A fantastic article from Ben Lindbergh at Baseball Prospectus (h/t MLBTR for the pointer to it) about implications of shirnking differences in the talent level of MLB GMs and front offices. It cogently puts together a number of tidbits that I have been thinking about recently. The following conclusion in particular is pretty logical (in my opinion, forecasting the future is fraught with peril) and chilling: "Small-market teams reeling from the new CBA's draft and international spending restrictions won't be happy to hear this, but the less variation there is among GMs, the stronger the correlation between spending and winning will become, since the effects of market and payroll size will account for an even greater percentage of the difference between teams. We can already see this happening—the Yankees were always rich, but they weren't always smart. Now they're rich and smart, which is very bad news for the Rays, the Jays, and the rest of the American League."