 
|
|||||||||||||
              
|
Sunday, March 05, 2000 By Paul Meyer, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
BRADENTON, Fla. -- The New York Yankees, who passed through here yesterday, don't have a team bus. They ride in a Brink's truck.
By comparison, the Pirates travel in a mini-van.
The Yankees last season had a payroll that averaged $3.2 million per player. The Pirates' best-paid player last season was Al Martin, who earned $2.7 million.
The Yankees this season will have a payroll of perhaps more than $90 million. The Pirates will top out at about $32 million -- their highest payroll since they were at $36.2 million in 1992, the last season they advanced to the postseason.
Think yesterday's exhibition game between the Yankees and Pirates didn't tell you something about the problem facing major league baseball? Again?
"No question about it," said Pirates owner Kevin McClatchy, a member of baseball's blue ribbon task force charged with finding ways to close the salary chasm. "That's the reason [Commissioner Bud Selig] formed the task force. We know beyond the shadow of a doubt there is a problem, and it's hurting the game. Everybody knows there's a problem."
The money gap between the large-market teams and the small-market teams seems to have changed the focus for so many teams. Tradition has it that every spring each team and its fans are supposed to think it has a chance to go to the World Series.
No more.
Now, it seems small- to mid-market teams simply want to be able to tell their fans they'll be competitive. Maybe be able to make a run at a postseason berth, as Cincinnati did last year. Maybe finish over .500.
Whoopee!
McClatchy understands.
"Baseball's put itself in this position over a 30-year span," he said. "It's going to take some time to narrow the gap. It's a slow process to tighten the disparity. People have to be patient.
"But there is more cooperation among the clubs than ever before. Now, New York is the large market -- period."
And even the New York teams seem to sense the urgency to try to fix the problem. Baseball has had a recent spate of 30-0 votes by owners on all kinds of remedies for the game's financial ills.
The game's central revenues, which include the $125-million signing bonus ESPN paid for its newest television deal, will be dispersed to smaller market teams. McClatchy doesn't know how much the Pirates will receive, but he did say it would not be an insignificant amount.
McClatchy expects the task force to present its ideas to Selig in the next couple of months. Those ideas probably will not include a salary cap. Baseball's collective bargaining agreement expires after next season, but McClatchy said he doesn't foresee owners being able to get a salary gap "in this go-round" of negotiations between management and labor.
That means the Pirates will need increased revenue sharing and increased revenues from the opening of PNC Park to improve their lot.
"Our revenues will jump significantly next year," McClatchy said.
So much so that McClatchy has hinted the Pirates' payroll could soar to perhaps $50 million for the 2000 season.
But if the Yankee payroll reaches, say, $110 million next season, what's been gained?
"This thing is going to start changing," McClatchy said, "but it's going to take a little time. I think you'll start to see the gap narrowing in 2001. Are we ever going to catch the New York Yankees? No. But I think you'll see a tightening. This will do nothing but help the Pittsburgh Pirates."
The Pirates will need some help in the coming months.
They face critical contract decisions concerning Jason Kendall, Brian Giles and Jason Schmidt in the near future. Francisco Cordova also could be in the new contract mix if he has a strong season this year. And contract decisions on Todd Ritchie, Kris Benson and Warren Morris loom, perhaps as soon as this year or next.
Signing even some of those players will take a huge bite out of that projected $18-million payroll improvement for next season.
"I think we can hold onto some of them with the increased revenues from the new ballpark," McClatchy said, "but every team will have to make decisions that some players are not affordable. The Indians made a decision they couldn't afford Albert Belle, for example, and they let him walk.
"We have to take a look at the contracts that are out there and talk to people. Our goal is to keep the people we feel we need to keep."
McClatchy reacted quickly to a suggestion that, in the end, the Pirates might be forced back into the situation in which their young players develop successfully and then leave via free agency or trade within six years because the team can't sign them.
"People are ignoring the contracts we've signed," he said, citing the four-year deals shortstop Pat Meares and first baseman Kevin Young signed within the last year. "There haven't been a lot of people jumping out the doors."
There also haven't been a lot of Ken Griffey Jrs. and Kevin Browns jumping through those doors, either.
"The key to a team like ours is having a strong farm system," McClatchy said.
Which General Manager Cam Bonifay is trying to strengthen.
"We just need to develop more players who will be All-Star-type players," he said. "The Yankees developed Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams. That's the key. We've just got to develop better players for the major league level. You have to have the source of talent to make deals.
"I don't think any club, if you ask it, will tell you it can keep everybody. That's why you have to bring young players forward."
The Pirates last year did that with Morris and Benson. They're trying to do it this year with third baseman Aramis Ramirez and outfielder Chad Hermansen.
But what if Morris and Benson and Ramirez and Hermansen develop into All-Star-type players? What if they all become $10-million-a-year players? Will they still be Pirates? Will the money gap ever truly narrow?
"It's getting better," Bonifay said. "I think [Atlanta General Manager] John Schuerholz probably said it best. He said, 'We all have a ceiling.' It's just that the extension on his light-changer is a lot longer than mine."
McClatchy can see the humor in that. Can see the reality in that. But he also can see a different future for baseball and the Pirates.
"Will it ever be perfect? No," he said. "I don't think we'll ever have pure revenue sharing like the National Football League. But the future will be a lot better for the Pittsburgh Pirates."
|
||||||||||||
