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By Bill Contz
For the Mirror
Imagine, if you will, an NFL team that featured both the LA Rams' Matthew Stafford and his outrageous $62 million salary with Denver's Russell Wilson and his equally appalling $57 million annual compensation backing him up.
While we're at it, let's have these supremely compensated signal callers toss spirals to either (or both) the Dolphins' Tyreek Hill or the Raiders' Davante Adams, both of whom now earn north of $28 million annually.
If NBA basketball is your game, how about a backcourt featuring the Warriors' Steph Curry ($48 million) and the Clippers' Russell Westbrook ($47 million)?
To quote the iconic line from Risky Business, "I don't think so, Joel."
Most pro leagues employ some variation of a salary cap to prevent the complete monopolization of talent and assure us of a somewhat competitive balance where the highest paid players are rarely, if ever, on the same roster.
Not so with major league baseball.
Case in point is the New York Mets' pitching staff, which now features the two priciest hurlers in the league in 38-year-old Max Scherzer and 40-year-old Justin Verlander.
Each of these former Tiger teammates (Scherzer and Verlander were teammates in Detroit from 2010-2014 along with fellow first-ballot Hall of Famer, Miguel Cabrera) will report a cool $43 million on their 2023 tax returns.
Both of these workhorses have consistently averaged around 35 starts over each of the past five seasons, and barring injury will bank north of $1.2 million each time they take the mound -- or roughly $12,500 per pitch.
Not bad work if you can get it.
Fangraphs' website tells us the New York Mets' 2023 payroll, a jaw-dropping $355 million, is a mere $73 million more than their crosstown rival Yankees.
To put that in perspective, if you combined the 2023 projected payrolls of baseballs' four lowest-spending teams -- Oakland A's ($58 million), Baltimore Orioles ($63 million), Pittsburgh Pirates ($75 million) and Tampa Bay Rays ($77 million) -- it would total up to $273 million and nearly equal to what the Bronx Bombers plan to dole out this year.
To solve this financial disparity, I propose we merge these four squads to create a new combo club.
I'll call them the OrAPiRays (pronounced Orr-APP-i-RAYZ).
The OrAPiRays would boast an impressive roster of young up-and-comers, none over the age of 30.
The lineup would boast surprisingly formidable power with the Bucs' Oneil Cruz at short, A's first baseman Seth Brown (25 dingers) and Orioles' right fielder Anthony Santander (33 HRs).
Tampa's talented left fielder Randy Arozarena would show off his speed on the base paths (32 stolen bases in 2022) while the pitching staff could boast the Rays' Tyler Glasnow (currently out with an oblique strain) and Baltimore's Jorge Lopez, who who posted 35 saves and an impressive 1.68 ERA last season.
In addition, Tampa's Wander Franco, Baltimore's Gunnar Henderson and Grayson Rodriguez are all regarded as budding future superstars.
The Mets have established a very clear line of demarcation between baseball's haves and have nots.
The lack of a true salary cap virtually ensures that a major market city like Los Angeles or New York will have a representative in the playoffs each year while the majority of other teams will either be entirely overmatched or sit on the sidelines during the postseason.
Contz was a starting offensive tackle on Penn State's first national championship team in 1982 and played six NFL seasons with New Orleans and Cleveland. He published a book in 2017, "When the Lions Roared: Joe Paterno and One of College Football's Greatest Teams." He resides in Pittsburgh.