Baseball is broken like a bat sawed-off by a Gerrit Cole fastball.

Incidentally, that sawed-off bat will cost you $2.2 million.

The New York Yankees — one of only about four teams who could have ponied up the requisite dough to sign the dominant former Pirate hurler — inked Cole for a whopping $324 million contract, further displaying what a farce the MLB is.

The rich get richer.

The poor, well, the poor stay poor.

Sure, “small market” teams have had some success — the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland A's are examples of doing a lot with little — but in the long run, those teams have a small window and zero margin for error.

Meanwhile, the Yankees and Dodgers and Red Sox and Angels of the world can throw money hand over fist at players like Cole and not bat an eye.

That leaves franchises like the Pirates out in the cold.

There was once a time when Cole was the ace of the Buccos' staff. He won 19 games for Pittsburgh in 2015.

After the 2017 season, the club traded him to the Astros, where he turned into the love child of Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan.

Even if the Pirates didn't trade Cole, he would have been gone after this season anyway.

Clubs like the Pirates can't spend $324 million on one dude, no matter how good he is.

To put it in perspective, the Pirates haven't spent $324 million total on free agents in the last 25 years.

That, more than anything, illustrates the tremendous gap between the haves and the have-nots in Major League Baseball.

The playing field isn't level.

Not even close.

The solution is easy on the surface, but impossible otherwise.

A salary cap.

Never going to happen.

Why?

Because of television rights.

The Yankees YES network rakes in more money than just about all the other broadcast networks of other teams combined.

The Dodgers network the same. So, too, the Red Sox.

Those franchises aren't going to share a bulk of that money with other clubs.

So, until MLB goes the route of the NFL and sells broadcast rights for the entire league to individual networks, get used to the big-market teams having payrolls 10 to 20 times that of smaller markets.

And it's unfortunate because the game could be so much better.

Pittsburgh was the place to be when the Pirates were good. The crowd was crazy and the atmosphere at PNC Park electric.

Now it's like a mausoleum at midnight.

That's not going to change any time soon.

Pirates fans, get used to being a Quad-A affiliate for the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox and a handful of other rich clubs.

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.