Baseball is nearly fixed; time to finish the job

The Minnesota Twins' signing of Joe Mauer completes Major League Baseball's journey back from the brink of contraction. Whether a team that will need to keep its payroll under $100 million should devote that large a chunk of change to one player is debatable. But the Twins are opening a new stadium this season and Mauer is a local kid, so there's an argument to be made that right now it's not just a contract, but an investment on the future of baseball in the city and payback to its fans for the stadium.

Interesting that this should happen now. Baseball is starting to grumble about realignment, which is long overdue for a sport that has one division with six teams and another with four. But ideas being bandied about like a dynamic realignment that can change from year to year based on teams' expectations or wishes, are even more ridiculous than the league's attempt to contract nearly a decade ago.

There is a competitive imbalance in baseball. The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox enter each season as heavy favorites to make the postseason, which makes for a boring season, especially if you live in Tampa, Baltimore or Toronto. But the problem is more than money. Beyond a certain point -- around $100 million -- the impact of payroll diminishes. The amount of money the Yankees spends protects them from the sort of injury-ridden disasters that even other big-market teams like the New York Mets faced. Spending a lot of money buys a lot of depth. But if major league general managers cannot construct a competitive team with $100 million, they should not be major league general managers. The secret to the Yankees' and Red Sox's success is more than free spending in the free-agent market. Each team also has great player development and scouting systems and a willingness to spend in the draft.

That the Red Sox and Yankees have ruled the American League East for more than a decade is due in part to their money and their player development, but also the ineptitude of their division rivals. The Baltimore Orioles and Toronto Blue Jays both squandered huge and loyal attendance with ridiculously dumb spending and ever-changing front offices. The Tampa Bay Rays were dealt a bad hand from the beginning, but it's ironic that the team in the worst financial position in the division is the only one other than the Yankees or Red Sox to make the playoffs recently.

Other teams have managed to stay competitive on a budget. At the still relatively high end, teams like the Phillies and Angels have built consistent winners without plunging too deep into the payroll pool, or at least showing a reluctant to spend for the sake of spending. At the low end, the Athletics had a successful run, the Twins have been consistently above average and playoff contenders for the past few years, while the Rockies and now budget-conscious Braves are fielding competitive teams on payrolls well under $100 million. The real problem is that teams like the Florida Marlins and San Diego Padres try to win with payrolls around $30 million, which isn't fair to their fans and is the source of the real competitive imbalance.

So how do you fix baseball without blowing it up?

First identity the real problems:

1. Some teams are too strong. Teams in the Northeast -- Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies and Mets -- tend to have larger revenue streams and therefore outspend their opponents in the free agent market, giving the East divisions an imbalance both within the division and within their leagues.

2. Some teams are too weak. A handful of teams either have been either financially for so long or been mismanaged for so long, that fan loyalty is eroding or non-existent. This includes the Florida Marlins, Oakland Athletics, Kansas City Royals, San Diego Padres and Tampa Bay Rays. It isn't necessarily related to the quality of the teams; in fact, the Marlins and Rays were both playoff contenders last season and made recent World Series appearances. But their inability to draw fans keeps the organizations in flux which in turn feeds back into their inability to draw fans.

3. The draft rewards the rich and powerful. The annual draft allows some agents to steer players to the teams with the most money with threats of holdouts or not signing at all. Rather than replenishing teams that need the most help and draft early because of their poor records, threats of holdouts and demands for enormous signing bonuses keep teams with a budget from making big moves in the draft just as it does in the free agent market.

Those are the biggest problems. Some simple cannot be fixed -- the Yankees will always be the Yankees and will appeal the best players available. But there are a few solutions that could even things up a bit without a drastic measure like a salary cap, that would undoubtedly lead to a lockout or strike.

1. Start with the draft. Recent changes like offering teams compensation the next year for unsigned early round draft picks have helped usually conservative teams take risks in the draft, like the Rockies drafting Tyler Matzek last season. Now, institute a true slotting system like the NBA. Players can hold out if they don't like the team that drafted them, but the only way to get more money is to wait another year and get drafted higher. The MLBPA has shown a willingness to screw over its undrafted future brethren. Every huge signing bonus is money that won't be spent on dues-paying major league players. Give the major leaguers something they want in return -- like a guarantee of no attempt at a salary cap or just more money -- and they're likely to agree to a slot system for the draft. Few draftees see the major leagues in under three years; to give them major league contracts before they play a day of professional baseball is absurd.

2. Don't contract, expand. Since attendance disasters with the Marlins and Rays, baseball has gotten skittish about expansion and is overlooking its successes. The Arizona Diamondbacks have been erratic, but have established themselves as a solid mid-market club. The Colorado Rockies went through a dark stretch brought on by confusion over how to play baseball instead of pinball in Denver, but now seem on the verge of forever solving that problem. But regardless of the nature of baseball being played in Denver in the '90s, attendance was historic. Why? Denver in the mid-'90s was a booming city with a great sports history (Broncos and Nuggets) and a long minor-league baseball history. Baseball fans in the city had formed alliances with teams because of radio (the Cardinals) and television (the Cubs), but the alliances were nothing like that for the local Broncos. It was a market hungry for another major league team, and it gained two -- the Rockies and Avalanche -- who were both enormous attendance successes.

