Columnist Dean Juipe: Pro teams must spend to contend

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or 259-4084.

As every professional sports league starts a new season, greater and greater emphasis is placed on its teams' salary structure. The corollary is simple: The teams that spend the most will win the most.

It's sad in a way but pro sports have become marginally predictable.

And the best example is Major League Baseball. Although the season doesn't begin in earnest until today, it's fairly certain the teams that have the highest payrolls will meet in the playoffs come October.

Even more interesting is that the lower-level clubs, those that are watching their purse strings, have resigned themselves to the inevitable. Instead of banging the promotional drum and telling tall tales about possible championships, they're asking their fans to be forgiving and enjoy the season as best they can.

The Minnesota Twins, for instance, are all but giving away season tickets as they look to trim their payroll from its current $21 million to something in the $10 million range by midseason.

Even at $21 million, the Twins are only outspending two other certain losers, the bare-boned Florida Marlins and the entertaining but financially impaired Montreal Expos.

At the other end of the spectrum are the teams with formidable and expensive rosters that will be playing beyond September. They're spending more up front, knowing that few if any teams in this day and age are able to contend for a title without having access to Fort Knox.

Here are the estimated payrolls of the six biggest spenders as the 1999 season gets under way: New York Yankees, $88 million; Baltimore Orioles, $81 million; Los Angeles Dodgers, $79 million; Texas Rangers, $76 million; Atlanta Braves, $75 million; and Cleveland Indians, $70 million.

Of that group, only the Orioles and perhaps the Dodgers can be called guilty of overspending. The Orioles have the money but are in a tough division with the Yankees, while the Dodgers have the Murdoch/Fox billions to work with and they spent lavishly during the winter. They may, however, regret not having a sturdy catcher if the surgically repaired Todd Hundley comes up lame.

But, aside from their cash outlay, the common denominator for each of these free spenders is that they will contend for a World Series berth. Even in a worst-case scenario of widespread injuries and unpredictable slumps, they all have the resources to plug another high-priced player into their win-at-any-cost formula.

The rule becomes more ironclad with each passing season: Money is an essential prerequisite for success.

There are 30 teams in the major leagues and only the San Francisco Giants -- with the 17th-ranked payroll at $47 million -- have any kind of legitimate shot at a playoff spot among those along the bottom half of the spending curve. In terms of value, the Giants, and the California Angels and Houston Astros -- each at $54 million -- have stayed within their means and shopped wisely.

Yet even those teams are but outside shots to win the world championship.

It wasn't always this way, of course. But it is now. The Yankees won 125 games last season and the World Series, and they had the highest payroll ($74 million) plus the greatest revenues ($170 million).

As they proved rather convincingly, money begets championships, which begets even more money.

That's how the game is played.

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