Tom Krasovic: What parity? Baseball continues to reward biggest markets, while NFL gives little guys a fighting chance.

SAN DIEGO — The recent massive spending by the big-market Dodgers and Mets and the ensuing criticism of Major League Baseball’s economic system has led some bright folks to recycle a familiar defense that, as far it goes, isn’t wrong.

Call it the Trophy Argument.

The World Series trophy, these folks point out, seldom goes to the team with MLB’s largest payroll. And despite the huge disparity in spending among clubs, no franchise has won consecutive World Series trophies over the past two decades.

Plus, in pursuit of the trophy, there’s a growing place for upstarts in MLB’s postseason field, which has been expanded twice in the past 12 years.

Beneficiaries include the small-market Padres.

“MLB’s postseason this year featured teams from Kansas City, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore and San Diego,” ESPN’s Jeff Passan writes. “Perhaps most important: The randomness of baseball’s postseason typically serves as an equalizer, keeping even the most talented teams from their most dynastic aspirations.”

Writing for The Athletic, longtime Fox Sports reporter Ken Rosenthal joined Passan in making favorable comparisons to the NFL. Brave lads.

“Owners and some fans crave a salary cap and accompanying floor, believing it would prove a competitive panacea,” Rosenthal, Fox’s MLB postseason reporter since 2006, penned in an article that appeared in Sunday’s Union-Tribune. “But super teams exist in cap sports. The NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs are going to their seventh straight AFC championship game. The New England Patriots appeared in eight straight.”

The assertions by Passan and Rosenthal are true. But it may not be a swell idea for MLB’s parity advocates to bring up the NFL’s model or its outcomes.

Doing so makes MLB’s defenders seem oblivious to the little guys — franchises in the smaller markets.

Smaller-market NFL teams have thrived in recent years and decades, part of a parity-driven system that guarantees tiny Green Bay and shrimpy Buffalo the same huge slice of NFL media pie as their competitors in New York and Los Angeles get.

Instead of facing the odds overcome by the hero of “Slumdog Millionaire,” NFL’s little guys know the system isn’t tilted against them.

The parity MLB’s defenders are left to celebrate is paltry stuff.

It’s the parity of franchises from large and mid-to-large markets taking alternative trips to the World Series trophy stage. Excuse fans of MLB’s small-market teams for not cheering the parades.

Baseball’s small-market clubs win the trophy at a dismal rate.

Thirty MLB seasons have been played in the wild-card era, begat by the World Series-canceling labor stoppage of 1994. In that time, the World Series trophy has gone to just one team — the 2015 Royals — from franchises in MLB’s six smallest media markets. Only three small-market teams have won pennants during that time: The 1998 Padres and the 2014 and 2015 Royals.

The parity picture isn’t pretty, even after we expand the little-guys group to round out the bottom third of franchises by media size. Upping the total to 10 clubs, let’s include St. Louis (24th designated media area market in the United States, per Nielsen), Cleveland (19), Denver (17) and Miami (18) to go with the bottom six of Milwaukee (38), Cincinnati (37), Kansas City (33), San Diego (30) and Baltimore (29).

Boosted the most by the Cardinals’ two trophies and four pennants, the small-market haul grows to five trophies and 13 pennants. Still meager.

The regular-season picture? Fade to black.

The small-market bottom six all have a losing record for the wild-card era. Of the 10, only Cleveland and St. Louis won more games than they lost.

The effects of MLB’s current labor pact are still playing out. But the three seasons have produced zero trophies or pennants won by a small-market club. Providing hope, Baltimore, Milwaukee, San Diego, Cleveland and St. Louis all boast winning records.

Going back to MLB’s labor pact that took effect months before the Peter Seidler and Ron Fowler group bought control of the Padres, the bottom 10 have collected just the one trophy won by the Royals. That’s a 1-for-13 success rate. That batting average might get you the last lineup spot on the Bad News Bears.

The NFL system, meantime, generates so much opportunity for its small-market teams that as the Chiefs prepare for their fifth Super Bowl in six years, their small-market status isn’t a topic.

Go back to 1993, when the NFL loosened up free agency. The 31 seasons that followed, taking us to the start of this past season, didn’t relegate small-market clubs to scrambling for bread crumbs.

Quite the opposite.

Behind New England, the NFL’s best win rates over those 31 years belong to Green Bay (68th in market size, .632 win rate), Pittsburgh (27, .625), Kansas City (33, .587) and Baltimore (29, .574) with Indianapolis (25, .557), New Orleans (50, .514) and Buffalo (54, .513) nearby.

Trophies? Over the same span, the NFL’s small-market bottom 10 won 11 of them, more than doubling the total of their corresponding MLB counterparts.

The NFL’s little guys aren’t just opponents for the big boys to dismiss. They have as much opportunity as their bigger-market competitors. Yes, a quarterback’s outsized role has no parallel in MLB. Get a good QB, and you’ll likely contend for the Super Bowl. But, thanks to the equal slices of the revenue pie, the hard salary cap, the spending floor and the franchise tag, the NFL system ensures everyone begins the race from the same starting line.

In MLB, the big boys start from second or third base.