Paul Daugherty

pdaugherty@enquirer.com

Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred doesn’t believe Major League Baseball has a competitive balance problem and he scoffs at any notion of baseball competing with pro soccer for fans.

In other news, Cincinnati’s small-market Reds are thriving on the field and any notion that 25,000 potential Reds customers are going elsewhere for their sports jollies on a given night is entirely coincidental.

The commissioner was in town Wednesday to speak to softball players taking part in the RBI World Series. He was generous and gracious with his thoughts about a future that would include females both on the field and in the front office. About the other stuff ...

“I don’t buy the idea that we have competitive imbalance. In case you missed last year the Cleveland Indians, a small market team from Ohio, were in the World Series. And the Kansas City Royals, another small market team, won the World Series’’ the previous years.

Well, yes, that’s true. It’s also the sort of condescension a baseball executive might give a soccer fan working in accounts payable. The issue is not reaching the World Series. The issue is the opportunities available.

Last year, the Indians were the only team ranked in the bottom 15 in payrolls even to reach the playoffs. Six of the other nine postseason teams had payrolls in the top 10. In 2015, when Kansas City won it all, seven of the top 16 payroll teams, about half, made October. It was a better year for small-money outliers: Pittsburgh, Kansas City and Houston all qualified for the tournament with small payrolls.

More often than not, money is the ante into the October poker tournament. Money buys better odds. Money allows you to stay in the game longer. Money can cover for mistakes.

The Reds are in the middle of the near-death experience known as rebuilding. The Royals and Pirates will get there soon, the Brewers are only now emerging from five years of purgatory.

The boom/bust/patience cycle is familiar to lots of places. New York and LA have no clue. Boston never rebuilds. The Trade Deadline is a big-money flea market for the rich teams trying to make the playoffs.

The finely balanced business of baseball has the Dodgers spending $256 million on players this year, and the Reds $113 million. Dodgers fans don’t experience the anxiety associated with waiting for a future that might never arrive. Yankees fans don’t worry about hope, the most necessary sustenance for any baseball fan. If hope is ever lacking in the Bronx, the Yankees just go buy some.

And yet ...

“Everything we do from an economic perspective is focused on promoting competitive balance,’’ Manfred said. “It’s an ongoing activity’’ he likened to keeping a lawn from going to seed. If the Reds are a lawn, I’m buying herbicide stock.

Manfred cited ever-higher luxury taxes on payrolls as preventing gluttonous Haves from spending themselves to prominence, but that threshold is scheduled to increase only $13 million – from the current $197 mil to $210 mil – by 2021. That’s the cost of one above-average starting pitcher.

There is now a cap on what clubs can spend on international players, which is good. If your team’s revenues and market size are in the bottom 10, your reward is an extra draft pick after either the first or second rounds.

These are gestures from the let-them-eat-cake catalog. Run down that bone, Billy Hamilton.

Maybe you agree with the commissioner. The Reds should find a way to win, regardless. History doesn’t suggest that. Even the smartest people aren’t smart every day, all the time.

Another non-issue, apparently, is that FC Cincinnati is gnawing at the periphery of a Reds revenue stream. “We make money five ways,’’ Reds Senior Vice President of Business Operations Karen Forgus told the assembled softball kids. “Three of them are tied to attendance.’’

Well, lately Futbol Club Cincinnati is taking a bite outta that business model. Will it last? No one knows. What we do know is that Millennials are out in the spending world now, and their affection for soccer is well established. The point isn’t that FCC is winning hearts and minds of Reds fans, though that could be true.

The point is that it could happen, certainly in the short term. Then what?

“I don’t believe there is a segment of fans that prefer soccer to the national pastime,’’ Manfred said.

Well, OK then.

The commissioner did say MLB was mindful of its millennials, with creative ticket plans and a stepped-up tech presence. If you want to watch one game a week on Facebook, have at it.

I don’t see much of anything changing to help the Smalls. I do see soccer invading a corner of the Reds wallet. I could be dead wrong. The commissioner thinks so. I hope he’s right.