Which MLB teams spent the most and least in free agency?

The MLB lockout may be over, but the underlying issues are far from resolved. Both sides may have come together to make sure that baseball is played, but they are essentially unmoved in their stance on the financial disputes that made up the crux of the matter.

Two time World Series champion outfielder, Mr Joctober himself, Joc Pederson tweeted out a stat in recent days that has laid bare the raw question.

In a reference to one of the MLB Players Association's chief complaints, Joc named and shamed three MLB teams, the Cleveland Guardians, Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles, as being patently unwilling to field competitive rosters.

In a “sorry, not sorry” moment, Pederson has opened up a timely debate into the funding that MLB teams receive from their contracts, and how that is reinvested.

Ownership, as you might expect, takes the opposite view, seeing the team’s income as their return on investment, carrying no obligation at all to spend the money on the team. After all, individual MLB teams are not, and never have been, non-profit organizations. Even the league itself surrendered its non-profit status in 2007.

The owners’ stance embodies the famous Margaret Thatcher stance that “you eventually run out of other people’s money”. The problem is, it isn’t the owners’ money at all. It is ours, the fans, who pay ever-rising ticket prices, perennially spiralling cable costs and streaming service fees. We collectively pay a guaranteed $100 million to each and every team, before the first pitch is thrown. That is their guarantee from the MLB’s television deals.

It bears repeating, $100 million, and that is the minimum TV money. Just TV. Not ticket sales, not replica jerseys or caps, not $8 hot dogs. And the larger market teams, the Yankees, Red Sox, and Dodgers, for example, will receive much more than that $100 million from the television deals.

When you see payrolls under $100 million, keep this number in mind. At those low-salary levels, essentially, the team pays the players nothing. Not a penny. Even the $270 million that the Dodgers have spent this season is a skewed statistic. Once you remove the $100 million guarantee, plus the extra $139 million local-market television deals that they will have in place, their outlay is in the range of $40 million.

In a statistic that is just as shocking as those details, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the Oakland A’s have spent exactly $0 on free agents. Now, you might argue that they have the players that they need, they will rely on mid-season trades or minor league call-ups, but it is staggering that a team worth $1.13 billion has spent less on acquiring competitive talent than I did at Starbucks this morning.

We are paying for these owners to pocket vast sums, as they threaten to kill off the season before it starts, and running professional franchises into the ground through under-investment. The collective-ownership model as espoused by the NFL’s Green Bay Packers is clearly the best way forward for baseball, its players, and fans. Everyone, in fact, except the ownership.

With all the changes in the rules of the game, and the 99 day lockout, it may feel that there is perhaps a revolution underway in baseball. But one thing is certain, if the MLB has anything to say about it, baseball will remain a closed shop, unaccountable to the fan base, and extremely profitable. That, after all, is what revolutions are really all about, changing everything to ensure that everything can remain the same.