MLB Won't Tell Cheap Teams To Spend More Money

Thanks in part to the Los Angeles Dodgers and their continued attempts to win baseball games, much of the online discussion in the baseball world this offseason has revolved around adding a salary cap to Major League Baseball. Because fans, for some inexplicable reason, are more interested in protecting cheap owners than forcing them to spend commensurate with the rest of the league.

Some dismiss such sentiments as coming from those who support big market teams. But you don't have to take an outsider's perspective at face value. One former player, reliever Andrew Miller, who spent the majority of his career in small markets, said in a recent interview that cheap owners won't spend. And the league doesn't care.

On The Foul Territory show, Miller was asked his perspective on it:

"How do you solve the issues of some of the bottom feeders, and occasionally they'll emerge, but we know some of the teams that stand out…Dick Monfort the Rockies owner, recently came out and said, ‘I want a cap and I want someone else to pay the money for me…' Anyway, how do you solve that, because you can't kick owners out, but there are repeat owners that are hurting the sport and causing this conversation to be like, 'hey let's take down those big teams, and those big boys that actually give a crap,' because we have to help the big group that's always complaining and never doing anything about it."

"Their goal is not to push teams up from the bottom, or honestly, to even it out," Miller said. "What they want to do is pull the teams down from the top. They want to put those restraints on the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Mets, whoever it may be, and they don't want that money to fully go back to the bottom teams and even out. They're just looking for a way to spend as little as they possibly can on players and put that money back in their pocket. 

"They're businessmen, we understand it. These guys are billionaires for a reason. They're not stupid business people. As far as addressing that, we've done a few things. We want to go further. The most obvious is working on revenue sharing. The league has been very difficult, to be completely blunt. They've said no, a lot of times, that this is not something they'll touch."

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 16:  Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred speaks at the National Press Club July 16, 2018 in Washington, DC. The MLB All-Star game will be held tomorrow at Nationals Park.  (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

MLB Allowing Cheap Owners To Stay Cheap

Owners, predictably, have been salivating at fan discussion on a salary cap. Desperate to have the opportunity to artificially limit player salaries, fans blame competitive teams for trying, while making excuses for cheap owners looking to maximize profits.

As Miller says, "we have ways to address that that are not a cap." But fans don't want to hear a solution that involves allowing teams who care to succeed.

Miller played the majority of his career with the Detroit Tigers, the Marlins, the Cardinals and in Cleveland. He knows how the system works, designed to protect teams and owners who use their franchise as a piggy bank, not an opportunity to win in a competitive endeavor.

Unfortunately, Miller's suggestion of beefing up revenue sharing likely wouldn't work either. Because as the Rays, Pirates and other organizations have demonstrated, even when handed tens of millions of dollars from the league, they won't spend it. And the commissioner, who's employed by the owners, won't go to his bosses and demand they do a better job.

A salary cap would, as the show suggests, simply allow those teams to pocket even more money, while hurting the players in the process.