Reese Kaplan -- Should All Owners Adopt the Steve Cohen Model?

Yesterday esteemed baseball write Ken Rosenthal penned a column for The Atlantic in which he took what I felt was an odd position on the question of team ownership as it relates to overall spending. His assertion is that more teams should follow the model of Steve Cohen, pay whatever it takes to succeed and that in itself would create a more compelling and competitive baseball environment than we have today.

On the question of history, he brought up the Steinbrenner regime and what it did for interest in baseball during the senior George's years at the helm. No one can deny that the Yankees were on top of the game of baseball during his years in charge, but fans also vividly remember the accurate accusation that the Bronx Bombers were buying rather than earning a pennant.

Nowadays you have some megarich owners involved in the game like Cohen, Peter Seidler in San Diego and John Middleton closer to home in Philadelphia. Hank Steinbrenner just doled out the largest contract in history for $360 million to retain Aaron Judge, but everything else in the Bronx has been uncharacteristically quiet. 

 In the interim, of course, the Mets added on Justin Verlander, Kodai Senga, Jose Quintana, David Robertson and retained the services of Edwin Diaz plus Brandon Nimmo. The Phillies have brought in Trea Turner and Taijuan Walker. 

 The Padres who already have some rather pricey players on the payroll added Xander Bogaerts and Nick Martinez. Rosenthal calculated that with their free agent acquisitions the Yankees, Mets, Phillies and Padres combined to account for $1.5 billion in spending which accounted for 60% of the entire MLB payroll tally. Yikes!

Flip that around and look at what the less well heeled teams have done and you begin to see that the old mantra about the rich getting richer has some validity to it. No one is saying that any of these freer spending teams are guaranteed a spot in October baseball, but most of us here are well aware of what it was like during the Wilpon mismanagement and previous ownership penury and vindictiveness that led to more losing seasons than winning ones.

The uncontrolled spending seems to be more geared towards keeping the fans entertained both on a day-to-day basis and for the duration of the season than is done while juggling AAAA players and promoting rookies who may or may not account to anything in the markets where there simply isn't as much capital available to bid on the best of the best. 

 We've all seen, for example, the Tampa Bay Rays play competitive ball year in and year out while selling off players perhaps a year or two early when they start to command salaries inconsistent with the business model they employ.

Then again, there are other smaller market teams who appear to remain destined annually for baseball's second division as they are not splurging on trade acquisitions nor free agents that upset the payroll applecart. The Cincinnati Reds, Colorado Rockies and Cleveland Guardians are not in competition with the big boys, so they must figure out how to remain wildcard competitive without three All Star bats in the middle of the lineup.

While Cohen and company are surely paying big in penalties for their spending habits along with the payroll obligations. So is this a valid business approach where you invest big hoping to gain big in ticket sales, advertising revenue and in the blue book value of your club if and when it comes time to sell it and move into another business venture? 

 Nearly everyone is against regulations of any kind, but rather than hoping for 30 team owners to emulate the models set by the deepest pockets in the game, I would rather see stronger limits and stiffer penalties enacted so that it really is a 30-team baseball competition and not merely the ones who fly on private jets.