Free Agency/Salary Cap? [Archive] - Page 2

Buczilla

02-03-2009, 07:31 PM

Selig brushes off salary cap suggestions

Associated Press

MILWAUKEE -- Baseball commissioner Bud Selig says the game's economic structure has come a long way and could still use some tinkering.

And while the man who bought the Milwaukee Brewers from Selig's family, Mark Attanasio, has suggested a salary cap might be the solution, Selig isn't ready to take a stand on an issue that could revive dormant tensions between owners and players.

The current collective bargaining agreement doesn't expire until 2011, and Selig suggested securing long-term labor peace with continued economic reforms could be his final major achievement as commissioner.

"The last year of my commissionership will be devoted to that," Selig said Tuesday during a seminar with students at Marquette University's law school. "So there's no sense in me sitting here today and engaging them on [a salary cap]. We'll just watch how the system develops and what we need to do."

Whatever economic tweaks to the game might be forthcoming, Selig said they will be made with one goal in mind. He calls it hope; others might call it parity.

"Our job is to give hope and faith in as many franchises as possible on April 1st," Selig said. "That's the intent."

Toward that end, Selig praised measures baseball has taken to help teams in smaller media markets compete with big-market teams, such as revenue sharing and a luxury tax on teams with lofty payrolls.

Selig used Tuesday's hour-long session with students to make the case that baseball is stronger than ever despite increased competition from an ever-expanding universe of entertainment options.

Selig said baseball is "more popular than it's ever been" in the U.S. and has significant growth potential overseas, adding he would like to see games played in Europe.

Selig also went out of his way to praise franchise owners for showing restraint on ticket prices. By his own count, Selig said eight clubs have cut ticket prices, 15 or 16 have kept them the same and others have raised prices "very judiciously."

But when asked afterward about his personal economic well-being, Selig was less forthcoming.

Selig brushed off a question about this week's revelation that he made nearly $17.5 million in 2007, according to Major League Baseball's latest tax return.

Is that commensurate with the success the game is experiencing?

"I let others make that decision," Selig said. "I'm not going to comment on that."

Selig also sidestepped reports that financially troubled Citigroup was rethinking its sponsorship of the New York Mets' new stadium.

"Believe me, that's a very complicated issue," Selig said.

Nor was Selig ready to offer an opinion on a salary cap, an idea recently put forth by Attanasio after the New York Yankees snapped up Brewers ace CC Sabathia as part of a three-player, $423.5 million free-agent spending spree.

"I've talked to Mark about that, and I've talked to other owners," Selig said. "But I'm just not going to comment on that. ... The cap has been talked about a lot. All caps are different. Some of them have worked, some haven't."

Teams have already been more cautious with their money this offseason because of concerns about the slumping economy, and almost half the players who filed for free agency remain unsigned. Manny Ramirez, Ben Sheets and Adam Dunn are among the players still on the market, and the players' union is keeping a close eye out for evidence of collusion.

"We are, as always, looking at the market," union head Donald Fehr said in an e-mail. "When conclusions are drawn, it won't be a secret."

Selig pointed to the success of the Brewers, who made the playoffs for the first time since 1982 last season, and other small-market clubs as evidence that revenue sharing and the luxury tax are already helping to level the playing field.

"There's more competitive balance than ever in the history of baseball," Selig said. "The reason you're seeing small-market teams do better is because the economic system allows them to be better."

Selig said the outlook for small-market teams is far different today than it was in the 1990s, when his family was still running the Brewers.

"We didn't really have much of a chance," Selig said. "We couldn't say that, but it was true. Today, they do. And can it be made better? We'll see. I meant what I said today. I'm just going to watch it. We've got three more years."

Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3882544

spark240

02-05-2009, 11:10 AM

And frankly the Minnesota Twins should never have the same resources as the Yankees, Mets, Cubs, White Sox, Angels, and Dodgers. Not unless their market share is equal to them. Small market teams winning is a nice story and all but MLB lives and dies on its big market teams.

The Twins "should never" be able to have the same resources as the Yankees? Why in the world not? What exactly is wrong with a little dynasty in Minneapolis (or Pittsburgh, or wherever) once every few decades?

You seem to be working under the assumption that the "big markets" rightfully belong to the teams that happen to be located there. I deny this.

The Yank's revenue is huge because the Yanks have been great for a long time.

Their history is not irrelevant, but the Yankees' revenue is huge primarily because they happen to play in the middle of an enormous metropolis which is also a center for national media. Or rather, because MLB's current system allows them to keep the bulk of the profits from the selling of MLB games in this market, regardless of where they are played.

You're trying to have it both ways--on the one hand you say the Twins should not have the Yankees' money, because they're not a "big market team," on the other you say that it's not really the market after all.

It is the market. More precisely, it is the structure of the system which makes "market" so determinative of revenue streams.

It does not have to be this way.

Ubiquitous

02-05-2009, 11:24 AM

The Twins "should never" be able to have the same resources as the Yankees? Why in the world not? What exactly is wrong with a little dynasty in Minneapolis (or Pittsburgh, or wherever) once every few decades?

You seem to be working under the assumption that the "big markets" rightfully belong to the teams that happen to be located there. I deny this.

There is nothing wrong with a dynasty or a small market team winning. That isn't what I said. What I said and what I mean is that a team in Minneapolis shouldn't have the same resources as a team in NYC. A team that has a fanbase of 20 million in its immediate area should have more resources then a team that has a fanbase of 2 million or so in its immediate area.

Their history is not irrelevant, but the Yankees' revenue is huge primarily because they happen to play in the middle of an enormous metropolis which is also a center for national media. Or rather, because MLB's current system allows them to keep the bulk of the profits from the selling of MLB games in this market, regardless of where they are played.

You're trying to have it both ways--on the one hand you say the Twins should not have the Yankees' money, because they're not a "big market team," on the other you say that it's not really the market after all.

It is the market. More precisely, it is the structure of the system which makes "market" so determinative of revenue streams.

It does not have to be this way.

That isn't what I am saying. The Yankees resources would be big regardless of their history and of their winning. But it is huge because they are well run.
St. Louis is not a very big market but they have been well run and because of that their revenue streams are much greater then what they what one might expect based on their market size. The Braves because of superstations was able to become a "large market" team with large revenue streams. But if they were to stay bad then they wouldn't have generated as much money as they did.

Look at the A's and even the Twins. When they consistently won they generated more revenue. Will they ever generate as much money as say a NY team? No, but then again I see no reason why a team in Oakland or Minneapolis should generate that kind of revenue. I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed but that a system shouldn't be created in which Oakland, Minneapolis, and NY all get the same amount of revenue. To me that is a tremendous disservice to a large amount of fans. Teams like Boston, NY, LA, Chicago make a lot of money for a reason while teams like Minnesota, Oakland, and Tampa do not and that is because there is simply more people in their areas.

spark240

02-05-2009, 12:27 PM

I'm not saying they shouldn't be allowed but that a system shouldn't be created in which Oakland, Minneapolis, and NY all get the same amount of revenue. To me that is a tremendous disservice to a large amount of fans.

I would say that the disservice--to a huge, national audience of baseball fans--is in the perpetuation of a system which limits the potential and possibilities for each season by concentrating its resources unnaturally in a few hands.

