Posted by Jay Livingston
In 2010, the Pittsburgh Pirates won 57 games and lost 105. That .352 was the worst in major league baseball. As we speak, they are at .602. But for last night’s 1-0 loss to Oakland, they would be tied with St. Louis for the best record in baseball.
What caused the turnaround? Socialism and planning.
The socialism part is revenue-sharing. Teams that make a lot of money must put some their profits into a pool for the less wealthy teams. From each according to his ability to pay and all that. The idea is that small-market teams can use the money for larger salaries to attract better players.
The NFL’s version of revenue-sharing shares a great deal of the wealth, which is why a “dynasty” in football rarely lasts more than a couple of years. It’s also the reason that a huge media market, Los Angeles, has not had an NFL team for nearly two decades.
In baseball, revenue sharing is less extensive, hence the long-term domination of big-market, wealthy teams like the Yankees. Still, some of the TV money gets distributed to the poorer teams. But according to leaked documents in 2010, it looked as if the owners of some small-market teams (notably two Florida teams, the Rays and the Marlins) were paying the money to themselves, not to their players.
The Pirates too came under suspicion since they kept to their tight-fisted payroll. But in fact, the Pirates were using the money for development – scouting young players, signing them, and giving them a couple of years in the minor leagues.
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Big hat tip to Alan Barra at The Atlantic. My Pittsburgh connections, who blame owner Robert Nutting for the Pirates’ dismal record these past few years, claim that Barra’s article is “the Nutting PR machine at work” and that we should wait to see what changes the Pirates (and the Cards and Reds) make to their roster in the second half of the season.
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