The Salary Cap and Major League Baseball

The completion in Major League Baseball has been greatly imbalanced since the strike shortened season of 1994. Competitive balance should exist when there are no clubs chronically weak because of Major League Baseball's structural features. Proper competitive balance will not exist until every well-run club has a regularly recurring reasonable hope of reaching postseason play which is parity. One of the primary reasons for the competitive imbalance that does occur in Major League Baseball is difference in how much revenue teams bring in. Large market teams such as the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and New York Mets are able to bring in large amounts of revenue. Small market teams such as the Minnesota Twins, Milwaukee Brewers, and Montreal Expos can only generate small amounts of revenue. This has created a situation where teams that can generate a large amount of revenue have the best teams because they have the money to sign the best players and have the highest payrolls. The teams that have the highest payrolls also tend to have the highest winning percentages and they tend to be the teams who win playoff games and championships. The teams who have the lowest payrolls on the other hand tend to have winning percentages that are below 50%. There are many measures that could be used to make teams more competitively balanced. These include the reverse order draft, revenue sharing, and the salary cap. The question I will address is, would the institution