Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf told the paper that if his team wanted to compete they “... had to step up ... (the White Sox) felt if we were going to get better, we were going to have to spend more money. We're definitely spending the money."

The report commented on how the American League Central division now has three $100 million payroll teams and noted that two teams in the same division that are not expected to contend, Cleveland and Kansas City have total player payrolls of under $50 million.

It takes $100 million to commit to winning in baseball now, but in 18 cities that is still too rich.

BOTTOM TEAMS STAY BOTTOM

Much is made about how baseball and basketball seem to have the same top teams every year and the bottom teams generally stay the bottom teams with little opportunity to move up.

Not all teams have the revenues to compete for the best free agent players like the White Sox, nor do they have enough to keep players they develop.

So the solution, bandied about over the last decade has been to consider shrinking these leagues – fold a few teams and disperse the best players to other healthy franchises.

With the 1990s came a movement of vibrant expansion in all the professional leagues and some warned that the product might become watered down as teams were added players were added.

Watering down is hard to prove as long as the watered down players still feel compelled to ask for more with each contract.

As players leave poorer teams for rich teams it is hard to claim that there is not an endless supply of ready talent.

There are now 30 baseball teams, an increase of only four from 1989, and 32 National Basketball Association teams, up from 23.

While specific markets do have concerns about building size and corporate support, for the most part winning teams have better attendance than losing teams, and with additional revenues teams can pay to keep better players.

So the easy suggestion for media pundits with bright ideas is to turn back the clock and kick out teams that fail the litmus tests of attendance or money.

The thinking is that by getting rid of weaker teams the game will be better. They think that competition will be better among the remaining franchises because the leftover teams will acquire the top players left from the contracted teams.

Alas I can hearken back to a time before 1990 when there were fewer teams in every sport, a time when salaries were not as exorbitant that teams never had to risk bankruptcy to compete, and I am pretty sure that there were still “haves” and “have not’s” back then too.

What makes people so sure that by folding teams the game will not deteriorate further to one of a few even richer elite teams still beating down the new bottom of a smaller pool?

In fact over a period of only a few years it will probably be exactly as it is now except the superstar athletes, shining even greater over their peers will command even more money for their services and some markets that can compete right now will probably also have to question their viability.

DID THE EXPERIMENT GO WRONG?

You have to wonder where the expansion experiment all went wrong in the first place, because there was talk as early as the year 2000 about contracting baseball teams, but the places that kept coming up on the short list to be contracted were not the new fledgling places like Florida which still can’t sell out its baseball stadium. The discussion was about contracting established teams like Minnesota and Anaheim.

Why did baseball add teams in the 1990s in Arizona, Colorado, and Florida if only a few years later they considered folding in places like Anaheim?

A team that had success historically like Minnesota, which had won baseball championships in 1987 and 1991 and stayed in contention most every year were declared fiscally inept in the new economic reality.

Could it have been that when four new teams were added to baseball so too were added more bidders desperate for top players?

Twins’ players would have been able to command more even to stay in Minnesota on a team that regularly contended.

Salaries are usually negotiated based on average comparisons. One player’s contract even if a top team overpays for it will drive all contracts at that position up.

If it was the right thing to add teams to balance the league, then how could it so quickly become the wrong thing to have extra teams?

Was it just because the process of addition moved the salary scale?

No, because that imbalance would have happened eventually even without contraction with the strong unions, cut throat players agents and overall proliferation of free agency in sports.

Without a salary cap the best player at his position is able to demand the highest wage. The second best player is able to demand the next highest wage at that position, and so on.

Eventually there will be a team priced out even if only 10 teams are left in the league.

If only the most elite baseball players were left in baseball, assume the top 250 players in the world, then the richest team would pay for the best 25 guys, and the bottom team would have the weakest selection of players.

The top players would sign long contracts ensuring franchise stability on the best teams under the illusion of winning every year.

The bottom teams would refuse to sign their players to long deals because they wouldn’t want to make a big investment in the tenth best player at any position, and those players wouldn’t want to sign long deals at low rates.

The end result is the most player turnover would exist with the same bottom end teams, but the top teams would be winning the most championships.

