Sports Nut: Hooray for the Rays

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Sports Nut Hooray for the Rays Baseball's new labor deal is great for small-market teams. Why is everyone saying the opposite? By Craig Fehrman Posted Thursday, Dec 08, 2011, at 07:03 PM ET Last week, Major League Baseball's players union approved the sport's latest collective-bargaining agreement. To lock down five more years of labor peace, players and owners agreed to some big changes (the addition of a second wild card team per league) and some small ones ("All Players will be subject to a policy governing the use of Social Media"). But one change in particular has preoccupied baseball's chattering class: For the first time, the sport will essentially regulate the price of its incoming amateur players, imposing a "luxury tax" and other penalties on all spending over a certain baseline figure. This approach has been blasted by baseball analysts from Buster Olney to Jonah Keri as a disaster for small-market clubs. Dave Cameron of FanGraphs summed up both the objection and the outrage in a piece titled "Did a Steinbrenner Write the New CBA?": "Congratulations, Major League Baseball, you just screwed every team that doesn't have the capability of running out a $100+ million payroll." Bud Selig has pushed hard for the new system, which would normally be reason enough to oppose it. But this is a rare instance where the commissioner has it right and his critics have it wrong. In fact, the CBA's opponents can be easily refuted by a recent piece of baseball scholarship. I'm talking, of course, about a little book called Moneyball. Before we turn to Michael Lewis and Brad Pitt, though, we need to sketch baseball's old system. In ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate The Misery Caused by the Facebook "Feature" That Hides a Bunch of Your Mail Charlize Theron's Bitter, Mean, Fascinating Performance Carries Young Adult Be Very Afraid of a Pair of Bills That Threaten Internet Freedom	Advertisement
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