If the "small" teams get a fair shake, and thereby (with smart management) build a contender, and are able to keep that contending team together and build upon it over a period of years... that's doesn't just benefit that team's fans. It's good for all of us.

By the way, I've never advocated a system in which all teams get the same revenue; what I am pushing for is a system in which all teams get a fair share of the revenue from the games they play and the season stories they help to create. It would be both right in itself, and good for fans everywhere.

Ubiquitous

02-05-2009, 04:19 PM

I guess it depends on what the definition of a fair share is.

Giving more resources to larger market teams is not unnatural. Taking away their resources and giving them to smaller market teams is unnatural. If 10 million people tune in to watch Yankee games why shouldn't they get that revenue? If 1 million fans tune in to watch Twins games then why should the Twins get paid like there is 5 million fans watching their games? Why artificially handicap teams that have large fan bases so that teams with small fan bases can have more money?

As it stands right now teams do get equal shares of revenue for certain rather large streams of revenue. All teams get the national TV money regardless of how many times they appear on national TV. All teams get equal shares of MLB licensed goods. All teams get an equal share of internet revenue. So it isn't like there is no revenue sharing (and that is ignoring luxury tax for the moment) going on in MLB, a lot of money gets shared equally. Secondly what is a fair share of revenue for a dysmal team? What is a fair share of the revenue for teams like KC and Pittsburgh that have been run ineptly? IF we were to use an honest definition of fair share wouldn't that mean they would get even less then they do now? And how would that help the fans of those teams?

Would it be good for baseball and all of us if Chicagos, NY's, LA's, and Boston were run like KC and Pittsburgh and teams like Milwaukee, Detroit, Oakland, KC, and Pittsburgh were the well run and dominant team? No, it wouldn't be because a huge huge chunk of the fanbase of baseball would be disenfranchised while a relatively small amount of fans would be delighted that their team is doing well. A healhty business is a business that has healthy top earners. Would Pepsico be a healthy company if nobody bought Pepsi? The answer is no, sure companies like to see auxilary products do well and may even focus on them once they milked all the growth out of there alpha product but the core of the business is still that alpha product. For baseball, whether we like to admit it or not, the core of the business is the NY, LA, Chicago, and Boston.

spark240

02-06-2009, 04:01 AM

Giving more resources to larger market teams is not unnatural. Taking away their resources and giving them to smaller market teams is unnatural.

In my view, it is the large-market teams which are presently doing the "taking." It is "unnatural" because it ignores the real source of the product value which produces the revenue.

If 10 million people tune in to watch Yankee games why shouldn't they get that revenue? If 1 million fans tune in to watch Twins games then why should the Twins get paid like there is 5 million fans watching their games?

The Yankees shouldn't get all the revenue, or the overwhelming share, because the game is not rightfully theirs (alone) to sell.

There is no such thing as a "Yankees game" or a "Twins game," really. There are only games they play with other teams in the league, which are of interest to baseball fans (regardless of which specific team the fans might root for) because of the athletic performance of both teams on the field in that game, and the larger context of the league and season.

For baseball, whether we like to admit it or not, the core of the business is the NY, LA, Chicago, and Boston.

I do not believe this is true, or at least I don't believe it has to be this way. The NFL and NBA have successful teams--even flagship teams--in several cities that are unthinkable as MLB franchise sites under the present system.

Ubiquitous

02-06-2009, 07:05 AM

I'm not saying the Yankees should get all the revenue nor do they. I'm saying the Yankees should get a bigger share of revenue then teams that do not generate as much revenue as them. Right now, even setting aside luxury tax, the Yankees share a tremendous amount of revenue with other teams. Teams that probably do very little to deserve that money other then exist. For instance back in Veteran stadium days the the Phillies had the largest stadium in the NL. It would seat well over 50,000 fans, but almost never got that many people inside it. Unless that is, the Yankees showed up. When interleague was introduced games scheduled against the Yankees would fill up the stadium. Now that is revenue generated because of the Yankees but the Yankees didn't sit there and demand 50% of the revenue for those games or anything like that. They got the agreed upon dollar a ticket or whatever small amount it is. The Mets when they would come to town would draw around 40,000 or so, same with the Red Sox. When the Pirates came town it was 16,000 or so. Yet through all of that the Phillies got to pocket the revenue generated by the Yankees. Secondly the Phillies, Brewers, Padres and all the other teams get the same slice of the pie as the Yankees and Mets in terms of the national tv revenue even though their contribution to that revenue is minimal.

Yes, the Yankees and TWins are on the field but it most certainly is a YAnkees game or a Twins game. For starters the majority of people in the NYC area are not going to tune into a game involving the Twins unless a NY team is involved in someway. For most fans against most teams it is their team versus the Generals. Yes, there are match ups that fans look forward too and watch because of the other team but most fans don't care if that the opposing team is the Pirates or the Rockies. Teams should get revenue that represents what their contribution to the game actually is. In the case of the Royals and Pirates that contribution is minimal, so why should large market teams with very large followings have to risk building a quality team by giving teams like the Royals and Pirates more money then those teams have actually added to the pot?

Both Basketball and Football have different formats that make it a different viewing package. Football is a once a week game in which the home team is heavily pushed as well as a national team. Yes, teams like the Packers can and do have a national following but if there is no Chicago team or if Chicago plays and acts like the Tigers it will hurt the Chicago market. Just like the Tigers hurt the Detoroit market. Basketball has national teams but for the most part they have been and are large market TV cities and their secondary team that they push are manned by a superstar. Basketball pushes the local team and the superstar.

BAseball like football and basketball push the local team and then push as the secondary option the better teams in the leagues. That being for the last 10 years or so teams like STL, Chicago, NY, Boston, and soome others.

No format pushes small market teams that are horrendous. With Favre gone and if the Packers play badly then they will disappear from the national broadcast. How many times has Cincin been or the Tigers (outside of Thanksgiving) been the national game while they have been horrible? The 49ers used to be a national team and then they went bad and vanished from the national scene. The NFL made a choice awhile back to abandon LA so that they could use it as leverage for new stadiums. If Green Bay moves to LA tomorrow the NFL improves, it does not decline. If Detroit goes to LA the same thing happens.

Buczilla

02-06-2009, 11:24 AM

If Green Bay moves to LA tomorrow the NFL improves, it does not decline. If Detroit goes to LA the same thing happens.

The NFL isn't market driven though, you can thank the salary cap for that. If there was no cap at all there would be nothing stopping the Jerry Jones' and Daniel Snyder's(him especially) from dumping boat loads of cash at the feet of every star player that hits free agency.

In the NFL bad teams are on level ground with good teams. They each receive the same amount of cash through revenue sharing and play within the same cap range. Some do better jobs than others.

Do you think that the NFL revenue sharing structure is unfair?

In baseball the jobs of Billy Beane and those just like him are praised on how well they turn over talent and remain competitve. We all commend them for that. These teams all have windows of opportunity though, all in all they are nothing more than an extended minor league system for the larger market teams. They can develop the talent, but are unable to compete dollar for dollar with the big boys to keep it.

Widespread viewership is the key. I keep hearing about ratings this and that. How baseball needs the Yankees and such in the World Series....give this a gander....

