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There is no bumper sticker, no buzzy campaign slogan that captures the challenge facing Major League Baseball and its 30 clubs as economic disparity grows and the expiration of the Collective Bargaining Agreement arrives.
A complex issue requires a complex solution.
Or does it?
A brief conversation about the Cardinals' spending strategy and past history with free agency, based on research done for The Write Fielder newsletter, spirals into a much larger debate between Best Podcast in Baseball host Derrick Goold and guest Kevin Wheeler, of KMOX/104.1 FM. After detailing how the Cardinals got into their current predicament, the questions that follow are two-fold: Do the Cardinals need to change their approach to free agency to return to contention, and does MLB need to change its economic structure for the Cardinals to have a new approach to free agency.
The debate ignites from there.
Wheeler makes a compelling case for how the Cardinals needed to "swim in deeper waters" for free agency and a more conservative approach caught up with them. He adds that a team now focused on development needs to produce its own stars. Goold counters by wondering what World Series contenders have developed their star and not had to outfit the roster with free-agent moves to complete the championship-caliber roster. The Yankees may have Aaron Judge, and they used prospects to trade for Juan Soto once, but they also signed Gerrit Cole. The Kansas City Royals have a homegrown, bona fide star in Bobby Witt Jr. But what's next?
That's where the economics of the game enter the conversation and Wheeler's stance that the "big boys" need to play ball for the betterment of the game, and if that means taking less or receiving a smaller cut to spur and require the spending of the smaller markets so be it. Goold makes a suggestion for pulling that off that Wheeler contends would be difficult to sell to fans who what the tangible bumper sticker, not the boring details of how it gets done.
Eventually they agree on one.
It's the TV deal.
Wheeler's arguments that hinge on a comparison to the NBA and its salary cap format require there to be a much larger national TV deal, one closer to what the NBA has. And that is the crux of this. Once that's in place then negotiations about a salarly floor, shared revenue, and an international draft to better balance talent coming from abroad are all more tangible because the largest issue -- the growing gulch between teams -- has been bridged.
In its 13th season as one of the first and most widely heard podcasts on baseball and the Cardinals, the Best Podcast in Baseball has reached a new season-high with 30 episodes. Each episode is sponsored weekly by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and lead baseball writer Derrick Goold.
