He’s got a much higher ceiling than Shoppach, and considering how terrible his 2009 was, there might be few suitors. He’s certainly more attractive than any of the 30+ retreads that make up the market right now.

I have mixed feelings on Henry’s observations. He seems to have a beef that revenue sharing received by small market teams is being used to pad the wallets of ownership instead of being spent on compensation.

It is a difficult workaround. Even if you forced small market teams to spend the money on compensation, it would just drive wages up in larger markets, so the existing competitive imbalance from spending variances would persist. If the league opted to “claw back” subsidies from teams generating subsidy-inflated operating profits, teams could still circumvent that adjustment by boosting operating costs in proprietary suppliers. Bottom line, there will always be workaround so that equalization payments are misappropriated to uses inconsistent with the original intent.

If MLB wants to ensure that competitiveness on the field is based solely on shrewd organizational mgmt, than the only solution is to cap wages, (and perhaps also set a floor so that players do not feel aggrieved). In short, I would characterize Henry’s suggestion as perhaps a sincere attempt to address an abuse of the existing revenue-sharing program combined with a perhaps cynical ulterior motive of preserving the economic bi-product competitive advantage enjoyed by large market teams.

Consider it this way Henry. If there was a team compensation cap, the adverse impact on BoSox revenue from diminished competitiveness would probably not be as great as the salary savings the team would enjoy. In short, a salary cap would probably disproportionately benefit large team’s operating profit. As such, small market teams should support a salary cap for competitive reasons while large market teams should support a salary cap for monetary reasons.