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/ws/wstv.shtml

We keep hearing Selig go on about attendance records and such, ones that don't go by turnstyles. That is a crock too. One has to look no further than to Marlin home games to see how off the figures really are. The image below will show you what 10,121 fans look like(there wasn't even 500 people at that game). Business is doing great, yet we can't follow the money trail.

Ubiquitous

02-06-2009, 12:12 PM

The salary cap has nothing to do with the markets. The salary cap is a recent construction in football and the revenue sharing that made the markets what they are was created decades before that. Nor does the salary cap prevent teams from dumping boatloads of cash on players. It is rules besides the salary cap that prevent the free movement of players. Franchise players, restrictions on trades, and so forth.

In the NFL teams do not get the same amount of money. They share a lot of money it is not equal portions for all teams. Like baseball they share revenue though they share more money so the spread is not as great.

In baseball the jobs of Billy Beane and those just like him are praised on how well they turn over talent and remain competitve. We all commend them for that. These teams all have windows of opportunity though, all in all they are nothing more than an extended minor league system for the larger market teams. They can develop the talent, but are unable to compete dollar for dollar with the big boys to keep it.

Why should they? This isn't T-Ball where everybody gets an at bat. Why should a team with a small fan base get to remain competitive at the expense of teams with a large fan base? I am a baseball fan because of the Chicago Cubs. If the Cubs do well I spend more money and watch more games. If the Cubs do badly I spend less money and watch less games. I spend money on the Cubs product. I do not spend money so that the Pirates can be competitive. Why shouldn't I be able to spend money so that my chosen team can do better? Shouldn't the Cubs get my revenue and shouldn't the Cubs be allowed to do whatever is possible to build a good team so that I continue to give them money? Last year over 3 million people went to Cubs games, 1.3 million went to Marlins games. The difference is about 2 million more fans showed up to Cubs games then Marlin games. So, why should the Cubs have to ignore their fans and subsidize the entertainment for Marlin fans who are fewer in number and less supportive of their team?

All ratings are going down for everything. The medium is changing. You can't compare ratings of today to ratings of yesteryear. It is a different medium now. When viewed properly baseball is still an attractive sport to broadcasters and advertisers because it still draws in their target audience very well when compared to its competition. That is one of the big reason why the cost of broadcasting sports continues to go up when the ratings are supposedly going down.

So 500 fans show up at a Marlins game (and yet they have won two world series in a little over 10 years) and the New Yorks and Chicagos of the world are supposed to subsidize them? Why? Where is the benefit of propping up a poorly run team with a small fan base? Why should a team with a large fan base suffer and potentially lose fans so that 500 marlin fans can be happy?

spark240

02-06-2009, 12:27 PM

I'm saying the Yankees should get a bigger share of revenue then teams that do not generate as much revenue as them. Right now, even setting aside luxury tax, the Yankees share a tremendous amount of revenue with other teams. Teams that probably do very little to deserve that money other then exist.

But other teams "existing" in the league is the only thing that allows the Yankees (and everyone else) to make any money in the first place...

I'm not advocating any form of "revenue sharing." I want to abolish both that concept and the "luxury tax." And I'm not saying that popular and successful teams shouldn't reap the benefits of that; they should, and they would, through ticket sales (80% home, 20% road is what I suggest), concessions and merchandise (100% to the home team), and by receiving a fair share in the broadcast revenue of the games they participate in, wherever those broadcasts may be.

When interleague was introduced games scheduled against the Yankees would fill up the stadium. Now that is revenue generated because of the Yankees but the Yankees didn't sit there and demand 50% of the revenue for those games or anything like that. They got the agreed upon dollar a ticket or whatever small amount it is.

The Yankees likely did make more money from those games than the Phillies did, because they got to keep all the proceeds from broadcasting it back in New York. The Phillies should have demanded a share of that, just as the Yankees should have demanded a share of the Philly area broadcast.

Ironically, under the present system, the Yankees (and everyone else) receive no money from the gate revenue of their road games. The visiting-team share, which made sense, was abolished in favor of "revenue sharing," which didn't. I would propose a restoration of the 20% visiting team gate share that used to apply in the AL.

For starters the majority of people in the NYC area are not going to tune into a game involving the Twins unless a NY team is involved in someway. For most fans against most teams it is their team versus the Generals.

It's not the "Generals." If the MLB opposition really was the "Generals"--patsies expected to lose every game--the Yankees' revenue would be dramatically reduced, to say the least. Indeed, to the extent that the Royals or whoever are considered patsies, I believe the Yankees' revenue does suffer some as it is. Yankee Stadium isn't sold out for those games like it is for the Sox.

People who go to the stadium, or tune in on YES, may want the Yankees to win, but what they really want (even if they can't necessarily articulate this) is to see the Yankees compete and succeed in a genuine, competitive league. They want the pennants and rings to mean something. (Again, though we keep using the Yankees as a convenient example, it's not about them as such. The same is true of all teams.)

And fans, tell me if I'm wrong: do you want the championship banners to represent a real accomplishment against legitimate opposition, or do you want gimmes?

No format pushes small market teams that are horrendous. With Favre gone and if the Packers play badly then they will disappear from the national broadcast.

I don't know what this talk is of "pushing" horrendous teams. I'm not advocating that any teams anywhere be "pushed." I'm saying that a better, more logical, more fair revenue system will better serve and better showcase the league and the game as a whole. Then teams will come to prominence, and perhaps gain national followings, on their own merits. There is no need to set out to market anything but the game itself.

If the Packers are bad in coming years, it will be simply because they have been badly-run, or unlucky, or both--the same as for every other team. That's as it should be. Talent and smarts and luck will lift you up, and a dearth of these will sink you. It is natural and desirable that strong teams should arise in different places in different eras, on the basis of these legitimate factors. The league, and baseball fans the world over, are best served when this is happening.

MLB's weakness is that this natural and desirable cycle is thrown out of whack by the system that funnels money to the big-city teams largely regardless of how good or bad they are. The only reason this distorted system exists in MLB (and not the NFL and NBA) is that baseball is much older, and the structural agreement about so-called "local" revenues was in place before TV broadcasts were a significant moneymaker. Now they are the primary revenue stream.

spark240

02-06-2009, 12:39 PM

Why should a team with a small fan base get to remain competitive at the expense of teams with a large fan base?

You really don't understand.

Look, suppose the Marlins only source of income was ticket sales to their "500 fans," as you mention. They can't afford any good players. They come to Chicago to play your Cubs, and you go to Wrigley, rooting for your team. Not only do the Cubs beat this team of league-minimum, third-rate minor league journeymen... they hammer them, 24-2. Okay, fun, whatever. But the next game is much the same. And the next.

How much fun is that? How often are you going to keep going back to Wrigley to see that? How much money are you going to spend on Cubs merchandise to show your pride in a team that can beat up on that kind of "competition"?

Organized sports leagues function on the understanding that each team needs the others, and that the competition is never so lopsided as to become meaningless. If it becomes clear that several teams really are not competitive, this hurts the whole league. And the game.

Buczilla

02-06-2009, 12:44 PM

Ubiquitous

02-06-2009, 12:56 PM

You really don't understand.

Look, suppose the Marlins only source of income was ticket sales to their "500 fans," as you mention. They can't afford any good players. They come to Chicago to play your Cubs, and you go to Wrigley, rooting for your team. Not only do the Cubs beat this team of league-minimum, third-rate minor league journeymen... they hammer them, 24-2. Okay, fun, whatever. But the next game is much the same. And the next.