This is no different from how it really works now in a 30 team baseball league where the poorer franchises develop players until they become too expensive to keep.

CONTRACTION: RECIPE TO LOSE MIDDLE

Contraction will not remove the bottom teams; there will still be a bottom group of teams. What contraction would remove are more of the middle teams. The expectation that the best assets of the contracted teams will somehow stabilize and make competitive the rest of the league is a misnomer.

That is why Anaheim, Minnesota and Montreal, all teams that contended with mid-range talent in the 1990s were considered expendable by baseball in 2001 when the spectre of contraction was first broached. It debunks the thinking of conventional wisdom that the teams that always struggled and finished last for decades would be the candidates to contract but that was never the case.

Wasn’t the case then and isn’t the case now.

In the NBA the growth of basketball really followed the Hall of Fame career of Michael Jordan. Basketball became very popular and more kids turned on to sport were playing basketball in high school. Subsequently the game grew at the college level and as some of the Jordan understudies became of draft age the talent level of NBA basketball exploded.

More cities wanted teams.

The game also became stronger around the world.

Both basketball and baseball had an influx of offshore talent that supported the jobs that were available with the addition of teams.

The pipeline has been very strong ever since for new talent in both sports.

In that light the expectation that removing franchises will eliminate the watered down talent pool is actually backwards thinking.

The danger is that by removing professional jobs the grassroots interest in playing these sports will decline. If basketball got very popular during the Jordan days that fact has a lot to do with why many of the star players we watch today in pro and college ball are even playing the sport.

What if they decided to play soccer instead?

Baseball supports a larger minor league at four levels. From triple-A ball to the Rookie leagues each franchise hosts about 125 prospects. When four teams were added that meant 500 new baseball players were in the major league system.

The more they evaluate the more they find players that can pitch and hit.

I often wondered how so many more Canadian baseball players had progressed to be great positional players in Major League Baseball. Maybe it is because the scouts had to find them to fill positions.

Justin Morneau and Jason Bay are very good examples of what can be found when one looks.

So was baseball watered down because of expansion?

Is contraction the answer to improve the game and make all the teams competitive?

What would fewer teams, fewer jobs, fewer prospects for jobs, and fewer new stars cause in these sports?

The answer: fewer good baseball players in the future.

In baseball some of the imported players will just not make it into the league.  

Why spend so much on scouting in foreign lands if there are enough players in the USA in high schools and amateur ball to meet the demand?

Can you imagine a league today without the Dominican, Cuban, and Venezuelan players?

Would it not then be watered down, because somebody from somewhere that is really good would get turned away?

That is what contraction will cause.

NBA THREAT OF CONTRACTION

So who is seriously thinking that contraction is a remedy to the issue of competitive imbalance?

The NBA threatens contraction, but it may be just to win negotiating points against its players association. There will be a push to implement a hard salary cap or the league might fold up jobs as a cost saving.

The million dollar question is where they cut.

Is it fair that a basketball franchise like Cleveland now be considered contractible for pulling down the quality of play in the league?

They had over 60 wins last year with LeBron James and due to his free agency departure now toil at the bottom of the league.

Can you say the middle is getting squeezed?

Cleveland and cities like it are not the problem in the NBA.

Miami which was one of the expanded teams’ has become a place that players will play for less money so that they can play with other superstars.

Players in the NBA have more clout than in any league. They decide by their whims and convictions what cities are the best to play in for reasons beyond economics.

This is why LeBron’s comments about how the NBA should have three or four superstar players on every team, just like Miami has are a conundrum for the NBA.

It used to be about economics, but it now is about personal choice and who they get to play with. The money is not really affecting who stays in Minnesota and who goes.

Players like LeBron really only want to play in basketball hotbeds like Miami, New York or Los Angeles.

Even if a super-elite NBA existed with just 15 teams you can bet that the top three teams would demolish the bottom three most of the times they played.  We have our example in Olympic international basketball – using the USA Dream Team experience.

So should a case be made that those unpopular teams they don’t choose should fold and their stars should go to the other more hip leftover teams.

