Money, Baseball, and Success

[pokerdirty]

The baseball payrolls for the playoff teams are as follows:

1 New York Yankees $208,306,817
2 Boston Red Sox $123,505,125
4 Los Angeles Angels $97,725,322
6 St. Louis Cardinals $92,106,833
10 Atlanta Braves $86,457,302
12 Houston Astros $76,779,000
13 Chicago White Sox $75,178,000
16 San Diego Padres $63,290,833

5 Philadelphia Phillies $95,522,000
(i add the phillies because the padres only got in by sucking the least out west)

My question is, what can be done to help balance out baseball? Does it come down to these smaller market teams just need to shell out more cash, or does something need to be done? It seems many teams can get close (Blue Jays, 25th; Indians, 26th; Brewers, 27th), but there has yet to be that small market team get over the hump in the wild card era it seems.

I think this can be a long, good discussion between the intelligent people in this forum. Some of my ideas will come out as the discussion gets started.

dirty