How much fun is that? How often are you going to keep going back to Wrigley to see that? How much money are you going to spend on Cubs merchandise to show your pride in a team that can beat up on that kind of "competition"?

Organized sports leagues function on the understanding that each team needs the others, and that the competition is never so lopsided as to become meaningless. If it becomes clear that several teams really are not competitive, this hurts the whole league. And the game.

So the answer is to make the Cubs worse so that what the Marlins can lose 7-3 instead? If competition is lopsided (and it isn't in baseball) then you fix the bad teams by either getting new management, ownership, or moving the team. You don't treat teams like they are the post office or the military. Teams are not institutions that we have to live with regardless of their performance or how big their market is. The Detroit Tigers were a minor league team and with new managemet and new ideas became a world series playing team within a few years and they did it by spending and in the current system. They didn't need a salary cap and they didn't need the system to be massively overhauled.

Again, in baseball teams do share money, they share lots of money. I believe that teams with larger fan bases should have an advantage. If one team has 1 million fans and another has 10 million fans then the ten million fan team should get more resources to field a better team.

By the way those league minimum Marlins tend to field pretty darn good teams.

spark240

02-06-2009, 01:09 PM

So the answer is to make the Cubs worse so that what the Marlins can lose 7-3 instead?

Well, that would be better for the Cubs, yes. They would certainly make more money beating teams 7-3 than 24-2, and more importantly their pennant (if, theoretically, they were to win one) would mean more.

You don't treat teams like they are the post office or the military. Teams are not institutions that we have to live with regardless of their performance or how big their market is.

So you're advocating an all-new system in which poor-performing franchises are automatically expelled from the league? Or what?

The way the league is set up now, the existences of the franchises are fixed.

Again, in baseball teams do share money, they share lots of money.

And I'm against that.

If one team has 1 million fans and another has 10 million fans then the ten million fan team should get more resources to field a better team.

Under my proposal, they would (see previous posts). They just wouldn't get an overwhelming share of that primary revenue stream, the TV money.

Ubiquitous

02-06-2009, 01:12 PM

You are right, it doesn't stop them from dumping a ton of cash on star players.... What it does do is prevents teams that are high up on the finacial food chain from cornering the market, stocking up on all the talent, hording....whatever you wanna call it.
I think the New England Patriots tend to be a big old fly in that oitment.

Revenue sharing was the wrong choice of words on my behalf. I meant the television revenue... Revenue which sets the playing field. If you have read any of my past posts pertaining to revenue sharing in baseball, I think the system in place is terrible. How can one punish teams at the top, but not the ones that remain year after year at the bottom?

If I am remembering the Forbes figures correctly and if those numbers are accurate then yes baseball has a greater disparity in revenues but that disparity is certainly not outlandish when compared to footballs disparities. There are a few teams in MLB that did poorly in generating revenue, some of those situations have been resolved through relocation, new stadiums, or new owners so that the great majority of teams in baseball are rather close to each other in terms of revenue. It only looks outlandish when you compare say the New York Yankeees to the Marlins.

Okay I looked it up. In 2007 the Yankees revenue was supposedly 327 million dollars, the next highest was the Red Sox at 263 million. The marlins revenue was 128 million. In football in 2007 the highest revenue team was 312 million dollars for the Redskins after that it is the Patriots at 255 million. The low end is 182 million.

The NFL has 29 of its 32 teams within a 50 million dollar spread. MLB has 21 teams. Of the 9 teams only 4 are at the bottom end with the Rays, Marlins, and Royals either get new stadiums, refurbished stadiums, or angling for a stadium. The 4th team is the inept Pirates who got a new stadium.

Baseball already does a good job of sharing money and taking away more from the haves to give to the have nots isn't really going to bring about anything of much value to baseball.

Ubiquitous

02-06-2009, 01:34 PM

Well, that would be better for the Cubs, yes. They would certainly make more money beating teams 7-3 than 24-2, and more importantly their pennant (if, theoretically, they were to win one) would mean more.

So when they lose to the Braves, or Houston, or to the Cards and fail to make the playoffs because they subsidized all these teams I'm sure the fans will appreciate it even more.

So you're advocating an all-new system in which poor-performing franchises are automatically expelled from the league? Or what?
I'm advocating what is already going with perhaps more stringent ownership evaluation. The last 10 years of baseball have seen some very good owners coming into the game who have improved their teams. They have slipped up and let in some duds and have some duds already and these people should pressured to sell.

The way the league is set up now, the existences of the franchises are fixed.
But they don't have to be in KC or Pittsburgh or in Miami.

And I'm against that.

Your against sharing money but for a salary cap?

Under my proposal, they would (see previous posts). They just wouldn't get an overwhelming share of that primary revenue stream, the TV money.

Again, I guess this comes down to ones definition of the word "overwhelming". MLB shares national TV revenue equally amongst all teams. The local is not but except for one or two teams the differences in local TV revenue is not vast nor much of a game changer. Not only that but a good chunk of baseball teams now own their own cable channels, including some of the small guys. For instance the Minnesota Twins have their own channel. Plus when you look at the creation of sports networks almost all teams are moving to some sort of regional sports network that is dropping big bucks to carry them. For instance the Tigers last year signed a massive 10 year contract with Fox Sports Detroit to televise almost all of their games on their network. They along with the Red Wings and Lions were signed up at the time and while the exact details are not known the entire deals is said to be worth over 1 billion dollars. No matter how that pie gets sliced up the Tigers are going to pulling huge amount of dollars from that.

spark240

02-06-2009, 02:26 PM

Your against sharing money but for a salary cap?

Sigh... no. I have never supported a salary cap. You haven't been paying attention.

I want to see the fundamental revenue question addressed. To wit,

When two teams, both members of an organized league, play a game in that league's season schedule, and the rights to broadcast that game are sold, who should receive this money?

The natural answer to this question, in my mind, is: Both teams should get a share; they are both there, both necessary to make the game happen. And also the league as a whole should get some consideration, because the context of the whole league is what gives the game meaning and value beyond that one day's entertainment. I don't see why this answer should be dependent on where the game is played, or how many of which team's fans end up watching the broadcast on which channels in which cities. It has nothing to do with any of that. The value of the product being sold has been created by the two teams jointly, as well as the league; all must rightfully share the proceeds from that broadcast.

On the other hand, the live game, the in-person ballpark experience, is a different product. The visiting team should get something (I favor a restoration of the 20% gate share that used to exist in the AL), but the home team should get most of it, since they're providing not just a team, but the facility and all manner of supporting staff.

If these commonsense answers to fundamental revenue questions are applied, there will be no need or rationale for any monkeying with the money thereafter. Popular and successful teams will make more money, as they should, but every team will have the resources to compete if they're smart. Nobody in any city will have cause to complain, because every team will be receiving the just proceeds of its efforts and contribution, and every team will be free to spend their money as they will.

Ubiquitous

02-06-2009, 02:52 PM

Sigh... no. I have never supported a salary cap. You haven't been paying attention.

I want to see the fundamental revenue question addressed. To wit,

When two teams, both members of an organized league, play a game in that league's season schedule, and the rights to broadcast that game are sold, who should receive this money?

