Baseball Needs a Lockout & Salary Cap

Well, that was an incredibly thrilling World Series, a true manifestation of the best side of America's national pastime. It was also an glaring example of what is wrong with baseball -- massive economic disparity in league. The Number 2 payroll that has a $700 million player contract (Ohtani) beat the Number 5 payroll. 

The era and idea of Moneyball -- the Michael Lewis book and movie that explored the rise of sabermetrics in sports and the hope that small market teams like the Oakland A's could use logistics to compete with big money behemoths like the Yankees -- is over, as if it were ever really valid. Major League Baseball has needed a salary cap, profit sharing, and economic parity since at least the 1994-95 lockout. And it needs it now more than ever.

Who knows what will happen during off season negotiations: 

OF ALL THE things to cause outrage, to intensify the bleating that baseball is broken and the Los Angeles Dodgers are the culprit, the signing that generated the most consternation was that of a relief pitcher.

Not Shohei Ohtani's $700 million contract in 2023. Not the $325 million guaranteed to Yoshinobu Yamamoto a few weeks later. Not the $182 million that added two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell last offseason. Not even the drastically under-market deal signed by Japanese phenom Roki Sasaki that winter.

There was something about the four-year, $72 million contract given to left-hander Tanner Scott in January that infuriated fan bases in every market outside of Los Angeles -- even the only one that dwarfs it.

But this much is clear: the small market teams and owners should outright refuse to ever enter into play with organizations that have Amazonian power over small indie bookstores. It's just silly, unsustainable, and not good for "love of the game."