Parity? What Parity?

Perusing the standings, I noticed the following teams are out of it, and it isn't even the end of May:

Tampa Bay, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Seattle, Oakland, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Chicago Cubs, Pittsburgh, Cincinatti, Houston, and Colorado.

That's 13 teams, or roughly 43 percent of the teams.

Before the season, Peter Gammons predicted that 25 teams would be in it by the time September rolls around. Hard to believe there'll be more than seven or eight. Which leads me to the point I've been making for a long time and that is, we need a salary cap. Granted, a few of the aforementioned teams are mid- to upper-market teams, but most are not, and without equal footing, they have little chance to compete.

Again, you can make the argument that the Phillies and Mariners are poorly constructed, and that's fair. You could argue that the Cubbies had bad luck with injuries. Fine. But what about Tampa Bay, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, who have good management, but lack to resources to put them over the top?

The CBA expires in 2006. I don't want to hear Bid Selig whine about parity and how successful revenue sharing is, and the brilliance of the luxury tax. Spare us, please.