The natural answer to this question, in my mind, is: Both teams should get a share;
And both teams do get a share. You do realize that when the Twins play the Yankees that the Twins receive money from their broadcast providers? The game isn't blacked out in Minnesota and only shown in NY, nor does the Yankees broadcast the Twins broadcast and shown in Minnesota. Under the current setup the Yankees receive money for their local market and the Twins receive money from their local market. Teams that do a better job of building a team and a fan base get more money because they draw better.

And also the league as a whole should get some consideration,
I'm not sure exactly what this means but the league does get a share of the revenue. Selig has quite a large war chest right now.

The value of the product being sold has been created by the two teams jointly, as well as the league; all must rightfully share the proceeds from that broadcast.
Yes, and when the Yankees play the Pirates the product is probably 90% Yankee and 10% Pirates and the Pirates get their local TV revenue while the Yankees get theirs.

If these commonsense answers to fundamental revenue questions are applied, there will be no need or rationale for any monkeying with the money thereafter. Popular and successful teams will make more money, as they should, but every team will have the resources to compete if they're smart. Nobody in any city will have cause to complain, because every team will be receiving the just proceeds of its efforts and contribution, and every team will be free to spend their money as they will.
The current system already does these common sense things and then some. You are in fact asking for more monkeying around with the money. Are not the Nationals receiving the just proceeds of their efforts and contributions? The Nationals have the lowest ratings in the land, I believe C-Span gets better ratings then the Nationals. What share of the pie should they get when the Yankees come to town?

Ubiquitous

02-06-2009, 03:18 PM

Here is something I forgot to mention.

The NFL uses 62% of its revenue to pay players, currently MLB uses about 40 to 45% of its revenue to pay players. In fact as revenue has grown dramatically in the last ten years for MLB, proportionally MLB has spent less and less on their players. The high water mark for player salaries was I believe 51% in 2001.

The NFL pays its players 62% of its revenue and those teams are making money hand over fist. What do you think the teams in baseball are doing if they only have to give their players 42% of their revenue?

We can cry for the little guy all we want but at the end of the day that little guy is making a ton of money and each MLB team would need to spend 40 million more dollars on its players to get to 62% just like the NFL.

KC can cry poor all they want but they are owned by one of the richest men in the world, generate over 100 million dollars a year, receive millions in revenue sharing each year, and make millions in profit each year.

RationalNYYfan

02-06-2009, 03:39 PM

I think a salary cap doesn't even need to be considered in the MLB at this point in time when we've got 8 different teams winning the series in the last 9 years. If the Yankees were spending like they currently are AND they had just won the last 3,4,5 straight series, then I could see the basis for argument. But the parity is stronger in baseball than any other sport, so why fix something that isn't broken?

Seattle1

02-06-2009, 03:47 PM

There should be a salary cap of $100,000 per year. No MLB player should ever make more than $100,000. Then the tickets to go to the ballgame would be less expensive.

Ubiquitous

02-06-2009, 04:28 PM

There should be a salary cap of $100,000 per year. No MLB player should ever make more than $100,000. Then the tickets to go to the ballgame would be less expensive.

No they wouldn't. Ticket prices are not high because of salary. Salaries are high because of tickets. The demand for tickets sets the price for everything else in baseball. The more people that want to watch or partake in the MLB experience the more they can charge. The more they can spend the more they can pay to get the talent.

You can snap your fingers tomorrow and make the highest paid player get $100,000 and two things will happen. One, you'll be disappointed when they don't lower prices and then you will cry when a new league is created and MLB collapses.

Baseball is something like a 6 billion dollar a year enterprise. If they don't pay the players top dollars then that is a market inequity that will soon be corrected by a competing league. That is how the AL became a reality, that is why the FL was created, that is why expansion in baseball happened, that is how the AFC got started, and that is how the ABA got their teams added to the NBA. Paying too little is just as inefficient and destructive to your business as paying too much can be.

Seattle1

02-07-2009, 11:06 AM

Imo, the tickets to go to the ballgame would be way less expensive if the players were only allowed to make a maximum of $100,000 per year.

SilentKiller

02-07-2009, 02:04 PM

I do not believe this is true, or at least I don't believe it has to be this way. The NFL and NBA have successful teams--even flagship teams--in several cities that are unthinkable as MLB franchise sites under the present system.

Which teams are those in the NBA? The NBA's flagship teams, Boston, NY, and LA all play in the biggest cities similar to MLB.

keystone

02-07-2009, 05:48 PM

SilentKiller

02-08-2009, 12:32 PM

What about the Spurs? Seventh largest city in the US, but we are considered a small market and will likely never have any other major professional sport in this city. Their payroll is nothing compared to Boston & LA, but they keep winning. (BTW, I am soooo sick of the Lakers & the Celtics $#@.)

The Spurs are not an NBA flagship team. They are not among the most popular teams in the league and are not promoted by the league heavily. Sure they've had their success but so have other teams in the past. The 3 teams the NBA promotes most heavily and wants to see do well are the Lakers, Knicks, and Celtics. I would say the Bulls come in 4th.

keystone

02-08-2009, 01:32 PM

Those NBA teams represent the same holy trinity as their baseball counterparts. Do we then just have to deal with the brutal facts of life -- that big markets always = bigger bucks and, therefore, more promotion? Or does promotion = bigger bucks? If the latter (which is not likely), then other teams could be perceived as "worthy."

It's a shame about the Spurs. Decent guys, good team. But no star-power city. :cry:

Buczilla

02-08-2009, 01:45 PM

The Spurs are not an NBA flagship team. They are not among the most popular teams in the league and are not promoted by the league heavily. Sure they've had their success but so have other teams in the past. The 3 teams the NBA promotes most heavily and wants to see do well are the Lakers, Knicks, and Celtics. I would say the Bulls come in 4th.

It's because that team is thought of being boring, when in fact they play some of the most fundamentally sound ball around. They lack the flash the NBA wants to sell and their star doesn't posess that look at me attitude. Not alot of highlight reel material for sportscenter comes out of there on a nightly basis and that is not a bad thing.

keystone

02-08-2009, 01:50 PM

"...lack the flash..." "Flash" seems to be the operative word for any professional sports team that is considered "good." Reality bites -- again. :hissyfit:

Buczilla

02-18-2009, 12:17 PM

Henry believes cap would garner support
Associated Press

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Boston Red Sox owner John Henry is renewing his call for a baseball salary cap.

Henry said Wednesday he thinks all owners would support an "enlightened" salary cap to improve competitive balance and that players might agree. He did not give details.

Henry's call came Wednesday at spring training after the New York Yankees signed three free agents for a total of $423.5 million during the offseason. The Red Sox gave out much shorter and cheaper deals.

Exactly five years earlier, Henry called for a salary cap when the Yankees obtained Alex Rodriguez in a trade with Texas after the Red Sox failed to complete a trade for him.

At that time, he advocated a cap to deal with a team that he said has far more resources than any other team.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/spring2009/news/story?id=3916048

SamtheBravesFan

02-18-2009, 12:33 PM

It's because that team is thought of being boring, when in fact they play some of the most fundamentally sound ball around. They lack the flash the NBA wants to sell and their star doesn't posess that look at me attitude. Not alot of highlight reel material for sportscenter comes out of there on a nightly basis and that is not a bad thing.

