Fixing MLB: Salary Cap

The Yankees would be stretched if they had to develop their own prospects.

The National Football League's biggest strength over the past decade has been the leveling of the playing field with a salary cap.

The biggest team the Dallas Cowboys has to play by the same financial rules as the Buffalo Bills.

Leveling the playing field with salary cap is one thing that would help MLB.

Unfortunately, during All-Star game festivities last month, commissioner Bug Selig crushed any hope of even entertaining a cap.

Citing Pittsburgh and Cleveland's resurgence, Selig claims the economic system in baseball has changed, and it's working. At the break, he suggested, the league had about 20 clubs who were still very much in it.

Really that number is much smaller, it's always smaller.

In the past decade there have only been four teams with a pay role outside the top half of the league to play in the World Series (Florida in '03, Colorado in '07, Tampa in '08 and Texas last year). Only one team in that group has won.

Every year, half the league really has no hope of winning a world title. League pennants are nice, but at the major league level you play to win it all.

Salary caps put a stronger emphasis on organizational identity, and it itself would help pull the Yankees and others back with the rest of the league.

Sadly, Selig seems to have bought into the idea that having the Yankees, Red Sox and other big market teams dominate October is best for baseball.

Let's be honest, who was the last prospect the Yankees actually developed into a star?

Derek Jeter comes to mind, but he's 37, and the Bronx Bombers lucked out he didn't get traded. More recently, Robinson Cano fits the shoe, but again the Yanks got lucky he's not another team.

It's been fun to see fans coming out and filling the ball parks in Cincinnati, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. No one wants to suffer through a season with 100 losses, but they occasionally happen.

When you put a good product on the field people will come. And baseball needs a good product in 30 cities, not just eight.

The way to do that is mimic the NFL, and make all teams play by the same financial rules.