So baseball should search carefully, but deliberately, for places to expand that have one of the two following characteristics: 1) proximity to the biggest teams in the Northeast that might help bring the East Divisions into balance with the rest of baseball; or 2) similarity to Denver: strong sports cities with long minor-league baseball histories and relative regional isolation.

Forget Portland, Ore. It's ripe for a team, but its proximity to Seattle is less than ideal and there is already a strong Athletics fan base in a lot of Oregon. Leaving Portland open as a fallback plan for the A's is the best idea.

Forget anywhere in Florida. The strength of spring training baseball there is too strong and loyalties are too fixed. Cities like Orlando and Jacksonville should be left open as possibilities for relocation if the Rays and Marlins ultimately fail to establish themselves in their current homes.

Forget Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Montreal turned out to be a bust, and Vancouver is too close to Seattle. Mexico City and Monterrey are intriguing ideas, but it's not time. Same for San Juan. Baseball should continue to build its identity, but not a team, in those places.

Some candidates:

-- Buffalo. It would draw nearly equally from New York and Boston markets, but could also hurt Toronto. But as Toronto is the only team in Canada, it's not unreasonable to expect the Blue Jays' market to extend beyond their metropolitan area. Before the 1993 expansion, Buffalo was well-positioned with its record minor-league baseball attendance to be among the next major league cities, but lost out in baseball's lust for the Sun Belt. Buffalo isn't as good a candidate as it was then, but it shouldn't be overlooked.

-- New York/New Jersey. Baseball once had three teams in New York, why not do it again? Slicing into the loyalty of Yankees and Mets wouldn't be easy, but identifying a team with New Jersey could play into existing metropolitan rivalries. The downside is that it could damage the Phillies more than the New York teams.

-- Memphis or Nashville. The NFL, NBA and NHL have all moved successfully into Tennessee. Both cities have long minor-league baseball traditions and good sports histories. Both cities' proximity to St. Louis is somewhat worrisome and Nashville's proximity to Cincinnati could be problematic. But the Cardinals' regional reach is already substantial and the Reds' problem is more managerial than market-driven -- if they but together a winning organization, they would be able to operate on the same plane as the Twins and Rockies. The Rays and Marlins are much more metropolitan than regional teams, which means the South really has one team, the Braves.

-- San Antonio: It's now one of the 10 largest cities in the country. It's only slightly closer to Houston than Kansas City is to St. Louis. San Antonio has a single major league organization with the NBA's Spurs, but a good history with its minor league teams.

-- Charlotte: North Carolina has long been one of the strongest minor-league markets in baseball. Charlotte's proximity to Atlanta could be a problem, but again, the South has only one team representing a still-growing population. The banking industry in Charlotte would be a natural hot spring of corporate sponsors. In the end, it might be a better backup plan for the Marlins or Rays.

-- Indianapolis: Maybe it's too close to Chicago, Detroit and everything in Ohio, but it has a great sports history and a long minor-league baseball tradition. Tennessee would probably be a better choice, but Indy is worth exploring.

-- Salt Lake City. Its proximity to Denver and relatively small population hurt its chances, but it's successfully backed the NBA's Jazz for years.

-- Las Vegas. It would mean another dome or retractable roof stadium to counter the heat, but it has a large and growing local population and ready-made luxury box customers in casinos looking for comps for their customers. But the fear of gambling's taint has always been stronger in baseball than in other sports. It should hardly be a concern in these days of offshore online casinos and limited gambling everywhere, but baseball would almost certainly steer clear.

In the end, I would go with Memphis and San Antonio. If the TV situation weren't a problem for New Jersey of Buffalo -- finding a network and enough advertisers in an already competitive market -- that would be preferable, but it's a tough sell.

3. Use the expansion money to fix the struggling teams. Not many teams need new stadiums anymore, but some do. The Athletics, Rays and Marlins are playing in stadium so bad, that even a winning team cannot make baseball interesting to enough people. Use the expansion fees to help fund new stadiums, picking up the bulk of the cost with smaller contributions from the teams' owners and the cities. Do not, however, use expansion money to prop up mismanaged teams like the Royals.

4. Realign. Four divisions with four teams each. Something like this:

American League

-- East: Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays.

-- Central: Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins.

-- West: Arizona Diamondbacks, Los Angeles Angels, Oakland Athletics, Seattle Mariners

-- South: SAN ANTONIO, Kansas City Royals, Tampa Bay Rays, Texas Rangers.

National League

-- East: New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, Washington Nationals

-- Central: Chicago Cubs, Milwaukee Brewers, Cincinnati Reds St. Louis Cardinals

-- West: Colorado Rockies, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants

-- South: Atlanta Braves, Florida Marlins, Houston Astros, MEMPHIS

5. Change the playoffs. -- Four division winners and one wild-card team in each league.

-- The team with the fewest wins among the division winners plays a three-game series (all at the home site of the division winner) against the wild-card team starting two days after the regular season ends.

-- Four days after the season ends -- a break about the same length as the All-Star break allowing the best teams a chance to regroup and cool off teams that sneak in with a hot September -- the rest of the series start, beginning with the No. 2 and No. 3 teams in each league. The next day the No. 1 team plays the winner of the No. 4 and wild-card series. With the tightened playoff schedule baseball is introducing this year, the playoffs will end about where they end now, but baseball should remain interesting in most cities for the entire summer.