Exactly. The Spurs are just as good a team as the Celtics or Lakers. Tim Duncan is just not a "hey, everyone, look at me" personality. And that's just fine.

Buczilla

02-19-2009, 08:15 AM

Lucchino, Henry in favor of salary cap
Red Sox brass address issue of competitive balance for MLB
By Ian Browne / MLB.com

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Despite their status as a big-market team, the Red Sox's ownership revealed Wednesday that they would be highly in favor of an "enlightened" salary cap when baseball's next collective bargaining agreement is put into place for the 2012 season.
Red Sox president/CEO Larry Lucchino noted that Major League Baseball is already doing some due diligence on what will likely be a hot-button issue in the next round of labor negotiations. But is it realistic to think that the Players Association would agree to a form of a salary cap when one has never existed in baseball?

"I think you have to make an intelligent, persuasive case for it," Lucchino said. "I do look around and I see a hockey league, a basketball league, a football league, all with forms of a salary cap or payroll system, and I think it's as inevitable as tomorrow that there will be some kind of system like that in baseball. It's just not as imminent as tomorrow."

"I think that the so-called large markets and small markets are probably united in one aspect," said Red Sox principal owner John W. Henry. "'United' is maybe too strong a word. But I think we all agree that competitive balance is an issue. If there was a way to put together an enlightened form of a salary cap, I think everybody among the owners would probably support that."

Could such a system hurt the Red Sox, a team that, in recent years, has always been among the top three teams in the game in player payroll?

"One could see it that way," Lucchino said. "I think that sometimes a short-term problem for us may be a longer-term solution for the game, for the industry, and also for us. The team we compete most directly with is the one that is sort of the outlier to the existing system, so they would be impacted even more so than we would."

Of course, Lucchino speaks of the Yankees, a team that committed more than $420 million in salary to three players (CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett) this winter.

"I think we've seen [an offseason] when the Yankees have spent like the U.S. congress," Lucchino said. "I agree whole-heartedly with John, that an examination of a salary cap, an enlightened approach to a salary cap, could make sense for the game. I think people in baseball are examining that possibility."

If such a system was put into place, Lucchino is optimistic that the Red Sox -- who have made the postseason five times in the past six years, including two World Series championships -- would remain perennial contenders.

"I think our commitment to winning would be as strong," Lucchino said. "I think winning would then be based on how hard you work, how smart you are, the kind of judgments you make about baseball evaluation, and we're happy to compete with anybody on that basis."

Wouldn't the Yankees resist such a proposal?

"I think that it depends where the levels are set," said Lucchino. "I think there are 29 teams that exist within a certain band, and there has been, in the last several years, one outlier that has been much higher. The outliers both at the top and the bottom would be most severely affected by a payroll zone, which I think his a better term than a salary cap. A payroll zone where all teams would have to be somewhere within a payroll zone. But again, that's being addressed at the highest level by baseball and its labor negotiators. I just want to reiterate what John said. An enlightened form of a salary cap would have the Red Sox support."

Lucchino said it's too early to tell what kind of salary cap or zone would be in place.

"Is it a fixed number? How is it calculated? Again, we like to talk about a payroll zone that has teams at different levels within a zone," Lucchino said.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090218&content_id=3843924&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

Buczilla

02-19-2009, 08:26 AM

Exactly. The Spurs are just as good a team as the Celtics or Lakers. Tim Duncan is just not a "hey, everyone, look at me" personality. And that's just fine.

A .666 winning percentage over the past twenty years. One sub .500 season, which was the only time they missed the playoffs in that span. In that same span they have won as many championships(4) as the Celtics, Knicks and Lakers have combined. The Knicks make more news for what happens off the court, than the Spurs do on the court. It really is a joke.

Buczilla

02-19-2009, 08:49 AM

HANK BLASTS SOX CAP TALK
By GEORGE A. KING III
February 19, 2009

TAMPA - Here is a shock: The Yankees and Red Sox don't agree about an MLB salary cap.

On the day Red Sox owner John Henry called for a salary cap, and Sox president Larry Lucchino said "the Yankees have spent like the U.S. Congress" after they shelled out $423.5 million for three free agents, Hank Steinbrenner fired back at his rivals.

Along with a few other teams, we're basically baseball's stimulus package," Steinbrenner told the AP yesterday.

The Red Sox, who finished ahead of the Yankees last year and had the second-highest payroll in baseball, are bothered by the gulf in team payrolls that affects competitive balance.

Henry believes the Yankees and MLB players would approve a salary cap.

"It depends on the overall picture," he said. "How does that relate to revenue sharing? We've gone as far as we can go with revenue sharing at this point. I think we all agree that competitive balance is an issue, and if there was a way to put together an enlightened form of a salary cap, I think everybody among the ownership parties would support it.

"I think it's quite possible to put together a partnership between the players and owners going forward. I think it's something that should be at least explored."

Henry called for a salary cap five years ago after the Yankees beat the Red Sox to a trade that netted Alex Rodriguez.

The Yankees' $222.5 million payroll last year was the highest payroll in baseball. The Red Sox were second at $147.1 million.

After paying in the area of $110 million in revenue sharing and luxury tax last season, the Yankees believe they have the right to spend how they like.

"As long as we're doing that and giving all this money to other teams in revenue sharing, a staggering amount, we should be able to spend on salaries what we want to," Steinbrenner said. "Because of revenue sharing and because of the popularity nationwide, the Yankees are critical to baseball."

While the Red Sox brass were eager to talk about controlling payrolls, they dodged questions about Rodriguez' admission of steroid use.

"I feel more comfortable talking about the Boston Red Sox than talking about the New York Yankees," Lucchino said.

Lucchino once sniped that the Yankees were the "Evil Empire" after they signed Cuban right-hander Jose Contreras in December 2002 for $32 million over four years.

Now the Yankees have added three more high-priced free agents.

"An old adage says [there are] three things money can't buy - love, happiness and the American League pennant," Lucchino said.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02192009/sports/yankees/hank_blasts_sox_cap_talk_155946.htm

Buczilla

03-10-2009, 09:45 PM

Fehr does not foresee a salary cap
By Barry M. Bloom / MLB.com
03/10/09

TEMPE, Ariz. -- Although it's a long way off, when the Basic Agreement expires at the end of 2011, Don Fehr said Tuesday he thinks a hard salary cap would be a non-starter in those negotiations.

Fehr, the executive director of the Players Association, discussed the idea of a salary cap after a 90-minute meeting with the Angels, the first stop on his tour of Cactus League camps. Fehr's point of view comes on the heels of two owners -- Mark Attanasio of the Brewers and John Henry of the Red Sox -- who said this past offseason that Major League Baseball needed a salary cap when the Basic Agreement expires.

"We've been down this road before and we saw where this led us," Fehr said during a 25-minute interview with about a half-dozen members of the media. "We spent an awful lot of time after the strike and again in 2002 and 2006, tying revenue sharing to the competitive balance tax and the free-agency system.

"It's difficult for me to envision a situation where we'd make a wholesale change in the system. It's nearly impossible for me believe that the players would be in favor of a salary cap."

Though some owners have spoken out, Commissioner Bud Selig has demurred this year when asked specifically about a possible salary cap. Basketball, hockey and football all utilize salary caps in some fashion.

