The business of baseball is booming, and every franchise in the game is worth more than it was one year ago, according to Forbes. Attendance and revenue is up, and there is no end in sight for baseball’s increasing fortunes.

For casual fans and obsessed stat geeks alike, though, it’s always been tough to connect a team’s on-field success with its performance as a financial asset. Sure, we know that winning games means additional attendance, which in turn means more money for the owners. But not every team is winning, and not every team is seeing increased attendance.

In the past decade, savvy front offices and obvious contradictions of the rule have started to put to rest the notion that only the rich teams have the resources to compete year in and year out. In the current financial climate of baseball, owning a team is like a license to print money. It’s hard not to earn something with a baseball team. It is increasingly evident that being in a small market is not an impediment to winning.

The cliché favored by the uninformed is that the wealthy teams are able to offer more money to high-priced free agents, leaving the smaller organizations in the cold. But the financial realities of baseball contract rules prove otherwise. Paying for a free agent means doling out significantly more money than one would pay for a cost-controlled player, defined as a player with less than six years of major league service time. Players with nearly three years of time become eligible for arbitration, where they make about 35% of their free agent value, on average. Before that, they are relatively free.

On top of that, because of the age and learning curves of baseball players, free agents are often past their primes when they reach their big payday. The only way to ensure a player has his best years in your team’s uniform is to acquire him well beforehand, through the draft or international scouting. Drafting costs money, but it’s a small price compared to the bounty star free agents command.

Most educated fans are aware of these financial realities. Unfortunately, Forbes is out of the loop. “Follow the money,” editor Michael K. Ozanzian writes. But how? The magazine’s most widely cited and useful feature are its team valuations. No surprise: the Yankees are on top, followed by the Mets, Red Sox, Dodgers and Cubs. These valuations include rates of change, debt value, revenues and operating income, as well as value breakdowns into team, market, stadium, and brand. There is also a calculation of team ownership of equity in regional sports networks. Forbes estimates that the Mets’ 66% interest in SNY is worth $1.5 billion (more than the team itself), the Yankees’ 32% stake in YES is worth $1.0 billion, the Orioles’ 88% ownership of MASN is worth $440 million and the Red Sox’ 80% interest in NESN is worth $400 million. This is interesting stuff, but I’m concerned with the team on the field.

There, I find the Forbes baseball issue quite inadequate. They rank the five best general managers in the game and have the Mets’ Omar Minaya second, the Giants’ Brian Sabean fourth, and the Phillies’ Pat Gillick fifth (Theo Epstein and Billy Beane round out the list). General manager evaluations are highly subjective and often depend on context that is hard to discern, but putting Sabean fourth is inexcusable. Forbes, a businessman’s magazine, cites his long tenure, presuming that his job stability must be indicative of good performance. Gillick and Minaya are fine GMs, but most would put them in the middle of the pack. Indians’ GM Mark Shapiro, about whom there is a glowing piece in the magazine, is nowhere to be found on the list.

Their ranking of the five worst GMs is better, but they have Brian Cashman fifth. Cashman’s handling of his bosses’ crazy whims and the intense media pressure of New York, combined with his development of young, cost-controlled contributors when the Yankees’ tradition had been to use the farm system to acquire veterans for the big club, should have landed him at the top, not the bottom of the rankings.

Far worse is the “Who’s Worth the Big Bucks?” feature. Forbes picks players whom they think are over- and under-paid, but completely ignores the realities of baseball contracts mentioned above. They calculate the average career salaries of young and old players alike, mixing Jeff Kent, who began his career in 1992, with Albert Pujols, who began his in 2001, when the baseball economy was very different. Miguel Cabrera is a “bargain” because—duh—he isn’t even close to free agency yet, while Johnny Damon is a “bust” because he signed a free agent contract. Also, how did Damon beat out Juan Pierre? I think I’ll stick to Wins Above Replacement and the insight of unpaid bloggers, glossy pages be damned.

There are things Forbes can tell us about the game that are worthwhile, like the aforementioned team valuations. But for player contracts, emerging trends and everything else, they would do well to consult people like Tom Tango, Maury Brown of The Biz of Baseball, Shawn of Sqawking Baseball, J.C. Bradbury of Sabernomics, Dave Cameron of U.S.S. Mariner, and the stable of excellent writers who contribute to excellent baseball publications like Baseball Prospectus and The Hardball Times. These are the brightest minds in baseball analysis, and as far as I can tell, none of them had any part in the Forbes baseball issue. That’s just silly.