Money And The Majors
By Lew Freedman
From the time we are very young we hear the phrase, “Money can’t buy happiness.” And while we all know that to be true in our souls, most of us wouldn’t mind giving it a whirl to see how it would play out.
At this time of year on the baseball calendar, just after the season has finished and a World Series champ has been crowned, it’s free-agent time. That means that money is in the forefront of the baseball business as it is at no other time. It’s all about the bucks when teams dive into free agency. Whether offers are real or imagined, whether sides are a mere million dollars or so apart, the topic on the table in negotiations and the topic in the atmosphere as fans wonder what their favorite team will look like next season is defined by money.
Boston Red Sox reliever Jonathan Papelbon just fled from the only team he has known to the Philadelphia Phillies for a four-year, $50 million arrangment. Albert Pujols is being wined and dined and is entertaining offers to leave the St. Louis Cardinals, the only team he has known. It’s hard to know from a distance what’s real and what’s rumor, but it is said that the Cardinals offered Pujols, admittedly the best player in the game, a nine-year, $200-million-plus deal before the season started. If that is accurate and that wasn’t enough to get Pujols to sign on the dotted line, there’s no telling what he’s holding out for. Perhaps a contract equal to the Gross National Product of Holland.
During the modern era of baseball dating back, oh 20 years, we have been conditioned to think that the richest teams get all of the players and the richest teams are the only ones that win. However, the teams with the highest payrolls have not been winning lately and in some cases not even making the playoffs. It’s difficult to pinpoint the true meaning of this, but it may just mean that teams with money have been investing wrong. Their payroll is high, but the return is lower than anticipated. The New York Yankees will never be outspent, but the Yankees, unlike their 20th century-dynasties, may not win the American League pennant every year.
This year’s Boston Red Sox team might be the current Exhibit A of a team that spent lavishly, but didn’t sound very happy. Not only resulting from the cataclysmic collapse during the September that kept the team out of the playoffs, but within the clubhouse, too, from all we hear about the Last Days of Francona. Certainly, the Red Sox come under the heading of being a team that can buy anybody to fill in the blanks on the roster. Yet it didn’t work out very well and the team seems to be in disarray now. The real off-season question for the Red Sox is whether having all the money they need to retool can buy happiness and success in the standings.
Along the same lines, we seem to be witnessing the gradual alternation of status of a team classified as have-not into a have. That would be the team formerly known as the Florida Marlins that wants us all to call them the Miami Marlins as they shed vestiges of their cheapskate past. The Marlins have been a quirky franchise. One minute they are winning a World Series title (1997 and 2003), the next minute they won’t give anybody a raise and are trading off stars and future stars to lower their payroll to a level beneath that of the Lansing Lugnuts.
The Marlins are trying to effect an identity change. They are moving into a new ballpark. They hired Ozzie Guillen as their new manager. And these days you can’t open your eyes or ears without hearing how the Marlins are wooing every name free agent this side of David Beckham. Pujols? Check. Jose Reyes? Check. Mark Buehrle? Check.
Watch the Marlins sign them all, run the payroll up to $175 millon, and finish third in their division.