In Major League Baseball, the general belief is that the more a team spends on payroll, the more games it will win. Without a salary cap, baseball can seem unfair to small market teams who cannot afford the salary costs that larger teams can. In Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, Lewis describes how the Oakland Athletics won in an unfair game for nearly a decade. The A's are a small market team that doesn't have as much money as their American League competitors. However, last season the A's won their fourth American League West championship in the last seven years while having the lowest payroll in their division. During the 2006 season, Oakland had a salary of just over $62 million and still finished with a better record than the Boston Red Sox whose payroll was double that of the A's. Based on the model economics developed in our textbook on pages 168-170, the Oakland A's are not expected to field a competitive team year after year, as author Rodney Fort says a big market team will always earn more than a team small market. Fort argues that with the existence of large and small market teams, there is a revenue imbalance because the large market team generates more revenue than the small market team. The revenue imbalance then leads to a competitive imbalance because the large market team will purchase more talent than the small market team and the winning percentage is described as a function of talent. By purchasing more talent, the large market team will have a higher payroll, so not only does income imbalance lead to competitive imbalance, but also payroll imbalance. You could say that explanation...... middle of paper .... ...r debuted in the big league last season and the A's believe he is their organization's future catcher. Fort argues in the text that income imbalance causes competitive imbalance because large teams in the market are able to afford talent capable of producing a winning team. However, Beane proved that a baseball team can win without spending a lot of money on talent, by focusing on important but inexpensive statistics described by Bill James and his sabermetrics. Beane has transcended how a baseball team can be put together and now many other general managers have started to follow suit, including Theo Epstein of the Red Sox and JP Ricciardi of the Blue Jays who was director of player personnel under Beane. Beane has proven that small market teams have the opportunity to succeed in baseball provided they are efficient and profitable at the front office level..