The Bernstein Brief: Bad Money Is Part Of Baseball
By Dan Bernstein-
(CBS) Some bad money is the price of MLB business.
As the Cubs ramp up for the next stage of their baseball construction, they are about to plunk down for Jon Lester or other top-end pitching, and the later years of the deal are going to loom ominously. Such is what is necessary to actually try to win, and the protections lie in their previous preparation.
They knew this day would come, and they told us so repeatedly for years, and that's why the efforts to construct a roster with position players under cost control with planned redundancies and flexibilities.
In MLB, there are no hard cap constraints as in other sports, and that limits the extent to which we should care about overall expenditure. Trying to win titles is costly. As revenue streams come on line year by year with improvements to the ballpark and the surrounding area and new deals for television rights, weighty contracts are less of a concern.
World Series championships are the end that justifies the means.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. Follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.