In baseball, there's a competitive balance threshold, which this season is set at $162 million per club. Any team with a player payroll above that figure must pay a tax on the amount of money it spends over the threshold. Sharing of locally generated revenue is set at 31 percent from the large revenue-generating clubs to the smaller ones.

For 2008, when the threshold was $155 million, the Yankees and Tigers paid a tax. The Yankees, paying a 40-percent repeater's rate, were assessed $23.9 million. The Tigers, paying a first-time rate of 22.5 percent, were charged $1.3 million. Since the tax was formalized in 2003, the Yanks are the only team that has been beyond the threshold every year.

Selig said last month that he'll worry about the salary cap issue when collective bargaining resumes, perhaps as early as next year.

"The [next-to-] last year of my commissionership will be devoted to that," said Selig, whose current contract expires after the 2012 season. "So there's no sense in me sitting here today and engaging them on [a salary cap]. We'll just watch how the system develops and what we need to do."

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090310&content_id=3961482&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

Brad Harris

03-11-2009, 06:34 AM

Salary caps lower payrolls; they don't increase competition.

Bill Burgess

04-20-2009, 11:40 PM

One would be hard-pressed to find a more vocal advocate for free agency than me. Yet, I also feel that $25m/season for a ball-player is far from 'reasonable', and hurts a franchise.

Alexander Rodriguez receiving $25m./season comes to around $154,320. per game! That is $38,580. per at bat!

That is a joke, ridiculous and ludicrous. It severely restricts a team's ability to hire other players. I just don't think anyone is worth that amount.

Maybe if Ruth, Cobb or Wagner were playing today, but that's about it.

I think that sooner of later, a team salary cap will probably come about. I find it inevitable. How or what formula will be important.

I would like to hear anyone else's thoughts with respect to this critical issue.

As per my custom, I will go first.

Bill Burgess

04-20-2009, 11:40 PM

I think that the following criteria might be a starting point for discussions.

1. Some kind of numerical formula to reward performance.
2. I wish the Players' Union would suggest limits on the upper limits of a players' salary. I would like to see a player top out at around $15m./season.
3. The owners' should also limit their profits. The money 'saved' on individual salaries/owners' profit might go into a fund to distribute among all teams, to go towards infrastructure maintenance.

The aging of older ballparks, and their eventual demolition is one of the saddest spectacles in baseball. Losing Yankee Stadium (2008), Shea, Tiger's (1990) and Comiskey (1990) lost a huge amount of historical beauty from the game.

If there had been a revenue sharing plan, whereby the older stadiums could have been continually renovated and upgraded might have allowed some ballparks to continue to enrich the lives of their fans.

I know I'll never see a plan like the above in my own lifetime, but maybe the young guys today will live to see it. I think it has to happen, one way or another.

Honus Wagner Rules

04-21-2009, 12:25 AM

Some food for thought:

1) The Player's Union will never agree to a salary cap. They have made that very clear.

2) Teams were not forced to pay A-Rod $25 million per season.

3) Paying such high salaries are not guarantee of team success. I think most teams today realize this now. Many teams put a lot of of their resources in scouting and player development.

4) Having pay tied to numerical performance is not a good idea. This would put pressure on the players to play for stats instead of for the team winning. Why would a hitter lay down a sacrifice bunt to move a runner over if it will cost him money when it comes time to negociate a new contract?

Bill Burgess

04-21-2009, 12:31 AM

Relating a player's performance to his stats need not be rigid. If a player refuses to follow his manager's orders, he could be subject to penalties, such a a fine or suspension.

The ordinary rules need not be set aside. The team could set down the rules in clubhouse meetings before the season starts, so that disobedience doesn't happen.

Los Bravos

04-21-2009, 02:13 AM

Teams were not forced to pay A-Rod $25 million per season.Argument over.

Ubiquitous

04-21-2009, 08:16 AM

Teams that pay 25 million dollars a year for a player can afford to pay a player 25 million dollars a year. So no, it does not severely restrict teams from building rosters. Secondly, even if that is true so what? I would think that if you are against giving somebody 25 million dollars to play baseball then you would want 25 million dollars a year to be prohibitively expensive. And it is, a lot of team cannot afford to give players that much and consequently they do not. One player makes that kind of money out of the hundreds and hundreds of major leaguers. Individual salaries are not the issue. It is the bogeyman.

Brad Harris

04-21-2009, 09:37 AM

I...feel that $25m/season for a ball-player is far from 'reasonable', and hurts a franchise.
Fortunately, the right to contract is a God-given right and not subject to your feelings.
[Rodriguez's salary] is a joke, ridiculous and ludicrous.
In your opinion.
It severely restricts a team's ability to hire other players.
Rodriguez's employer doesn't seem to think so and, in fact, has proven otherwise.
I just don't think anyone is worth that amount. Maybe if Ruth, Cobb or Wagner were playing today, but that's about it.
So it's not the amount of money, it's who's earning it? I wish you'd make up your mind, Bill.
I think that sooner of later, a team salary cap will probably come about. I find it inevitable.
You're probably right - unfortunately - as the only thing preventing this is the solidarity of the MLBPA over the issue and let's face it, Don Fehr is no Marvin Miller.
2. I wish the Players' Union would suggest limits on the upper limits of a players' salary.
Unless salaries are damaging the industry's profitability (and they never have and aren't likely to any time soon), then this would be contrary to the MLBPA's members' best interests and antithetical to the purpose for which the MLBPA exists.
3. The owners' should also limit their profits.
If only the Soviet Union were still around; you'd have some place to call home.
The aging of older ballparks, and their eventual demolition is one of the saddest spectacles in baseball.
True, but inevitable. This sadness is soothed, however, by the many beautiful baseball-only parks that have been replacing them since the early Nineties, creating a new wave of "historical beauty" for the game and future generations of fans that shouldn't have been made to sit in crumbling structures a century old.
If there had been a revenue sharing plan, whereby the older stadiums could have been continually renovated and upgraded might have allowed some ballparks to continue to enrich the lives of their fans.
There has been a revenue sharing plan in place for more than a decade and yet the owners haven't seen fit to utlize their pooled funds to do anything with respect to stadiums. Whether it's renovating the old ones or building new ones, the clubs would "enrich the lives of their fans" if they did that instead of extorting money from local taxpayers to fund stadium construction projects. Of course, this has nothing to do with the "free agency/salary cap" discussion, does it?
I know I'll never see a plan like the above in my own lifetime, but maybe the young guys today will live to see it. I think it has to happen, one way or another. One can only hope you're wrong.
Relating a player's performance to his stats need not be rigid. If a player refuses to follow his manager's orders, he could be subject to penalties, such a a fine or suspension.
It isn't rigid now. A player's salary is more closely related to his performance under the current system than it would be under your proposal, or a salary cap in general. A player is already subject to a fine or suspension for those kinds of things.

The only thing a salary cap would accomplish is to artificially lower the rate of increase in total payroll for the industry, thus increasing profits for ownership. While that's a positive effect (only for shareholders), the negative effects of a salary cap far outweigh it.

It sounds like you've been drinking too much of Obama's kool-aid to be advocating this kind of baloney, Bill. As someone who I know is an ardent defender of a player's right to contract, I'm stunned that you'd support anything that undermines that right (which a salary cap certainly does.)

