You can try to buy your way to greatness, but it really works as a long term solution. Signing at 28 year-old star to a 10 year contract means you have to manag

You can try to buy your way to greatness, but it really works as a long term solution. Signing at 28 year-old star to a 10 year contract means you have to managed an expensive older player that will under-perform at the end of the contract. In a few occasions that works, but generally you are spending more for less at that point. Sure, you can keep spending, but you eventually have an old aging team that is difficult to upgrade, unless you trade players and agree to pay part of the salary. The biggest problem in baseball is you have to maintain a minor league AND a major league. You need younger less expansive players, inexpensive players to fill the roster, and expensive players. Depending on the market you need to either trade your younger talent before it gets expensive (getting younger players from other teams) and be able to develop those players. Or, you have to be able sign high price players and make trades to bring in lesser talented players from other teams to developer your farm system, where you'll often trade your best prospects for older, more expensive players. Both systems have worked lately. Cleveland has had one of the best records in baseball since 2014, but the Dodgers and Yankees spend and do well. The larger problem is revenue sharing in MLB. While there is revenue sharing because of the TV contracts, New York, Boston, and LA make a huge amount of money off local TV deals. Cleveland, Tampa, et.al. make a lot less. So, unlike many other sports, revenue is not shared equally and teams need different ways to acquire and use talent. In the NFL, you need to have a very good QB and you can build a team around them. In the NBA, you need 2-3 very talented players, mid-cost starters to fill your game day rotations and strong reserves to handle injuries and such. Since those leagues share revenue that can implement caps and floors with salary. Sorry, I can't talk about the NHL, I don't understand their business enough. The bigger problem with the MLB is their lack of equal revenue sharing makes a floor and cap next to impossible to setup. MLB teams simply are not going to put all their money in a big pool and share it.