Dollars must make sense in baseball's offseason

As I watched the World Series last night, I found myself thinking what 2010 might hold for baseball. While some people might say I’m looking too far into the future, I would remind them that, even in early November, Major League teams must have their eyes on the season ahead.

The smart front offices do. They are focusing now on revenue – specifically, on how to grow revenue in an economy that has shown faint signs of a recovery. That’s also an important area for fans to concentrate on, because revenue concerns will explain the timidity in which teams they follow will enter free agency.

The odds of seeing a mega-contract such as CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira signed last offseason are about as good as the NFL changing its mind about allowing Rush Limbaugh to buy a stake in the St. Louis Rams.

Unless you root for the Yankees, you likely won’t see money flowing on talent. What you will see is your team packaging all sorts of come-out-to-the-ballpark incentives to get butts in the bleachers.

That’s not just my belief here; Forbes.com raised the same issue with Bob DuPuy, the No. 2 man in the Commissioner’s Office, when it asked him last Wednesday to discuss the state of the game.

DuPuy sounded hopeful.

Conceding the revenue challenges, he offered what might be the only solution the sport has if it intends to return soon to the salad days of the mid-2000s. Nothing is better for baseball than a good ol’ pennant race.

The lack of good races – and the economy -- slowed the turnstiles as the dog days of August rolled into September this past season. Most of the divisional races were locked up by then, and who would want to shell out top dollar to see small-market teams like the Indians, Pirates, Nationals, Royals, Padres, Reds, Orioles and Athletics play?

They weren’t the only bad baseball teams. They were, however, teams with the most economic limitations. None can do what big-market teams like the Cubs, White Sox, Tigers and Mets can: spend their way into contention. So the small-market teams will have to show creativity to draw crowds. Those teams can’t sell championship baseball, because they would be peddling a lie.

You never know about sports, though. Strange things have been known to happen; one or two of those small-market teams might surprise. They could pull off what the Tampa Bay Rays did in ‘08 and wind up in the World Series.

If they do, they won’t do it because they brought in a high-price free agent. They will have to rely on what they have in their organizations, which is young, cheap and unproven talent.

Unproven talent is a hard sale to fans who want to see stars in the lineup, if they can’t see a winning ballclub. So if they can’t have either, they’ll need a reason to go to the game.

And that’s the dilemma baseball faces, one that is uncomfortable for the lords of the game to discuss. But if they can’t discuss tense pennant races, what else is left?

They know what pennant races will do. They know what $1 hotdogs, fireworks and $5 bleacher tickets will do when fans are watching lousy baseball. Those promotions might draw some people to the ballpark, but promotions won’t full the place.

That’s the challenge in 2010 for DuPuy, a fact he’s mindful of. As he told Forbes.com: “Holding our own would be a good objective.”

DuPuy is correct.

Yet even that might not be possible next season with a bad economy and no decent pennant races to keep fans interested in spending money at the ballpark.

Shut loophole on international free agents

Baseball is a crazy game. Or, some might argue, a stupid one.

I often find myself leaning toward the latter category. For stupidity is the only thing I can point to for why baseball officials refuse to seal a loophole as big as Alex Rodriguez’s ego.

This time the issue is talent, not the inequity in market profitability, though profits, I suspect, do weigh heavily in this situation as well. At the center of it, as with most things in baseball, is money, which Aroldis Chapman stands to make a pile of.

Who is Aroldis Chapman?

Unless you know baseball well, the 21-year-old Chapman isn’t on your Fantasy League radar. But for those unfamiliar with him, they should file his name away, because he’s a ballplayer who should someday be making headlines in the Majors. He’s the latest defector from Cuba, a country with a deep pool of baseball players.

Now, Chapman is on the open market. His handlers are pimping his talent to the baseball world. They should fetch a handsome return, as they rightly should.

People who have scouted Chapman, a 6-foot-4, 180 pounds of arms and legs, claim the man’s as good as any pitcher his age. He has a fastball that routinely hits 100 mph. It's the kind of velocity that should make him a top-of-the-rotation starter, a rare commodity in an era in which quality pitching has proved scarce. Teams never have too much of it.

A free agent like him comes at a high price. Already, the typical suspects have lined up to throw millions Chapman’s way.

The Yankees are interested; they’re interested in any player who can make them better. The Mets, the Angels and the Red Sox are interested, too. That means the paupers of baseball will be watching this auction of prime talent from the sidelines.

And here’s the loophole: Why isn’t Chapman in the June draft?

Baseball does its fans and its weaker franchises an injustice when it allows talent like Chapman to avoid the draft. But all players from Latin America and Cuba and Japan and Korea and Australia and China avoid it, which keeps clubs like the Royals, the Pirates, the Nationals, the Padres, the Indians, the Marlins, the Rays and the Indians, as well as a few others, from participating in high-stakes auctions.

The advantage goes to the Yankees and the Red Sox, who can afford to miss or overpay for a can’t-miss prospect no matter what he’s asking for his services.

No other sport gives rich teams such an advantage, and if you listen to what baseball officials say, the loophole can’t be closed. No way, they claim, can baseball hold a draft of international players. It would be too complicated, too costly and too unwieldy to work.

To believe what baseball officials and general managers say is to partner with the stupid. They have no more difficult a task in putting together a worldwide draft than hockey or basketball do. A good scout can find talent in the Arctic Circle, if boys are playing baseball there. If the player’s name is registered for the draft, someone will figure out if he can play -- or if he can’t.

The issue is: Should players like Chapman be free to peddle their talents without rules. If so, why? If they can, then why not let a Minor League player who can’t find his niche in one organization do likewise? Why keep him on a treadmill going nowhere?

A team with a deep farm system shouldn’t be allowed to hinder the progress of a ballplayer.

The concept of letting a franchise hold a player’s rights for more than a season might have outlived its purpose. In today’s world, a player in the Minor Leagues should be able to pursue free agency after each year. He should be allowed to do what Chapman will do: post a for-hire sign.

That will keep teams from stockpiling talent. It won’t, however, stop the Yankees and Red Sox from outbidding rivals for the CC Sabathias and the Manny Ramirezes, but even the Yankees and the Red Sox can’t find a place for all the young players in the game.

Those players will have to go elsewhere first, perhaps honing their baseball skills on the cheap in Kansas City or Pittsburgh or San Diego.

At least then, fans there will have a window for success, which is more than what they have now. For a talented player like Chapman, if he’s as good as people say he is, could give any of these teams hope, and I see hope as a good thing for people who have spent the past decade watching their favorite team dwell in the cellar.