Major League Baseball: Where the Very Best Head Off to the Biggest Markets

Any true baseball fan knows that many players get paid ridiculous salaries. If you're at least an above-average player in the league, you're bound to get paid big, and it'll likely be more than you're truly worth. Why more than you're truly worth?  In the world of free agency, it's all about outbidding other teams in order to get your services. It shows that a team wants you, and wants you bad. In the end, you're one lucky son-of-a-gun to get the salary you earned.

There's no beating around the bush. While some teams this offseason are being more conservative with their spending, a few are still spending as much money as ever, and that's not good for the game or the other teams in the league.

How to begin this argument is easy, and it begins with the outrageous spending of the New York Yankees. While they have given tremendous salaries to big-name free agents in the past, what's gone down this offseason appears to be nowhere near what they have spent before.  he three new big-name players that will help christen the new Yankee Stadium on Opening Day are C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, and Mark Teixeira.  The three combine to be paid a salary of $423.5 million. In addition, the Yanks are paying a combined 20 years for these players' services.

However, the spending goes beyond the Evil Empire also known as the Yankees. Their inner-city rivals, the Mets, have signed Francisco Rodriguez, now baseball's all-time single-season saves leader, to a three-year, $37 million contract. Here's one that really struck me:  Thirty-six-year-old Raul Ibanez signed a three-year deal with the Phillies worth $31.5 million. Ibanez is good, but he's aging and not as great as the deal suggests.  More recently, the Cubs signed Milton Bradley, a Type B player who has a reputation of being one of the biggest clubhouse cancers in baseball, to a three-year, $30 million contract. There's no way a Type B player should be earning that much.

As you're reading this, you might be thinking, "Geoffrey, that's the business of baseball.  You even explained this at the beginning."

I did say that, but lost in the argument is that this type of spending is not fair to the teams that don't have quite as big a payroll. When you take a look at the players I just mentioned, they came from teams like Milwaukee, Toronto, Seattle, and Texas. Out of those four teams, only Seattle had one of the top ten payrolls in baseball in 2008. Three of the new teams these players signed with (both New York teams and the Cubs) were in the top ten and out of that group, none finished below seventh in the rankings.

The trend? You won't see Manny Ramirez sign with a team like Minnesota, Milwaukee, or Tampa Bay when someone finally picks him up because their entire payrolls last season were less than Manny is likely to demand. Recent rumors suggest that he could go to the Giants, but don't count on it. Chances are he'll likely re-sign with the Dodgers or another team with a bigger market than San Francisco.

The same goes for remaining free agents such as Adam Dunn, Orlando Hudson, and Ben Sheets. Don't look for either to re-sign to with their respective teams. To do so, they'd have to have a payroll like that of the Cubs, who spent $52 million to keep Ryan Dempster around for another four years.

The bottom line:  Championships aren't won by dishing out money like it grows on trees.  Since the Yankees developed that attitude, they haven't won a World Series. Yes, they landed C.C. Sabathia, one of the top-three starting pitchers in the game, but is that really enough? Teams in smaller markets are trying to win as well, and they can't sign a player like Sabathia if they don't have the dough.

The team from the Bronx is becoming a monopoly, and it's proof enough that baseball needs to have a salary cap to keep this from happening again. Sadly though, I don't think one will be put into place.