If my hand-wringing today in the wake of a Yankees-Dodgers World Series seems a bit outdated, it’s only because it is. Rivals have been whining about the Dodgers since Brooklyn had 27 farm teams in 1949, and crying foul against the Yankees goes back a century to the Babe Ruth trade with Boston.
More recently (am I the only one who considers the ‘50s more recently?), the Yankees built much of their foundation for World Series titles in the ‘60s (Roger Maris, Clete Boyer, Ralph Terry and more) on very shady deals with a Kansas City A’s owner who formerly owned Yankee Stadium. The Dodgers moved west and all of a sudden had all of Southern California coming to their games, an attendance advantage on the league that kept Dodger Blue in the black for years.
But there’s something different at play now, and I say this recognizing that this was the first Yankees-Dodgers World Series since 1981. The Rangers had been to three World Series since the Yankees’ last visit (that still boggles the mind), and this was LA’s first Series triumph played in home stadiums in front of full houses since 1988. The game of baseball itself tends to save MLB from its worst excesses and mistakes, and an expanded playoff also creates a more level platform in which, say, a 90-win wild card team (Texas) can beat an 84-win wild card team (Arizona) while three 100-win teams (Baltimore, Atlanta, LA) watch from the sidelines.
As MLB heads toward its offseason and the usual free agent frenzy, the Rangers are one of a number of teams still trying to solve the local TV revenue puzzle that the Diamond Sports Group (formerly Bally Sports) going into Chapter 11 in 2023 produced. It’s happening across the board in sports, as you’ve noticed with the Mavericks and Stars, teams having to find new ways to generate the millions in local revenues they previously took for granted.
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Leagues share the greater pie that comes from national broadcasts, but local TV money is to each its own.
Meanwhile, the Yankees are the principal owners of the YES Sports Network and can count on something close to $200 million while the Dodgers have a 25-year deal worth more than $8 billion (roughly $330 million per season). That gives LA an incredible running start when it comes to pursuing players such as Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, two players they landed by spending $1.025 billion last winter — blowing away the half billion Texas pledged to Corey Seager and Marcus Semien three years ago.
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This isn’t to suggest the shedding of tears for any MLB owners, in particular Texas’ Ray Davis. But in the only uncapped league in major American team sports, every hundred million counts, you know?
“The beauty of baseball is that star power does not guarantee championships,” Rangers GM Chris Young said Thursday. “But it does enhance your chances. And certain teams have the ability to make mistakes and move on.”
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Even the Rangers could do that, in a sense, when they signed Jacob deGrom and got six starts out of him en route to the 2023 title. That was back in the golden era of guaranteed local TV revenues (or at least Texas and other teams thought they had guarantees prior to the network’s bankruptcy filing). The game has changed.
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The built-in advantage that the Dodgers and Yankees possess now is a greater weapon than any they have ever wielded. As those teams begin their offseason plans following the end of the World Series, they have certain known quantities in their oversized budgets that other teams lack. Even the Rangers, with the D-FW area representing the No. 5 market in the country, lack the certainty of resources for making plans beyond the immediate future. So imagine what that means for Cincinnati, Pittsburgh or Kansas City. Imagine being Tampa Bay (without a roof) or the Athletics moving for an unknown period of time to Sacramento.
What kind of fairness exists in a sport where the disparity of revenues and the ability to spend is as great as this one?
It’s only creative management, good luck with pitching and the awkward bounces of the game that occasionally allow the Rays or Guardians or Royals to ever really compete with the big boys. I’ve never understood why MLB players fight so hard against a cap when a cap also means a spending floor for small market teams that automatically increases spending at the below-superstar levels.
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The Rangers had their moment in the sun in 2023, and it could surely happen again. But a team that’s working to create its own sports network is not playing on the same field as those with the high-octane revenues that fuel the Dodgers and Yankees.
When free agency first came to baseball in the late ‘70s, the Yankees and Dodgers reaped the benefits and met three times in a span of five World Series. We thought they might always dominate because of their market size advantages. It didn’t happen then.
If it doesn’t happen now, it’s mostly because expanded postseasons create short playoff series in which being the hot team trumps being the best team. But when even a club with the market size of the Rangers is short-handed to compete with New York and LA, you have to ask if the modern advantages the Yanks and Dodgers possess make a mockery of the notion that competitive balance is even a goal?
LA already knows it’s adding Ohtani to the rotation in 2025. What if the Dodgers pencil in free agent Juan Soto in the outfield? Second-best team on paper might never have looked so far away.
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