The MLB Money Gap: Why Big-Spending Teams Always Win and What Can Fix It
By Hailey Jesin
Major League Baseball has a serious problem. In 2024, the gap between what the richest team spent and the poorest team spent was over $230 million. This is a broken system that is in desperate need of being fixed. Without real salary limits, your team's market size decides whether you have any shot at winning, not how well it's run.
Big-market teams have built-in advantages: more people means more ticket sales, more corporations means better sponsorships, and bigger TV markets mean way more money. These advantages feed themselves—star players bring in extra money, which buys more star players, which brings in even more money.
Being a well-run small-market team isn't enough when you're competing against well-run big-market teams with three times your budget.
From 2010-2023, the richest teams won about 54% of their games while the poorest won only 46%. That's 13 extra wins per season just from having more money.
Between 2015-2024, the ten richest teams grabbed 64% of playoff spots even though they're only one-third of the league. The poorest teams made playoffs just 18% of the time. Since 2010, rich teams have won 11 of 14 World Series.
The exceptions—like Kansas City in 2015—needed perfect luck: great player development, cheap contracts, and narrow windows before players got expensive. These prove how much luck small-market teams need just for one chance.
People say we don't need a salary cap because Tampa Bay proves you can win without spending. But this argument misses the point entirely.
The Rays are probably the best-run team in baseball. Yet even with elite management, they can't sustain success. They constantly trade star players when those players get good because they can't afford to keep them. They've made the playoffs multiple times but can't build a dynasty because they have to find cheap talent, develop it perfectly, then watch it leave.
Tampa Bay doesn't prove the system works. They prove that small-market teams need to be way better managed than big-market teams just to compete temporarily. That's not fair.
Sports leagues need competitive balance to work. Unlike normal businesses, baseball teams need strong opponents to make games interesting. When only five or six teams have a real shot at winning, fans in most cities stop caring.
The NFL has a hard salary cap. From 2010-2023, NFL playoff spots were distributed way more evenly, and small-market teams succeeded just as much as big-market ones. It's not perfect, but it's way better than baseball.
Baseball's luxury tax doesn't work because rich teams just ignore it. Teams like the Dodgers treat penalties as just another business expense. A real salary cap—with a ceiling teams can't exceed and a floor so teams actually try—would level the playing field while still rewarding smart decisions.
MLB's problem isn't about punishing successful teams. It's about fixing a system where money matters way more than management. Without real reform, baseball will keep splitting into two tiers: a handful of rich teams competing for championships and everyone else fighting for occasional wild card spots.
That's not sustainable. A real salary cap isn't about limiting excellence—it's about making sure excellence, and not geography, determines who wins.
