Unlike any other professional sports league in North America, MLB doesn’t impose a salary minimum or cap on teams. The salary free-for-all-all is a blessing and a curse for baseball. It leaves the door wide open for scrappy — or even miracle and underdog teams — to make World Series runs, but it also allows owners to pocket money, starving their teams of adequate talent needed to stay competitive.

The MLB payroll landscape has gradually become top-heavy. Nine teams have an active payroll of less than $100 million, while the top four teams in the league have active roster payrolls exceeding $200 million. Ten years ago, more than half of the league dished out less than $100 million to their 26-man roster, and only the Dodgers paid more than $200 million to their active roster. With the inflation of player salaries and the need to overpay to lock down top-tier talent for several years, owners who refuse to spend are setting their teams up for failure.

Although the Moneyball mentality sparked roster creativity within tight financial limitations, the Athletics proved that punching above your weight doesn’t equate to outplaying rich franchises (the Athletics haven’t won a World Series since 1989, well before embracing sabermetrics). And it doesn’t solve the issue of poverty franchises sitting at the mercy of their selfish owners.

To address the unfair advantage teams have for losing the owner lottery, commissioner Rob Manfred needs to implement incentives for owners to spend or consequences for owners who refuse to pay up. Here are three potential solutions for encouraging team spending across the league, ranked in descending order of feasibility.

Implement relegation and promotion
The English football league system is one of the best examples of relegation and promotion. Each year the worst three teams in the league are relegated or demoted down to a lower league, and the best three teams from every non-Premier League level get promoted to the next tier. Presenting a deterrent for losing and a reward for winning prevents purposeful tanking and makes owners accountable for their team’s performance.

This system works better in theory than reality for MLB. Between TV broadcasting rights and sponsorships, it would be a nightmare for any independent team to gain media attention. Stadium capacity for MiLB teams, if they’re part of the system, would be a big issue, too.

Pay teams per win based on their active roster payroll
Rewarding teams for winning would be a positive reward for fans and owners. A team could be awarded cash per win based on how much they spend on their team. For example, if 0.25% is the set reward, the Dodgers would be awarded roughly $610,000 for every game they win based on their $244,063,841 payroll this year.

The main issue with this solution is deciding who foots the bill for the bonus money. This money might be taken from the luxury taxes teams pay for exceeding the soft league spending threshold, or it might be used in conjunction with a tax on owners who spend less than $75 million. It may be more practical, but the politics of this idea could get dicey.

Require owners to spend a minimum percentage of the team’s valuation
The least invasive answer to the problem is implementing a flexible spending floor based on the team’s value. if the minimum is 7.5%, then  Marlins’ owner Bruce Sherman would have to spend at least $78.75 million based on their $1.05 billion Forbes valuation. That’s almost $55 million more than their current payroll.

The biggest flaw with this fix is that it lowers the ceiling while raising the floor. The minimum percentage may increase as teams become more valuable, but that may open too many cans of worms.

Something needs to be done to stop punishing fans and players for greedy owners. An owner’s responsibility is to put the money on the field, not in their bank accounts. If a billionaire doesn’t want to spend money, they shouldn’t buy an MLB team. Perhaps the checks and balances process should begin with fielding ownership eligibility, but that’s a topic for another article.