“The argument is that Major League Baseball (MLB) needs a more robust revenue-sharing system, similar to the NFL, to create more competitive balance between high-revenue and low-revenue teams. The current MLB system is criticized because local revenue, particularly from TV deals, is not shared as extensively as in the NFL, where all national broadcast revenue is divided equally. Implementing an NFL-like model would aim to prevent a few wealthy teams from dominating and would help smaller-market teams become more competitive.”
The above more comprehensive revenue sharing like the NFL would help smaller market teams compete payroll wise. But the players union is reluctant to have a salary cap.
If or until that happens small market teams will struggle to compete. Smaller market teams can and do develop good players. But they can’t compete once those players become stars.
Green Bay could never compete in the NFL without a more equitable revenue system being divided equally. MLB will always have a huge disparity in payroll with the status quo.
Btw. Money Ball is a great movie showing how a small market Oakland A’s team had to compete using Bill James Sabermetrics because they couldn’t compete payroll wise. Catching lightning in a bottle is hard to repeat though.