John Romano: A World Series between Yankees (wallets) and Dodgers (bank accounts)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Finally, Major League Baseball has the World Series it craves:

Get ready for IBM vs. General Motors.

Or is it, Amazon vs. Apple?

Regardless of the analogy, you get the picture. Yankees vs. Dodgers is a matchup of baseball royalty. Or baseball wealth, if you prefer.

The Yankees have won the World Series 27 times, more than twice as many as any other team. The Dodgers have won the World Series seven times since 1955, more than any team other than … the Yankees.

But that’s just the preliminaries. The matchup also features two of the game’s biggest stars — Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani — without a World Series on their resumes. And two enormous fan bases that led their respective leagues in attendance in 2024.

So, yeah, this World Series pairing is about as good as it gets for MLB.

Too bad it also represents MLB’s greatest weakness.

Sorry to bring up money on the eve of the season’s showcase event, but it’s difficult to live in Tampa Bay and not obsess over baseball’s continuing economic disparity. The Yankees and Dodgers both had payrolls that were about 300% larger than the Rays in 2024.

That’s not a random stat, it’s a competitive insult.

Everything we love about sports begins with the idea of a level playing field. Heavyweight boxers do not fight featherweights, and Class A high schools do not face Class 7A schools in the state tournament. So, why does baseball allow such a huge discrepancy between the type of players teams can afford?

It’s at this point in the argument that critics often say the fault lies with cheap owners and not baseball’s structure. For instance, you may have heard people pointing out that the Dolan family, which owns the Guardians, have a larger net worth than, say, the Steinbrenner family. And yet the Yankees payroll was in the $300 million range this season while Cleveland was closer to $100 million.

The problem with that argument is that MLB teams are businesses, not toys. The Dolan family might be able to afford a $300 million payroll, but that’s money coming out of their pockets and it’s not justified by the revenues brought in by the franchise.

It’s not a coincidence that the bottom 10 teams in payroll in 2024 were all in the bottom half of the league in attendance. The simple truth is the more funds generated by a market, generally the more money goes back into payroll.

And don’t tell me that cheaper teams provide less incentive to attend games. Since 2008, the Rays have the third-best record in the majors (behind the Yankees and Dodgers), and yet they are 29th in attendance. Clearly, a winning record is not the only factor in a market’s ability to generate revenue.

The other argument is that money is not the deciding factor in a team’s success. Baseball has not had a repeat winner in the World Series in more than 20 years, and Cleveland and Tampa Bay seem to do fine without spending a ton of money on payroll.

And that’s all true. But it’s not the best indicator of payroll influence.

In the last 10 full major league seasons, teams that were in the top 10 in payroll made the postseason 53% of the time. Teams in the middle tier reached the playoffs 31% of the time. And teams in the bottom third had a postseason rate of 20%.

That’s a perfect sliding scale, almost as if the more money you spent the better chance you had at succeeding.

So, what’s the solution?

Well, all the other major professional sports (NFL, NBA, NHL) have salary caps that promote competitive balance. Most baseball owners would be in favor of a salary cap, but the players association is adamantly opposed out of fear of artificially limiting salaries.

Baseball has dabbled in revenue sharing but needs to be more aggressive in how to support smaller-market teams. The recent issue with regional cable providers could also provide a new model in terms of a centralized media fund.

In no way does any of this take away from the accomplishments of the Yankees and Dodgers. They had more money to spend than most, but they also spent it more wisely than a lot of teams.

And, unfortunately, that’s a scary omen.

When big-market teams (like the Dodgers, Red Sox, Yankees and Mets) begin using some of the forward-thinking analytical tools that have helped low-revenue teams keep up, competitive balance will be a thing of the past.