Fascinating post on Blog Maverick. Too much good stuff to excerpt, but here’s an interesting graph about how Cuban’s desire to win may scare other baseball owners:
On the flipside, my dedication to winning could also make my job of getting approval with MLB baseball much harder. Some people thought it meant that I would spend on players like I did in my early days with the Mavericks. Back before I learned that sometimes GMs put keeping their jobs ahead of trying to win championships. But thats another story for another time. I had no intentions of trying to outspend the Yankees or Red Sox. There was no reason to. I didnt have to beat either of those teams unless I made it to the World Series. The only teams I had to be better than were those in the National League, and more importantly, those in my division. There were no big spending rivals close to home, so the AL East could spend themselves silly. My plans were to spend to win, not to spend for spending’s sake. IMHO, the money I could save being in the 2nd tier of payroll could be invested in scouting and development. I made this clear to any and all of the owners that I spoke to across the league. Of course that didnt stop some from trying to convince some owners otherwise.
