BUSINESS AS USUAL EVEN WITH THE NEW LABOR DEAL, IT'S STILL THE YANKEES VS. EVERYONE ELSE.

Byline: Brian Dohn Staff Writer

VERO BEACH, Fla. - Carlos Beltran is one of the American League's rising stars. The center fielder turns 26 next month and has averaged 27 home runs, 103 RBI and 33 stolen bases the past two years. He is the ideal player to build a ballclub around.

There's just one problem, which is symptomatic around baseball: the small-market Kansas City Royals can't afford him. Sometime during this season, Beltran is likely to be traded, thus keeping Kansas City in the rebuilding mode while strengthening a team that can afford stars of Beltran's caliber.

It's a familiar scenario in the last decade of baseball but one that was supposed to be solved by baseball's new four-year collective-bargaining agreement.

However, this offseason saw the big-market New York Yankees land two highly touted and expensive international free agents in Japanese outfielder Hideki Matsui and Cuban pitcher Jose Contreras, and the small-market teams like the Royals with Beltran and the Oakland Athletics with shortstop Miguel Tejada say they will not be able to afford their franchise players.

Is the collective-bargaining agreement a failure? Some say in the long run it's baseball's best answer. But in the short term, there's going to be a lot of Beltrans and Tejadas changing uniforms.

The problem

The idea of the new labor agreement was to narrow the payroll disparity between teams and create competitive balance. Instead, the Yankees were as active as ever in stockpiling talent. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner spent oodles of money to attract the top talent, while the small-market teams remained nonplayers.

Matsui signed a three-year, $21 million deal to play in the Bronx, giving the Yankees more high-priced outfielders than positions until the trade of Rondell White this week. Contreras signed a four-year, $32 million deal but is likely to find himself pitching out of the bullpen because he couldn't crack a starting rotation that features Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte, David Wells and Jeff Weaver. Each would be a No. 1 starter on many small-market clubs.

Conversely, the Montreal Expos, close to being a contender in baseball's rigorous National League East, were forced to trade staff ace Bartolo Colon to the Chicago White Sox to remain within their budget set forth by Major League Baseball, which runs the team.

The luxury tax, which will penalize a team this season for any payroll exceeding $117 million (about $110 million for the 25-man roster), and increased revenue sharing was supposed to keep such disparities in check.

Instead, the Yankees' projected opening-day payroll is $150 million, an increase of $24 million from 2002. According to opening-day payroll projections, small-market teams such as Tampa Bay, Toronto, Florida and Milwaukee each cut payroll.

``Some teams are not going to spend $70 million and try to win when another team is spending $140 million,'' said agent Scott Boras, who counts Beltran, Alex Rodriguez, Greg Maddux, Bernie Williams and Kevin Brown among his clientele. ``So they're going to spend $35 million.''

The key elements of the new deal were the implementation of the luxury tax, increased revenue sharing and a possible worldwide amateur draft, though the feasibility is being studied by a special committee. All three aspects are designed to aid smaller-market clubs.

Revenue sharing over the length of the deal was increased 34 percent, from $169 million to $258 million, providing more monies to the small-market teams. Monies received from revenue sharing must be used toward major-league payroll, player development and/or the betterment of the organization. Each organization must issue a detailed report outlining how said monies were used, said Major League Baseball executive vice president Rob Manfred, ownership's lead negotiator of last August's deal.

A world-wide amateur draft would enable teams incapable of awarding huge contracts like the Yankees gave to Matsui and Contreras to tap into that market.

``I guess you'll find out during the season if it's more competitive,'' Dodgers catcher and union representative Paul Lo Duca said. ``It'll be interesting to see if the lower-level teams are able to compete with the higher-level teams. In the offseason there were definitely a lot of guys that had trouble finding jobs, so I guess (the new agreement) affected that a little bit. It's still hard to tell until this season gets going.''

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays promise to be an interesting case study.

The Devils Rays, who own a 318-490 record in their embarrassing five-year existence and never finished above fifth place, opened the 2002 season with a $34.4 million payroll. Baseball claims the organization, which is expected to receive $14 million to $15 million in revenue sharing for 2003, lost $5 million last season. So the Devil Rays trimmed $6.4 million from their 2003 opening-day payroll.

Opponents of the new deal say it is obvious the Devil Rays will use the increased revenue sharing to offset losses. Major League Baseball says otherwise and notes the Minnesota Twins as the reason to why fans should not jump to conclusions about Tampa Bay's long-term plan. Baseball believes new manager Lou Piniella's four-year, $13 million deal is an indication the club is re-investing revenue-sharing dollars into the franchise's on-field product.

The Twins banked money for a few years so they could increase payroll the past two seasons. They will open the season Monday with a projected payroll of $55.5 million, the 12th highest in baseball.

``Minnesota can't be a $55 million team without, over a period of years, massive amounts of revenue sharing,'' Manfred said. ``Revenue sharing proceeds have to be used to improve the team.''

