Bud's Big Mess
How to clean up after the sloppiest commissioner in history
1/7/04
Aaron Wolfson

Nobody has succeeded at failure quite like Bud Selig. Pissing off casual fans and stat geeks with equal aplomb, Bud has enjoyed one of the more unique reigns ever in that he has managed to devote the most resources to the smallest problems, leaving the real issues to fester and slowly erode the game. With no end in sight, however, we are forced to speculate as to what a normal person might do to fix baseball -- that is, if it's even broken.

The biggest error Bud has made (and let me tell you, that's like picking Michael Jackson's weirdest character trait) is his consuming, pathological desire to even baseball's pay structure and subsequent misguided attempts to "fix" it. Just for one example of why Bud is chasing an imaginary demon, check out last year's playoff teams and their payrolls:

Team	Payroll	MLB Rank
New York	$180,322,403	1st
Boston	104,873,607	5th
Atlanta	103,912,011	6th
San Francisco	100,061,211	8th
Chicago	86,576,763	12th
Minnesota	65,318,977	18th
Florida	63,281,152	20th
Oakland	56,596,691	26th

Yep, the teams that spend the most sure do have an unfair advantage, Bud. It's clear to anyone with half a brain that the reason teams like Milwaukee and Montreal are not competitive is not how much they spend; it's how their owners run them. And, surprise! Bud owns both of the aforementioned teams in one form or another. Although it's not for payroll reasons, it is true that MLB has more than its share of deadweight teams that are virtually eliminated from contention by Opening Day. However, if this is to be fixed, MLB must target ownership, not revenue allocation.

Baseball has perhaps as many simply absurd situations as all the other major sports combined, and the primary example is its ownership of one of its teams. For one thing, that creates more conflicts of interests than can possibly be imagined. There is just no way to adequately run a franchise this way, and if something is not done with the Expos soon, the franchise will completely implode. The easiest solution would be to quit trying to find the best possible city on the globe for the team and just auction it off to the highest bidder, allowing whoever gets the team to move it wherever they believe it will perform the best (subject to owner approval, of course). MLB has absolutely no excuse for hanging onto the Expos for as long as it has.

I firmly believe that winning creates revenue, not the other way around. It really doesn't matter where the Expos end up headed to, as long as the ownership is committed to making them a winning franchise. One must look no further than Kansas City circa last year for an indication that this is true. Moribund for the past decade, with declining attendance and a miniscule payroll, the Royals didn't have much to look forward to entering 2003. But one miraculous winning streak and a mid-season comeback later, Kansas City was experiencing a baseball renaissance. All of a sudden, people cared. And they began to fill the stadium in droves. Nothing had changed, save the team on the field and its record. Pittsburgh was once a baseball hotbed, and the Pirates are steeped in tradition unlike almost any other MLB squad, having seen the likes of Wagner, Stargell, Clemente, Kiner, Vaughn, Traynor, and Bonds wear the black and yellow. But now, the Pirates are considered a small-market team by Bud and his cronies, and after looking at the team they expect to field for 2004, one wonders how in the hell Pittsburgh will win 40 games. And Bud is surprised that attendance is down, even with a new stadium? Reality check: fifty-foot-tall Coke bottles don't hit home runs.

This is where many stat geeks would plead for every team to hire a Billy Beane or Theo Epstein in order to save baseball from the evil clutches of Cam Bonifay, and subtly hint that they're available for a job. Not this geek. Of course I'd love to see all franchises adopt sabermetric principles, but it's clear that it's not the only way to turn around a team. Allard Baird is no genius, but he appears to be finally on the right track in Kansas City. Maybe Allard can't make the Royals into the new A's without checking an OPS or two, but he is clearly able to get them back to respectability. And in places like Milwaukee right now, respectability is but a mere pipe dream.

Got something to say? Say it to my face. All comments are welcome.