WHY THE TIGERS AREN'T GRRRRRREAT: In what's likely the most comical story thus far of the nascent baseball season (and that includes the Jeter injury), the Detroit Tigers last Friday released second baseman Damion Easley, in the process eating the entire three years and $14.3 million remaining on his contract. It's the largest contract ever eaten by a major league team, breaking after less than a week the $9.5 million owed to ex-slugger Greg Vaughn by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. It should go without saying, of course, that the Devil Rays then signed Easley to a minor-league contract of which they will pay only $300,000.
The Easley affair shows us the downside of that unique phenomenon of baseball economics: the guaranteed contract. You see, unlike in football (where everything but the signing bonus is essentially fictional), all contracts in MLB are guaranteed. Meaning that if a player gets hurt, gets traded, or just plain starts to suck, he still gets his money regardless. The nadir of this is Albert Belle, who signed a five-year, $65 million contract with the Orioles prior to the 1999 season, and suffered an injury two years later that has since prevented him from playing- yet he'll still collect $13 million this year and is by far Baltimore's highest paid player. Belle would forfeit his paycheck if he were to retire, which he hasn't done, though if ever a player richly deserved to suffer a painful, career-ending injury, it's Albert Belle. (The NBA at one point had even more draconian rules, stating that a player's contract must remain on his team's salary cap even in the event of death- therefore, Reggie Lewis continued to count against Boston's salary cap for two years after he passed away. Now that the rule is no longer in effect, don't be surprised if the Celtics try to have Vin Baker killed.)
Bud Selig would have us believe that the reason the Tigers have been a non-factor for the past decade is because they're a helpless, small-market team. Bullshit. The Tigers suck because they do things like give 5 years and $30 million to Damion Easley, a player who is currently unable to crack the lineup of even the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Now maybe the Tigers are about to turn the corner, with a new-ish stadium, some good young players, and energetic new manager Alan Trammell. And after all, the Twins and A's have proven the last couple of years that it's possible to field a winning team on a budget. But the reason those teams have succeeded, more than anything else, is visionary leadership- which shows, conversely, that the reason the Tigers, Royals, Brewers, and Padres continually suck isn't because of market at all: it's because they're run by friggin' idiots.
Bud and the owners argued in last year's labor dispute that the small-market owners needed greater revenue sharing in order to "compete" with their larger-market rivals. More BS from Commissioner BS. In fact, small-market owners are the most greedy and corrupt of all, by the same logic that a slumlord is more likely to be a crook than the guy who owns luxury highrises: their job is to pimp misfortunate for their own gain. Why else would the owners adopt revenue sharing without making it illegal for them to pocket the money themselves?