Contending teams bemoan the lack of sellers at the trade deadline, noting too many clubs are bunched together.Wait, how is this possible?Major League Baseball continues to insist the sport lacks competitive balance, and a salary cap is the only solution.Playing right out in front of us, for anyone who cares to pay attention, is a season that defies the league’s argument.Entering Tuesday’s play, 24 of the 30 clubs are within five games of a postseason spot, and 21 are within two and a half.Oh, and the New York Mets, Toronto Blue Jays and San Francisco Giants — teams with the game’s second-, fifth- and 11th-highest luxury-tax payrolls, respectively — were among those more than three and a half games out.How many players will the Mets trade by the deadline?Ken Rosenthal and Johnny SweetRandom, wacky outcomes — in a game, a season, a postseason — are not unusual in baseball. But the league, acting almost as if the results are preordained, keeps banging the competitive-balance drum, through its “Level the Playing Field” ad campaign on MLB.TV and elsewhere.If fans “overwhelmingly support a salary cap and floor,” as the league says, they shouldn’t need additional convincing. Then again, when the on-field results don’t fit the off-field narrative, better to bombard the public with spurious arguments.Which would you rather believe, the owners — whose primary motive is boosting their franchise values — or the competition you’re seeing in the standings? Competition that by the way, stems in part from the expanded playoffs the league introduced in 2022 to ahem, make more money.Don’t get me wrong. I’ve written repeatedly about the necessity for the league and players’ union to address the revenue disparity between between big- and small-market teams. In February, I suggested a number of ideas on how to improve the plight of small-market clubs without resorting to a cap.The game is experiencing a renaissance, in part because of innovations such as the pitch clock and the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system that commissioner Rob Manfred pushed and the union resisted. The owners’ insistence on a cap, however, almost certainly would result in a prolonged lockout, jeopardizing part or all of the 2027 season.