all-expenses paid trip to…the American League. Also, Montreal owner Jeffery Loria would potentially hold onto a few Expos and take them to Miami, where he will grab the reins of the Marlins. Marlins owner John Henry would take a few Marlins and head to Anaheim after purchasing the Angels from Disney. I’m not quite sure what this accomplishes, if anything. These guys couldn’t get out of the red with one franchise. So give them another to run into the ground.

But maybe my biggest objection is the elimination of the Twins. I have less problems with Montreal – the Expos could have packed up and moved three years ago and no one would have noticed – but don’t mess with Minnesota. The Twins spent the better part of a decade building a team of superb young players like Eric Milton, Joe Mays, Cristian Guzman and Torii Hunter. They’ve played the game that the system dictated, and last year started to reap the benefits. I realize that owner Carl Pohlad might be a bit anxious to take MLB’s contraction buyout and run, which has everything to do with the probability that the Twins would be one of the two teams eliminated.

So don’t listen to the owners. They’re the ones that got baseball into this mess in the first place. If they really want to fix things, institute a salary cap that means something, not just a luxury tax that inhibits only the league’s lower half anyway.

Don’t trust the owners to pull baseball from the mud. They’re the ones that tripped it up to start with.