That is something the large-market clubs, like the Dodgers, will closely follow. The Dodgers paid $10 million in revenue sharing last year, and they budgeted to pay $12 million this season. They certainly don't want to see that money go toward the ``golfing'' or ``exotic trip'' fund of a small-market owner.

The future

Privately, Major League Baseball is thrilled with the early returns. They believed five or six teams would surpass the $117 million luxury tax line. Only the Yankees, who obliterated the line and will check in at $170 million, and the Mets (by $3 million) have surpassed that threshold.

However, Manfred warned against expecting drastic changes quickly, instead saying the spirit of the agreement, which runs through 2006, is to allow smaller-market teams to build their organization over the years. It also means fiscal responsibility will be closely monitored.

There were grumblings at the winter meetings, usually a meat market dedicated to signing free agents to big contracts, of collusion. Several agents were aghast that numerous teams were offering roughly the same deal to their free agent, thus ensuring the market remained structured.

``I had one player that was offered the same deal by three teams,'' one agent said. ``That just doesn't happen. Teams that had no need for a player at that position would talk about the same contract as another team that was trying to fill a need and obviously researched it. It was ludicrous.''

To an ownership group that wants to curtail salaries because of what they say is increasing debt, they look at what transpired in the offseason as the beginnings of parity, or competitive balance, in the marketplace.

Clubs are discounting the signings of the three biggest free-agent contracts this offseason - first baseman Jim Thome with Philadelphia for six years, $85 million, pitcher Tom Glavine with the Mets for three years, $35 million, and Matsui and Contreras - because of how the deals happened.

Certainly, all three went to high-revenue teams, which includes the Phillies since they are readying to move into a new ballpark in 2004, but the pool of interested teams in the three players was greatly diminished from preceding offseasons. The flip side is that none of the small-market teams were involved in the bidding.

``I think the elite players will still get contracts, but it wasn't a buyer's market,'' Mets general manager Steve Phillips said. ``What happened this offseason is the players available exceeded the demand.''

There is also the plight of organizations like Kansas City and Oakland, which continue to struggle to sign marquee players.

The Royals, with a projected $43 million payroll, offered Beltran a three-year, $22 million deal when he sought a deal that would guarantee him as much as four times that amount. The Athletics, with a projected $49.9 million payroll, never reached a substantive contract exchange with Tejada.

``We never said revenue sharing was going to let every club keep every player all the time,'' Manfred said. ``With revenue sharing, you saw a number of teams change the way they conduct themselves.''

That appears to be the primary reason players like Reggie Sanders, Kenny Lofton, Dodgers first baseman Fred McGriff and Florida Marlins catcher Ivan Rodriguez signed deals considered well under the 2002 market value. There is also veteran pitcher Chuck Finley, who remains unsigned.

However, the only small-market team that could be considered active in the free-agent market was the Pittsburgh Pirates, and they signed Sanders and Lofton to bargain-basement deals.

``We were able to be involved with a better quality of player than the year before,'' said Pirates general manager Dave Littlefield, who raised his payroll $10 million to $52 million. ``It's a good-news, bad-news thing. We have opportunities we can present Kenny Lofton and Reggie Sanders, but the bad news is we won 72 games last year.''

Teams and players expect the financial belt of teams to tighten in the upcoming seasons. The Dodgers, for example, saw salaries of players under guaranteed contracts in 2002 and 2003 rise more than 20 percent. The luxury tax for the 2004 season will be $120.5 million, a 3 percent increase. The luxury tax line in 2005 and 2006 will be $128 million and $136.5 million, respectively.

``If you look at it on the surface, you'll still see significant payroll disparity,'' Graziano said. ``But in 2004, some of those disparities will begin to close. Then you'll see more in 2005.''

CAPTION(S):

30 photos, 5 boxes, drawing

Photo:

(1) GIAMBI

(2) RAMIREZ

(3) HINSKE

(4) JOHNSON

(5) HUFF

(6) KONERKO

(7) HUNTER

(8) SABATHIA

(9) BELTRAN

(10) HIGGINSON

(11) TEJADA

(12) WASHBURN

(13) BOONE

(14) RODRIGUEZ

(15) FURCAL 

(16) ABREU

(17) BURNETT

(18) PIAZZA

(19) CABRERA

(20) OSWALT

(21) PUJOLS

(22) SOSA

(23) DUNN

(24) BENSON

(25) SHEETS

(26) BONDS

(27) BROWN

(28) JOHNSON

(29) NEAGLE

(30) KLESKO

Box:

(1) PROJECTED PAYROLLS

(2) AMERICAN LEAGUE SCHEDULES

(3) NATIONAL LEAGUE SCHEDULES

(4) AL PREVIEW CAPSULES

(5) NL PREVIEW CAPSULES

Drawing:

(cover -- color) no caption (Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, foreground, holding cash, while members of four other team's react)

Jorge Irribarren/Staff Artist