MLB is a protected business, not a free market.
The number of fans in the stands does not (especially for the Yanks) equate with the amount of money they can spend on players. TV and Radio bring much more money than attendence ever could. Wanna put it on a fair basis (and I do not advocate this), allow the teams to only spend attendence money on salaries.
If MLB were allowed to be a 'free market', then we would only have teams in LA, SF, NY, Houston, Dallas, Boston etc. Boy that would be fun watching LA and the Yanks play the series year after year. Hey we won 20 World Series in a row... but there are only 6 teams.
The owners and the players both have screwed the financial end of the game up. Now we have the 'new ballparks' which cater to the high rollers (luxury boxes), the ordinary fan cannot buy a good seat in the good markets. Try to buy a seat at Bush other than the upper decks. I used to be able to buy Lodge Reserved seats, pretty good seats for about $12-$15. Now they are $29 and they are all held by corporations. Every seat in the lower decks are season ticket holders, and 95% of those are corporate purchases. Hell they even reduced the bleacher seats a few years ago. The NEW BUSH STADIUM will have fewer seats than the existing one. Think the owners have the ordinary joe fan in mind?
They have allowed the game to become a subsidized business by taking money from teams with high earnings and giving it to small market teams who, in many cases, pocket the cash. If you can sell a lot of tickets at high prices along with watered down beer and cold hot dogs then that's life. If you can get fans to watch you on TV then all the better. The fact that Yankee and Sox fans love their teams whereas other fans couldn't care less is also life.
The Yankees won all of those World Series with a lot of home grown talent and some good value players. It was only when they started buying players again that they started to fall short of their goal. Smaller market teams like the Cardinals, Marlins, Twins and Royals used to win when they had good farm systems and good veteran players. The Sox won last year with a mix of cast offs and some purchased talent I grant you but they also traded Schilling and Jeff Bagwell out of their farm systems years ago and got one good started for a few years and slob of a set-up man in return.
Also to consider, you can get seats at a game in smaller markets but in markets where there is pressure to win like in Boston or New York, ownership will turn to whoever can pay the tab.
I think that players make far too much money but that's the game.