Championships Bought and Sold

I have never gotten to riled up about the whole "Yankees buy championships" talk. To me, as much money as the Yankees have, the team chemistry really does matter. I think that Nick Swisher's outgoing, vibrant personality changed the Yankees this season, and even though he makes $5.5 million a year, I think Andy Pettite's contribution this season is critical to the Yankees championship. That said, some recent trends do bother me. Specifically, contending teams using smaller market teams as pseudo-farm systems.

I guess I should clarify the origination of this post. Last night, I saw that the Red Sox signed Jeremy Hermida from the Florida Marlins in exchange for 2 minor league pitchers. I think it's a great signing, but I can't help but feel that my Red Sox are turning into the Yankees by buying emerging free agents to contend rather than growing most of their talent. When I first became a Red Sox fan, Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez were the stars of Fenway. In fact, I have a T-shirt with both of them on it, one of my favorites. But the difference back then was Nomar was the home grown star and Pedro was the marquee free agent. I am by no means arguing that teams should not seek a marquee free agent in the offseason to put them over the proverbial edge. But there is a difference between going after that one guy that puts you over the edge and signing Mark Teixeira, arguably last year's best bat in free agency, and CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, probably the 2 best arms in free agency.

It's quite alarming to see how many of the Yankees and Red Sox players have come from smaller market teams (I'm calling Japanese teams these too)out of free agency or minor league trades. So here we go:
Yankees
Sabathia, Burnett, Bruney and Marte in the pitching staff.
Matsui, Damon, A-Rod, Teixeira, Swisher in the field/at bat.
Red Sox
Bay, Drew, Ortiz, Martinez, Baldelli in the field/at bat.
Beckett, Schilling (during their championship run), Matsuzaka, Okajima (maybe) in the pitching staff.

To have eight key players from free agency seems ridiculous to me, specifically how they are simply bought out by the Yankees or Red Sox from other teams. It's scary to think what baseball would be like with a salary cap, but clearly the makeup of teams like the Yankees and the Red Sox is concerning to baseball enthusiasts.