Or maybe there isn’t really a problem in the NBA after all.

The 32 team NBA has averaged a new Finalist each year for the last twenty years.

That is pretty decent record of competitive balance for that sport.

In the glorious 1980s only six teams ever made it to the NBA Finals. That means that the same teams of that era dominated the regular season and the playoffs and it never changed.

The NBA was lucky in the 1980s that the winners were in big markets and NBA hotbeds well dispersed regionally. Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Boston all won titles in that decade.

In the present we are witnessing the most intriguing NBA finish ever. There has been some question entering the playoffs the past few seasons about who would advance to the Finals. This season is the foggiest yet and that uncertainty means that there is more reason to watch.

Despite the whispers the NBA is not ripe for contraction.

Baseball isn’t either.

MANAGEMENT NOT MONEY

The issue of which teams compete or not in baseball really comes down to management and not just money issues like Reinsdorf thinks.

Decisions regarding player scouting and coaching go a long way towards success.

The teams with the best farm systems can break down the player caste system of skill and money and remain competitive, or they can just choose to play the system.

Teams that scout well develop prospects timely, horde draft picks, and trade good players away before they become lost as free agents are in a position to take advantage of talent before other high paying teams take them.

In baseball, player development is critical. Baseball is in its strongest position with more teams because that actually makes it easier to find raw talent to develop.

While a little hit and miss it is possible to beat the big boys with small money ball. A survival strategy can be about building a talent pool that premieres the best young players to generate an exciting winning game of baseball before the rich teams attract them away.

There is no need to over pay for anyone, and expectations can be kept realistic with minimized payrolls.

The pitfall of being a team that contends with payroll is they must buy players at their peak. That often costs more than it needs to, and the list of prospects to buy is very small with great risk if the wrong choice is made.

The most important investment for a franchise that can’t compete in free agency is scouting, coaching and training.

They can still sometimes produce winning teams – note the Tampa Bay Rays in baseball’s American League East with two division championships ahead of the two most free spending teams in baseball in 2008 and 2010.

They still don’t sell the place out, but they probably can afford to stay competitive.

We need more of those teams not fewer. They lower the levers of salary escalation by not bidding for players.

Smart organizations will succeed in that environment by doing more with less.

Sometimes it easier for a “fledgling” organization to make adjustments than one poorly invested in bad player choices.

OBLIGED TO SPEND

While salary spending caps may be a bandaid solution to help all weak markets, there will be teams who still won’t agree to spend as much as the consensus going rates. A salary cap may still cause middle market teams to feel forced into bad decisions they shouldn’t make because they feel obliged to spend.

This is why in the National Hockey League, a league with a hard salary cap there are teams that assume bad contracts in trades with contending teams, for a fee of top draft picks.

That is smart on the part of the weak sister taking advantage of the big brother, but it only really works well if there is responsible management in place to know how to develop the young draft choice.

Contraction is really not a smart idea and not a likely scenario in any sport. Teams will move or change ownership before they fold in a sport like basketball. The value of every other franchise drops when a team is lost.

While it may have been a little too robust when it began expansion of the NBA was the right idea in the 90s and most of the markets that entered the league have since enjoyed periodic success including Miami, Orlando, Minnesota, Charlotte, New Orleans, and Toronto.

The places that suffered the most were franchises already in the league like Sacramento, and Indiana as the Pacers were contenders until about ten years ago. Even the storied Boston Celtics have bottomed out at some point, but the big difference has been who was the most willing to take risks along the way.

There are enough elite players, but there are problems with some the teams.

I cringe when I hear the word contraction, because usually it’s not just a question about economics. The dark road of perpetually unsuccessful teams is dotted with sharp forks in the road.

Just like in the 1960s-80s the franchises that were run awful, made the bad trades, or had no program of long term development also generally had players and owners that weren’t on the same page.

Contraction may not be the answer, but better commitment from ownership groups to try and field winners rather than accept mediocrity at whatever price would make NBA basketball and Major League baseball look much nicer.

While we commend Reinsdorf for spending to keep the White Sox in the mix in baseball's American League spending to keep up is not the only way to stock good players.