At the end of the day, John Stanton will continue to profit off his players and refrain from paying them as much as he can afford because he makes more money that way, and he knows that, deep down, as much as fans may gripe and be upset about that, he will continue to get away with it because fans won’t do anything tangible to try to make him change his strategy because, at the end of the day, they’re all rational actors just like he is, and they understand that nothing is actually at stake, so it’s not worth their time to put any effort into changing things because the success of a baseball team is inherently meaningless. And baseball games will still be fun to go to.
