by Erich Heinlein

Created on: April 15, 2010   Last Updated: April 17, 2010

The salary cap is the perfect solution to the biggest problem in baseball. Small market teams can't compete. Why? Since there is no salary cap teams can pay players whatever they want. Including rookies. That is just plain dumb. Think about the logic of paying a rookie an exorbitant salary.

Obviously he was good in high school or college (in your opinion anyways) and he performed well in your farm system. But he has never faced major league hit and has probably never played in front of a major league sized crowd.

When a player enters the bigs there is a whole another set of obstacles he has to deal with than when he played in high school, college or the minors. When most people start making millions of dollars a year they don't even know what to do with it. Even minor league baseball players don't make that much.

In a matter of fact, it's so low it almost seems like an allowance than a contract. They make $1,100 a month on average for the months they are in season, according to masnsports.com. There is no paycheck for the off season and players have to fend for themselves for money during spring training when it comes to money.

The problem is, when people go from barely making $1,100 a month to making hundreds of thousands of dollars to making millions, they don't know what to do with all the extra money. The result? They end up spending more than they have and eventually end up in bankruptcy.

So therefore, it is neither good for the game or the players. While all of us dream of becoming gazillionaires, deep down we know it is not good for us because of the popularity and misery that can come with having that much money.

Lacking a salary cap is not good for the game or it's players. Let's face it. Everybody knows the players salaries are a large part of why everybody charges exorbitant prices for tickets at the major league level and everybody knows that is why small market teams can't always compete.

This is also why the Yankees have attempted to buy their way into the World Series. Some years it's worked, others not so much. Don't believe me?

Let's do some comparisons. Last year, the Yankees, who won the World Series had a payroll of over $206 million dollars according to baseball.about.com and now let's take a smaller market team. The Tampa Devil Rays had an average pay roll of a mere $63 million dollars. The average salary for those that played for the Rays last year was $1,800,000 while the average Yankee made $5,200,000. With no salary cap it's only getting worse.

The average Yankee makes more this year by $300,000 and the average Devil Ray makes $1,800,000. One thing to take into consideration is the Devil Rays pay roll did go up by $8,000 in the last year.

The bottom line when it comes to player contracts is this: While players will not admit it large contracts are bad for everybody. They are bad for the players because nobody needs that much money; it is bad for the fans because it forces them to pay more at the gates; it is bad for the teams because they have to keep fan attendance way up just to meet payroll and it is bad for the game because it gives large market teams when it comes to competing over small market teams.

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