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How Large is Your Market?

© Bryan Walker

"But I disagree with this issue of disparity being a problem. When people talk to me about small markets and large markets, to me, it's good management versus bad management. You look at the Chicago White Sox and the Anaheim Angels, they are franchises in the heart of major metropolises. Then you look at the success stories of Cleveland, Colorado, Phoenix and Baltimore." -Player Agent Scott Boras

Suppose I told you in 1985 that by the year 2000, baseball would be divided into small market and large market teams creating an economic rift that would prevent small market teams from being competitive. Which teams would you guess as populating the large market? Would you have put Phoenix on the list? Colorado? Cleveland? I doubt it. These are not the largest population centers in the country, but somehow these franchises have been grouped in the "large market" teams. Their population based is close or equal to the population of other teams that have declared themselves "small market." So where is the line between the "have's and the "have not's" drawn?

The terms, "large market" and "small market" do not completely explain the differences between the top-shelf teams and the non-competitive teams. Scott Boras makes a good point in the quote attributed to him above: The better managed teams generate more profit, and thus more money to spend on players. I firmly believe that if former Cleveland Indians owner Richard Jacobs had bought the Minnesota Twins in the late 80's instead of the Cleveland Indians, we would be calling the Twins a "large market" team, and Cleveland would still be the subject of the Major League movies. Obviously there were many considerations (including the potential that Jacob saw) involved in Jacobs buying the Indians, but the point is that Jacobs has managed the organization extremely well. The Indians organization was turned around because of the management of Jacobs, not because Cleveland is in a large market. But let's make a distinction between ways of generating money, because having a large market does give a team an advantage. The advantage is local television revenue. In fact, if the "large market/small market" distinction must be made, then the logical dividing line should be between teams with large local television contracts and those without large local television contracts. Some teams, such as New York and Los Angeles, have easy access to large amounts of local television revenue, and other front offices have created their own television revenue through superstations, as Ted Turner and the Braves have done. As I just said, big money from local television should be the dividing line for have's and have not's, but those who espouse the "large/small market" argument draw this invisible market-size line between teams that win and teams that lose. This label is not fair to teams who are competitive financially and on the field without the additional television money, in spite of being in a mid-sized market.

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