Executives from Major League Baseball meet in Nashville this week and experts are predicting some noise will come out of that Tennessee city. Rumors are rife and we'll all find out together what the outcomes will be.

It does seem fairly realistic that the Twins' great pitcher, Santana, will be traded this week. It also seems that Scott Rolen will escape Tony LaRussa some time this week as well. Since Santana is the bigger news, let's start there.

The logic of a trade from a salary dump seems twisted in favor of the cheap. We always hear that small market teams can't hold on to their stars for long because they can't pay like Boston or New York. That argument might have held true a decade ago, but rings hollow in the era of the taxes the "rich" teams contribute for their high payrolls.

Bud Selig (who the Fan still hasn't seen the same time as Bill Gates. They are the same guy!) touts the system as an equalizer. Some parity gains seem apparent, but overall, the cheap teams like the Twins and the A's seem to be the winners and the Yankees, Red Sox and Angels are the dupes.

According to published reports, the Yankees will pay Selig's office a combined $85 million. $25 million of that comes from the "luxury" tax and the rest is revenue sharing. How does it seem to be a fair deal that those three teams get to pay all the other teams a portion of their income and yet, the cheap teams still dump their best players.

The Twins rate 29th among teams in value, which means that they are receiving a hefty chunk of that revenue sharing money. If Selig's plan worked to perfection here, the Twins should receive enough from baseball to sign the world's best pitcher.

In effect, whether Santana goes to the Yankees, the Red Sox or Seattle, they will lose their best prospects, lose another big chunk of pay to the brilliant pitcher and thus add to their tax bill.

The system is skewed in the Twins' favor and if I were those three "rich" teams, I wouldn't be further subsidizing the cheap teams by losing good young prospects to pay for some other cheapskate's star.