So says Mike Ozanian at Forbes SportsMoney, "the conventional wisdom is that salary caps benefit poorer teams. But in reality they benefit richer teams more."
I've been arguing this for some time now, and I'm glad that the MSM is beginning to take notice. By the way: what's worse than hard salary caps? Soft caps without salary floors.
As you can see, baseball is the laggard again. However, unlike the graph above, this data shows that the NHL is just as mobile as the NFL, and the NBA isn't far behind.
The point is that payroll effects are relatively weak--if at all significant--determinants of competitive balance. That said, those who criticize the level of competitive balance in baseball can draw support from these findings.
