Yes, that's probably pretty much correct. It just goes to show how socialist concepts like "revenue sharing" have a counterproductive effect everywhere they are used, expecially in a "society" consisting exclusively of very wealthy entities, as MLB is.
BTW, the Pirates, are owned by the McClatchy family, the publishers of a slew of left-leaning newspapers, which seems quite fitting to these circumstances.
The teams that give up the revenue, the teams that receive it, and the amounts involved in this "revenue sharing" seem to be determined by Commissar Selig himself. Just another example of Selig's tyrannical rule.
Actually, there is a specific definition of which teams pay luxury tax and which teams receive revenue sharing. Selig admihisters the program, he does not determine the payers or the the receivers.
And, yes, there are teams like the Pirates (and their owners, the McClatchys) -- who have pocketed the revenue sharing check.
There are other teams, though, like the Milwaukee Brewers, who used their revenue sharing checks to sign high draft picks and re-sign their major league players. The difference is in the owners: Mark Attanasio wants to win, the McClatchys don't care if they lose.
I heard that the Pittsburgh Pirates have been profitable due to baseball revenue sharing, and that the Pirates owners have put a sorry team on the field because it's cheaper than paying big stars who could improve the Pirates team on the field.*chuckle* The Pirates are far from the only ones who'd been guilty of that crime. A few years ago, the hoopla was over Carl Polhad of the Twins doing likewise with all those yummy Yankee tax dollars he was getting. (And anyone who thinks revenue sharing isn't at least two thirds a tax on the Yankees is full of it.) As a matter of fact, before his untimely death Doug Pappas of the SABR did a deep analysis of all the revenue sharing dollars and discovered several so-called small market teams "dependent" on revenue sharing, pleading they couldn't invest competitively in their teams without it, were investing in anything but their teams while still having resources enough to have invested in their major league rosters and their minor league systems without the revenue sharing dollars.Yes, that's probably pretty much correct. It just goes to show how socialist concepts like "revenue sharing" have a counterproductive effect everywhere they are used, expecially in a "society" consisting exclusively of very wealthy entities, as MLB is.
The teams that give up the revenue, the teams that receive it, and the amounts involved in this "revenue sharing" seem to be determined by Commissar Selig himself. Just another example of Selig's tyrannical rule.I'm no big fan of Frank McCourt, who seems to have used his club as his personal ATM machine---the IRS was talking in the neighbourhood of about $150-180 million even before the Selig regime bandied the same number about---and whose financial holes may have hamstrung the Dodgers just enough to keep them, when they were competitive during his regime, from getting much beyond the first or second round.
But the sooner Selig is gone, the way better for baseball. And it only begins with him having been stupid enough to sanction McCourt's badly-leveraged buy of the Dodgers in the first place. If not for the gravity of the thing, it would have been to laugh watching Selig go nutshit over McCourt's incompetence considering he'd sanctioned the idiot buying the team with what amounted to a house of cards in the first place. That's Selig for you. He doesn't wake up or wise up until something blows up in his face and damages the game.
But I'd go even farther. If it were up to me,
* No former owner, player, manager, umpire, or any team official would be eligible to become baseball's commissioner. Ever. Whatever his mistakes, and God knows he made them, Fay Vincent was baseball's last legitimate commissioner. It's time for the game to have a legitimate commissioner again. (Since Bob Costas doesn't want the gig, I'm open to suggestions. Maybe Roger Angell could be talked into the job; once upon a time I'd have thought about Bill James, but since he's been a Red Sox official that rules him out, too . . . )
* The so-called "small" or "medium" market clubs would be told, plain and true, to quit bellyaching, stop blaming the Yankees for all evil known to mankind (I'm no Yankee fan but even I think that crap goes too far too often---example: when the Yankees made a cross sponsorship deal with Manchester United, everyone else screamed such blue murder it didn't cross their minds that the Yankees only did what they wished they'd thought of first for another revenue stream) and living off some of the Yankees' well-earned revenue, invest their otherwise little-discussed and little-admitted resources in their teams (it would probably shock people to know just how well-resourced a lot of so-called "weak" franchises' owners might happen to be), and learn that brains wins more than money ever did (if all you needed was money, this year's Red Sox wouldn't have taken such a spectacular dive and any year's Mets would be a National League powerhouse, to name just two); or, get the hell out and sell to people who know how to operate a baseball franchise. Or was I just imagining that the so-called big money teams who got to the postseason (the Empire Emeritus, the Phillies) got shoved aside early and often this year?
* Don't even think about adding postseason rounds. It's been diluted quite enough. But start thinking good and strong about restoring the World Series' primacy once and for all. You want to keep up the good work that was done, when all was said and done, by this year's World Series? Easy: 1) Eliminate the wild card. (Let's see who really has the mettle to close ranks and hunker down down the stretch when you're playing for either division championship or bustaroonie. I'd have laid bets that, in that circumstance, the St. Louis Cardinals, who really came alive after August, just might have found enough to meet and maybe even overtake the Brewers in the NL Central.) 2) The division winner with the best regular-season record gets a round-one bye. 3) The remaining two division winners play a best-of-three division series. 4) That winner meets the bye team in a best-of-five League Championship Series. 5) The World Series stays a best of seven. 6) Just watch the caliber of competition ramp up and just watch the nail-driving pennant race return even more in earnest.