Money can attract a talented team, but a gifted team can accomplish greatness without money.
Salary cap is a rule that limits the amount of money that a team can spend on all their players’ salaries. But one major sport, baseball, does not have a set-in place rule for the limit a team can spend on creating their roster.
Why does Major League Baseball not follow the other major sports with this rule? You would think that not having a salary cap could create some problems with roster balance and parity for who the best teams are, and you would be right. But not having a salary cap isn’t all bad for one of America’s pastimes, and it has led the mangers in less “rich” franchises to play “Moneyball” to look for players they can sign to good value contracts.
Baseball fans know that while there isn’t a salary cap, there is a “luxury tax” that is used for the big spending teams to justify spending big money on contracts. Fans of smaller market teams continue to wonder how they will be able to compete with these mega-franchises. I’m a Toronto Blue Jays fan so I can’t relate to being a fan of a small market team, but I have seen unexpected teams succeed before.
If you take a look at the champions from the past 20 seasons you will notice right away that there have been no back-to-back winners. This isn’t to say that this is the only reason why not having a salary cap isn’t such a bad thing, but it gives hope for other teams looking to win a championship. Take the 2015 Kansas City Royals for example, their 40-man roster was only around $125 million which ranked in the middle of the league when they took home the title.
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Where the negative effects of not having a salary cap really come into play is during free agency. Each year more and more top free agents are choosing to play for the top franchises that can offer them the most money.
All this discussion leads me to believe that there does not need to be a salary cap in baseball. At the end of the day, it is not the money that wins your team a championship, it is the heart and passion that each player brings to their team in important games that will make the difference.
The next time you see a big-name player sign a contract with an already talented team, just remember that super teams don’t always automatically win championships, and it takes a real team effort to achieve greatness in any professional sports league.