Joe Posnanski did a typically tremendous job discussing the Yankees’ payroll and why, even though the Bombers may not win every year, the current system in Major League Baseball is patently unfair.

You’ll get no arguments out of me, but I’ll reiterate: It is not the Yankees’ fault they spend so much money. The Yankees are doing precisely what they should do. They have by far the largest budget for payroll because they gross by far the most money.

The onus is on Major League Baseball to fix the system, something that, as Posnanski points out, the league hasn’t appeared all that eager to do.

There have been billions of proposed solutions to baseball’s payroll disparity. Revenue sharing from online assets and the luxury tax may slightly even the score, but clearly do not do enough to let the Royals and Pirates compete for free agents with the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox and the like.

So the simplest conclusion is that baseball needs a salary cap, either a soft one like the NBA’s or a hard one like the NFL’s.

Both are problematic, though. The NBA’s system creates situations like the Knicks’ current dilemma, wherein it will take them several years to get out from under the weight of past mistakes. The NFL’s cap relies on a weak players’ union, as players under contract can be cut without penalty to the club.

They’re a bit more complex than that, of course, but it’s immaterial: The MLBPA is strong enough that even the hint of a salary cap would likely spell a strike, and no one wants that.

You’ll find few answers here. Back when I was in college and I thought I knew a whole lot about everything, I thought the answer was a true free-market system. (Oh, me at 21. What a beautiful fool.)

I recognize now that’s not a perfect solution, because I realize cable revenues and ad sales are inflated in large markets like this one, and concentrating a greater number of teams in the large markets would probably choke off interest in the rest of the country and ultimately hurt the sport.

Still, it strikes me that in some ways, the Yankees have the most money to spend because they must have the most fans. The largest fanbases then get rewarded most frequently, and so, from a purely utilitarian standpoint, the system is working.

So I wonder if the best way to mitigate the Yankees’ financial dominance would be to add another team to the market. Instead of punishing the Yankees for having the most fans, perhaps the league should do something to diminish the size of their fanbase.

As fans, of course, we say: No way that affects anything! I’m a (insert team here) fan for life, and no new team in my area would ever change that.

But cable ratings for the Mets and Yankees tell a different story. There are likely as many bandwagoneers in the area as there are die-hards, and a winning team will always prompt people to tune in or show up. A third team in the market would create more competition for fan and advertising revenue, even if there would still be plenty of both to go around.

There’s a reason a Google Maps search for McDonald’s in New York, NY looks like this and the same search in Pittsburgh looks like this. More mouths to feed necessitates more franchises.

I don’t know. I assume people much smarter than me have thought about this a lot harder than I have and done a lot more research and everything else. I’m just thinking out loud is all.

All I’m sure of is that it’s silly to fault the Yankees for taking advantage of their situation. We should only fault the situation.

Doin’ my duty:

SNY cover the Yankees’ parade live tomorrow beginning at 11 a.m.

Jonas Schwartz will host the coverage. Jon Heyman, Mark Feinsand, Marty Appel and friend of TedQuarters Alex Belth from Bronx Banter will be in studio to weigh in.

Today’s From the Wikipedia entry is dedicated to A.J., the reader who yesterday provided a suitable mascot for the Nippon Ham Fighters.

A.J., it turns out, does not just traffic in still images, but also in Web video, which you should check out at his YouTube page.

From the Wikipedia: Stop-motion animation

This filmmaking technique is somewhat self-explanatory. A filmmaker manipulates an on-screen object between frames, creating the illusion of motion.

The most commonly recognized form of stop-motion animation is claymation, the familiar realm of Gumby and the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But the technique is nearly as old as film itself and was first employed by pioneers like J. Stuart Blackton and Georges Méliès around the turn of the 20th century.

More recent stop-motion animators include Tool guitarist Adam Jones, who normally includes elements of stop motion in his band’s videos, and South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who initially crafted that show’s characters out of construction paper for a video Christmas card.

Many have suggested that computer graphics render stop motion obsolete, because they allow for smoother and more realistic animation. But realism does not always trump style, and more likely, stop-motion artists will merely be challenged to re-envision their medium, much in the way portrait and landscape artists were at the advent of photography.

My former roommate Mike Carlo, himself a talented 2-D animator, often pointed out that with every new form comes concern among artists that old ones will vanish, yet somehow they never really do. Technologies may develop to make a medium inefficient, but unless they can perfectly mimic that medium’s aesthetic, they will never replace it.

So though stop-motion animation may be something of a dinosaur, it is unlikely to go entirely extinct, and for that we should be thankful. Because no matter how stunning we may find Shrek or The Incredibles, this will always look cool:

William Rhoden weighed in on A-Rod in today’s New York Times. He writes:

We began reading and hearing that A-Rod was a changed man. How did that happen?

Some speculated that it was the finality of his divorce, others that it was the tearful February news conference in Tampa with teammates looking on. Still others said the author of Rodriguez’s renaissance was Kate Hudson.

But A-Rod is not the one who has changed. He is the same guy.

There it is. So many columnists and bloggers and fans weighed in on the new, relaxed A-Rod this year that it essentially became fact. The perception even seeped its way into news articles that read like a bad comedian at open-mic night.

“Women are like this; men are like this. Last year’s A-Rod was like this, this year’s A-Rod is like this.”

Nonsense.

Did A-Rod really spend less time worrying about reporters, or did reporters spend less time worrying about A-Rod?

So many have suggested that he cast away the distractions and focused on baseball in 2009. Then in the next breath, they mention how clearly happy he is with his new Hollywood starlet girlfriend.

If A-Rod had failed in the postseason, would Kate Hudson still be the magic charm of relaxation, or would she be another cursed complication?

Of course we see signs that A-Rod is different now and somehow better. You know why? Because we’re looking for them. Because we want to find them. Because now he had a bunch of clutch hits, and we’re looking for an explanation better than randomness.

But there isn’t one. A-Rod is a great hitter who happened to struggle in a few consecutive postseasons. This year, he performed as a great hitter, because that’s what great hitters usually do.

Slumps and streaks are part of baseball. They’re not indicative of some massive psychological overhaul, just baseball.

The good news is that now a three-time MVP and 12-time All-Star, the owner of 583 Major League home runs, can finally lose some labels he never deserved.

He’ll keep others, of course, like “juicer” and “adulterer” and “centaur.” But regardless of how we choose to judge those, they’re ones he earned.

Just A-Rod being A-Rod, really.

That’s it for the 2009 baseball season, and good riddance. Good for the Yanks and the good people at Bronx Banter and Was Watching.

Maybe my favorite non-New York baseball blog is Drunk Jays fans. The language is rarely even remotely safe for work, but I enjoyed their quick World Series recap.

The Mariners picked up former Met farmhand Yusmeiro Petit off waivers, and Lookout Landing provides a nice writeup on the right-hander. Petit’s Minor League numbers, short stuff and all, are simply too good to ignore. The home run has been his bugaboo, but maybe pitching at Safeco Field will help him.

James at Amazin’ Avenue explains what would be on the cover of Duh! Magazine if it weren’t so hard for some people to grasp: “The goal is to score more runs than you allow.” It doesn’t really matter how you do that, so long as you do it frequently and convincingly.

Now the nonsense begins.