FanHouse CatfishHunter

MLB Power Rankings: Where MLB FanHouse's editors, writers and bloggers team up to break down the who's who and the what's what in the baseball world.

The second half of the season is in full swing and lo and behold if capitalism hasn't reared it's ugly head once again. Billy Beane was spun off Matt Holliday (as expected of course) and the eleventy billion dollar payroll machine that is the New York Yankees are in first place in the AL East. (Of course, that can't explain why the Mets are horrible but that's a whole other thing.)

Will the Yankees' surge be enough to propel them into the critically important No. 1 slot of the FanHouse MLB Power Rankings? Find out after the jump.

Charles Finley hasn't owned the Athletics in years, but apparently his outlook towards the money he paid his players is still alive within the organization today. You may remember that Finley broke up one of the most dominant teams in baseball history after the Athletics won three straight titles because he didn't want to give his players a raise. So instead he just sold everybody. Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, he sold everybody.

Well Joe Kennedy was released by the Athletics and claimed off of waivers by the Diamondbacks last week. While Kennedy started in Oakland, he's coming out of the bullpen in Arizona.

In 16 starts Kennedy was 3-9 with a 4.37 ERA for Oakland, by no means a productive season. The thing is that in Kennedy's contract there's a $100,000 bonus if he makes 20 starts and another $100,000 if he makes 25 starts.

So was Kennedy's release more performance based or for financial reasons? Kennedy wouldn't come out and say it straight up, but he feels it was a money decision.

Asked if he thought the A's decision to remove him from the rotation had something to do with that, he simply said, "Do the math."

I can't blame Kennedy for being bitter about the whole thing, but I don't think this was all just about money. Do the A's really want to give Kennedy an extra $200,000? Not really, but something tells me if he was 9-3 with a 3.37 ERA they wouldn't mind paying him the bonuses.