Cincinnati Reds

First off, we have the unstoppable, heartthrob, phenom known as Kris Bryant our third basemen. With only his second season ever in the

Teams with large payrolls routinely win at a higher rate than teams who cannot afford to spend the massive amounts of money other teams do. For example, in the last fifteen years the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, two teams which regularly are among the highest spending teams in baseball, won on average 94.7 and 86.8 games respectively. By comparison, the San Diego Padres and the Kansas City Royals, two teams who are not able to compete financially with teams with deeper pockets, won an average of 77.1 and 71.6 games respectively in that same time span (Major League Baseball). This disparity in season wins is a direct cause of Major League Baseball’s lack of a salary cap. Over the course of a 162 game season, teams with higher payrolls, and therefore better talent on their roster, will prevail more often than

Last year a whole nation came together to cheer on the Toronto Blue Jays as they made their bid to win the World Series. It was a feat that they had not accomplished in over 20 years. The excitement across Canada was unbelievable! People from all over the country were travelling to Toronto and the opponent’s city to show their support for the Jays. Unfortunately, their efforts were cut short in a series loss to the Kansas City Royals who ended up World Series Champions. Now with the 2016 season around the corner, can the Blue Jays make it back to back playoff berths with the changes that have been made in the front office, pitching rotation and player trades?

The Houston Astros have been making deals to improve their team, and avoid another collapse like the one they had last season. Their bullpen could not finish the year strong after being one of the best in baseball throughout the season. The bullpen, also, collapsed in game four of the ALCS against the eventual champions. The Royals could not hit Lance McCullers, but once he was removed with one out in the seventh inning, Kansas City 's offense got it going.

Jayson Stark, ESPN columnist, presents an interesting argument of the downfall of baseball after free agency. He uses sarcasm and slight humor to introduce the reader to the topic of free agency and uses the argument style of comparison and contrast to predict what today might have held had there been no free agency. But within his column, player agent Tom Reich states, “The people who criticize free agency to easily today don’t realize how bad baseball was twenty-five years ago” (Stark). It is Stark who realizes that the talent of the game has improved, but the overall passion in each player may have decreased.

There were many reasons the scandal that was the 1919 World Series happened, none more important, and maybe less mentioned than the greed of Charles Comiskey, the teams owner. This club may have been the best ever assembled, but it may have also been the most underpaid. No incident explains this any better than the salary of Eddie Cicotte, Eddie had won 28 games in 1917, the war had harmed 1918, but Eddie was back for 1919, but Eddie was only paid $6,000 for the 1919 season, many pitcher in the league with much less talent was paid more than twice that amount. Eddie wasn't the only one, as a whole Comiskey was paying a much smaller salary to his players than any other team would have to pay for the same talent. But for Comiskey it was all about the money.

The Louisville Slugger baseball bat began over 120 years ago in the talented hands of 17-year-old John A. “Bud” Hillerich. Bud, whose father owned a woodworking shop, left work one afternoon to watch Louisville’s major league team, the Louisville Eclipse, and his favorite player, Pete Browning. During the game, Browning, who was struggling through a long hitting slump, broke his bat. Following the game, Bud met Browning and invited him to his father’s shop to make him a new bat. With Browning’s assistance, Bud handcrafted a new bat for Browning from a single piece of wood. Browning got three hits with it the next day and the “Louisville Slugger” was born.

They could not afford to outbid other teams for established players. Under the farm system, the Cardinals bought minor-league franchises and hired young players. The farm clubs provided the players with experience. The best players then moved up to play with the Cardinals” (Sports Champions, 1). This quote shows how teams with less money can get good baseball players without having

Boston has one of the best farm systems in baseball. The scouts for the Red Sox are doing God’s work for Major League Baseball, but not the hometown team. A team grows their farm system with the intention to build the Major League roster for the future or use these prospects to attract strong, veteran trade candidates. Instead, the Sox give up guys only to watch them flourish for other ballclubs. Every other team benefits thanks to Boston and we get nothing remarkable in return.

He saw the Cubs as a chance to be a part of history and knew what a World Series championship would mean to the Cubs’ fans. Epstein first established his goals for the Cubs and his plan to rebuild the team. He wanted “impact players”, players who were not only skilled players on the field, but were leaders and genuinely good people off of it. His four impact players he would acquire were Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Addison Russell, and Kyle Schwarber. These players would be at the core of the 2016 World Series championship team.

In the Major League of Baseball, there is a blue and white team from Arlington, Texas, known as the Texas Rangers. In 2009, although the team had a substantial amount of talent on the field, they also had serious financial problems. The team has always been grossly undercapitalized. They depended on capital joint connections and loans to help pay for their bills. These problems lead to one of the biggest demonstrations of the economic crisis through the world of sports.

Myers was traded to the Reds in 1990 for closer John Franco, and became one of the league's elite closers and the most successful member of the Nasty Boys trio, which also included Rob Dibble and Norm Charlton, while being selected as an All-Star in 1990. In 1990 Myers won his second World Series ring as the Reds swept the Oakland Athletics. In 1991, the Reds experimented with Myers as a starter, a move that proved highly unsuccessful as he posted a record of 6 wins and 13 losses.[2]

The A's recent success is attributed to the innovative approach taken by Billy Beane in assembling a baseball team with a very limited amount of financial resources. Billy Beane has built a successful ball club because he has found an efficient and cost effective way of measuring baseball talent thus essentially creating a loophole in this unfair game because winning percentage is a result of talent not

Another thing John Hart has done is restock the pipeline to the major leagues with a ton of top prospects that are ranked in MLB's top 100. Turning a farm system that was ranked in the bottom third of the league, to a farm system that is now ranked number six what a difference a year makes. Last year there wasn't anything to write home about as we traded most of our top prospects to acquire Justin Upton and we were also financially strapped with some of the deals that Frank Wren did while he was in charge of the of the Braves. Let's just say it was a awful mess that John Hart inherited and look at what he's done. He has definitely gotten back to what made the Braves a perennial playoff team and that is acquiring top arms and letting

The 10 year contract which Tom Hicks and his team proposed for Alex Rodriguez was one of the biggest ever in the history of Baseball. It was a major Investment decision for the group. The Group had taken over the Dallas Stars few years earlier and spent on buying quality players. This worked wonders for the team and Dallas Stars went on to lead the group. Tom Hicks had a policy of spending 50-55% of team revenue on team payrolls. If that is maintained he always gains an operating profit of 10-15%.