NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
For years baseball owners told fans that only a handful of teams had any chance at winning the World Series, and that only through greater sharing of revenue among teams could that problem be corrected.
And for the most part, fans and sports writers bought it, coming to believe that "competitive imbalance" was a greater threat to baseball than the NFL, PlayStation2 and Nascar put together.
A year ago ownership got increased revenue sharing in a new labor deal with players that increased the payment of local broadcast and stadium revenue from large-market teams to low-revenue team. And sure enough, this year's pennant races were great. Small revenue teams such as the Kansas City Royals and Montreal Expos stayed in until the end, and the Minnesota Twins and most likely, the Florida Marlins, will play in the post-season.
But a look at the numbers shows what the owners really won at the bargaining table: lower salaries, not some grand Rozelle-like era of parity. The increase in revenue sharing held out as the holy grail in 2002's labor talks ended up being pretty modest. The 14 teams getting revenue saw their take increase an average $3.5 million this season. That's not the reason that half of them had winning records, compared to only four in 2002.
The small revenue teams planned well and got lucky as a new crop of young players came into its own. The teams didn't run out and use increased revenue sharing to sign big-bucks stars.
Take a look at the Royals' payroll. The team started the season with a payroll of $40.6 million by baseball's calculations, which was almost $9 million lower than 2002's salaries, even though its share of the revenue sharing pie increased by a few million dollars this year.
The team made some trades that added about $3 million in payroll during the course of this season, rather following past years' pattern of trading better players mid-season to richer contending teams. But the more than 25 percent jump in attendance that followed the team's being competitive for a change more than paid for that modest increase.
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The increase in revenue sharing that the owners won from players in the 1996 contract, which is usually termed a loser for the owners, has had a far larger impact on the competitiveness of small market teams.
About $220 million will move between clubs in revenue sharing this year. Last year, the figure was $169 million. But in 1995, it was a mere $20 million.
Owners' labor negotiator Rob Manfred and union chief Don Fehr don't agree on much, but they both told me this week that it's too soon to attribute this year's competitive races to last year's labor agreement, although of course Manfred sees far more positives in the performance of the 14 revenue sharing recipients this year.
As I told you last spring, what mattered in the new labor deal wasn't revenue sharing; it was the luxury tax, which helped hold down salaries for established players. The "tax" penalized teams that spend more than $117 million on player salaries. Teams near that threshold pulled back on spending, and in the end only one team, the deep-pocket New York Yankees, jumped the cap, coming in at about $150 million.
The median salary, the point that reflects half the players being paid more and half being paid less, fell to $600,000 from $725,000 last year.
Of the 100 free agents who had their 2002 and 2003 salaries widely reported, players seeing cuts in their guaranteed dollars outnumbered those seeing raises by better than two-to-one. Yes, that helped the Minnesota Twins, who were able to sign pitcher Kenny Rogers for a song. But it also helped the big-dollar teams, like the Yankees. In fact the Yanks probably saved much of the $12 million they paid in luxury tax through lower salaries.
The key to competitiveness is how many teams are spending their money smartly, not simply how much money they each have. And that's a matter of management talent, and in some cases luck, more than the revenue sharing formula.
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The biggest advantage that the Florida Marlins had over division rivals New York Mets this year isn't that the Marlins pulled down a few million more in revenue sharing than they did in 2002. It's that the Marlins' superior pitching staff this October, led by mostly young players, earned less than the $17.2 million the Mets paid Mo Vaughn to hit .190 over 27 games.
If the bigger revenue teams like the Yankees and Giants crush the Twins and Marlins in the upcoming playoffs, that doesn't mean that small-revenue teams don't have a chance, any more than upset victories by those two Davids means that the Goliaths were slain by revenue sharing.
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