Baseball's new CBA is already failing the spirit of competition | theScore.com
So every team gets $230M in shared revenue but only 15 teams look like they'll spend even half of that on player payroll. This is true even with 12 playoff spots.
The gap in payroll isn't because the big spenders are spending more. The luxury tax is flattening payroll at the top of the scale. The gap is because the small teams aren't spending at all.
The Twins options are try to win, spend $150M or so on a competitive team and make $90M in profit or try to lose, spend $45M and make $180M. It is roughly twice as profitable for the Twins to intentionally suck as it is to go for it. They appear to be splitting it in half, try to put a mediocre team on the field for $100M, hope that they get lucky enough with the young pitching to be the 6th best team in the American League and expanded playoffs gives them a windfall that gets them closer to $170M in profit. If they don't make the playoffs at least they'll still sell tickets in August if the team is .500 and less than 5 games behind the final Wildcard spot.
BTW the 12 team playoffs with the top 4 teams getting a bye made it a HUGE advantage to be one of the top 4 teams. That doubles the likelihood of a World Series appearance compared to the #5/6 team and guarantees a 7 game divisional series instead of a 3 game wildcard series.