MLB+

One of my friends who I am not a big enough sports blogger to give a cutesy name to and refer to incessantly asked me the other day where I thought Big MLB Player X was going to sign with. I realized, as I started to rattle off the usual suspects of teams that could commit to a big long-term contract, that we need a new division just for Hot Stove League talk: the teams that are capable of buying proven talent on the open market.

The story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf tends to miss out on one critical point: eventually, the Wolf *does* show up, and the hammer comes down. That hammer, at least where MLB is concerned, is Competitive Balance. CB is the idea that every team has a chance at the start of the year, if only they have a good year.

That might have been true once, and still is true to some extent. But when the big breakthrough last year in the AL was that a Cleveland team that everyone thought would be good in 2006, but was good in 2007, and the Cubs spend $300 million and make the playoffs anyway, because while they are the Cubs and far from wise or prudent, every blind pig can stumble upon a good year from Ted Lilly...

Well, the simple fact of the matter is that the rich teams aren't as dumb as they used to be, and the poor teams aren't getting any smarter (or, for that matter, spending the money they are supposed to be getting from the revenue sharing plan).

Add this to the simple fact that the good teams have a large source of talent that is simply an auction marketplace (that would be Japan), and you take a bad situation and make it even worse. It's not that every player from Japan is an instant superstar, and you could even argue that most of the players have been bad bargains. However, it's not like every team in the league didn't know that Daisuke Matsuzaka would be good. But only a few teams could even consider signing him. (You can put Kei Igawa in that list, too, but only if you want to watch Yankee Fan get really, really bent.)

One of the nice things about baseball is that it has such a rich history, you can generally find everything that is happening now has happened before. What this looks like is the pre-farm system era, when teams simply paid for minor league stars. Since then, there has been the slow but steady flattening of the disparity between good and bad teams, as the farm system, draft and lessening of income differences helped to bring more teams beyond the level of punching bag.

But trends are just that, and when the snapback comes, it's noticeable. And when that snap causes fewer teams to say competitive, that's another problem. (What, we'll go to three wild cards per league?)

Cynics will point out the large number of World Series champions in recent years, but it's not who wins the Series that defines the era. It's the consistent presence of similar teams in the playoffs. And maybe this is really only a BOS/NYY problem, but it's hard to imagine how the NL doesn't eventually get there as well.

In the 2008 playoffs, Boston will qualify for the post-season. So will the Yankees, and at least two of the following four teams: Cubs, Dodgers, Angels, Mets. So that's half the field, more or less certain. 162 games to decide four spots. Welcome to the Hot Stove League of 2007, the new era of MLB+.

Now, if only we could reconfigure the standings to reflect the new order...