Captain Cold Nose

04-21-2009, 09:43 AM

Please do not turn this into a political thread.

Bill, you do understand baseball as an industry takes in billions yearly. It is a business, as it always has been. For such changes there has to be a real reason behind them. "Bad feelings" are not among them. The wherewithal is there for those salaries, those improvements. There is no legitimate reason to move away from that.

Brad Harris

04-21-2009, 11:25 AM

Please do not turn this into a political thread.
Mentioning the name of the most prominent anti-capitalist in this country is hardly out of line in a discussion where one proponent is advocating anti-capitalist principles as a solution for perceived injustices in the industry. My remarks were strictly based on the economic principles Bill and his ideological soulmate subscribe to.

Point taken, however.

gman5431

04-21-2009, 12:19 PM

Ubiquitous

04-21-2009, 12:25 PM

Teams that are run poorly lose games and don't make much money. Teams that are run well win games and make money. Teams that are run poorly are not competitive and thus they do not make money.

Brad Harris

04-21-2009, 12:47 PM

Salary Cap is needed to install some sort of competitive balance.
Says you.
Dont give me some BS about how the Yankees havent won since 2000 and how the Twins have been able to compete.
Because the facts inconveniently dispute your contentions.
Its just because the Twins organization is that good and they are able to do some things despite the inequities of the system.
Both true and not limited to the Twins.
An open market of free agents is good...
Hoisted on your own pitard.
...but when the same usual suspects get the first crack at the FAs every year, thats not right.
The best organizations ought to attract the best free agents. No team gets "first crack" at any player unless that player is already under contract with the team. Free agency is an open market. Furthermore, the best offer is not always the highest per annum salary.
And on top of that, its the other spectrum of usual suspects that are losing those FAs so its a double whammy.
Teams that let FAs go do so for the compensatory draft picks as much as signability issues.
Everyone should be on the same playing field. No revenue sharing,...
These two statements contradict each other. Leveling the playing field can't be done effectively without reducing the disparity of operating revenues each team has at its disposal.
...let the big market teams bring in the cash and keep the cash - but as far as salaries for the big league club, there needs to be a range (cap and floor) so that everyone is in the same ballpark.
Why does there "need" to be this arrangement?
When there are teams that have an entire 25 man roster that makes less than any one player on another team, then we have a glaring problem.
Far more critical to competitive balance is how teams spend money, not how much they spend, just as examples like the Twins (which you don't want to hear about) demonstrate.

Honus Wagner Rules

04-21-2009, 12:53 PM

Salary Cap is needed to install some sort of competitive balance. Dont give me some BS about how the Yankees havent won since 2000 and how the Twins have been able to compete. Its just because the Twins organization is that good and they are able to do some things despite the inequities of the system.

An open market of free agents is good but when the same usual suspects get the first crack at the FAs every year, thats not right. And on top of that, its the other spectrum of usual suspects that are losing those FAs so its a double whammy. Everyone should be on the same playing field. No revenue sharing, let the big market teams bring in the cash and keep the cash - but as far as salaries for the big league club, there needs to be a range (cap and floor) so that everyone is in the same ballpark. When there are teams that have an entire 25 man roster that makes less than any one player on another team, then we have a glaring problem.

G Man

Why does MLB need "competitive balance"? Has there EVER been competitive balance in baseball history? When the Yankees were winning 14 pennants in 16 years in the 1950s-60's was there competitive balance then?

As for a salary floor how do you get teams like the Marlins and Pirates to spend more? Would you force them to sign mediocre free agents just so the can reach a salary floor? In 2008 the Marlins had the lowest payroll at just under $22 million. Let's say a salary floor is set at $60 million. Is it reasonable to expect the Marlins to almost triple their payroll just like that? All that a salary floor will do is increase the pay for the mediocre players as desperate teams go after them so they can clear the salary floor.

gman5431

04-21-2009, 01:01 PM

Says you.

Well this is my post and my opinion... so yes.... that is what i said.

Because the facts inconveniently dispute your contentions.

Because the fact that they havent won a WS is irrelevent to the competitive balance. They are a virtual lock for the playoffs and it takes utter incompetence to not do so when you have a payroll almost 200 million more than other teams in your division. The fact that their organization was poorly run, but they can make up the gap with a hefty payroll isnt an argument against a salary cap but its one for it.

Both true and not limited to the Twins.

Sure, the Marlins have show an ability to do this as well. And there are others, but like i mentioned in my post, they are still at an competitive disadvantage when they are faced with either attempting to lock up players who havent fully proven themselves or losing them in 4-6 years. And if they do lock them up they face losing them when the players are 30 instead of 26.

Hoisted on your own pitard.

Sorry, i have no clue what that means.

The best organizations ought to attract the best free agents. No team gets "first crack" at any player unless that player is already under contract with the team. Free agency is an open market. Furthermore, the best offer is not always the highest per annum salary.

So you think its a coiencidence that the biggest FAs commonly go to the big market teams? Its a coiencidence that the Yankees signed 3 of if not the 3 biggest names this off season? It is an open market but the small market teams CANNOT match the offers of the big market teams (with rare exceptions of course as there is an exception to every rule but im speaking to the overwelming trend). Therefore, the big market teams get first crack at the players they want and bid among the other big market teams. Then the small market teams get the leftovers.

Teams that let FAs go do so for the compensatory draft picks as much as signability issues.

The compensatory draft picks was an end around to not having a salary cap. It is trying to create a competitive balance but it really just fosters a vicious cycle where the small maket teams lose the big names they have developed the the big market teams, get picks in return. With this picks it is critical that they make some big hits because if they strike out on them they are put back on player development. But if they do score with some picks, they develop them, have a small (3-6 year window) and then lose the big name players once again.

These two statements contradict each other. Leveling the playing field can't be done effectively without reducing the disparity of operating revenues each team has at its disposal.

Sure you can. You level the amount that teams can spend on the current roster. Excess revenues could be shared but it wouldnt be as necessary as it is today. There would also have to be some checks on minor leagues and scouting as well, IMO. But if you have salary caps, it would install some competitive balance, as it has in other sports leagues.

Far more critical to competitive balance is how teams spend money, not how much they spend, just as examples like the Twins (which you don't want to hear about) demonstrate.

Sure, choice on how you spend it are a big factor to the teams success and thats obvious. But that doesnt mean that it is fair now. Teams such as the Twins dont even have the option of signing guys like Santana, Tex, CC, etc. That isnt even an option available to them. With a salary cap, it could be. They have to look else where and have to face the fact of subtractions (Santana) when these players cease to be affordable due to the current economic set up of the game. With a salary cap, there would be a true fair bidding as each team would have to weigh what percentage of their cap they wanted to assign to each player, instead of having no ceiling at all. With no ceiling, the big market teams can consistently outbid the small market teams. In essance they get first selection on players because of this. Teams such as the Twins/Marlins have to scout and develop just that much better to succeed in the face of these inequities.

G Man

gman5431

04-21-2009, 01:07 PM

Why does MLB need "competitive balance"? Has there EVER been competitive balance in baseball history? When the Yankees were winning 14 pennants in 16 years in the 1950s-60's was there competitive balance then?

As for a salary floor how do you get teams like the Marlins and Pirates to spend more? Would you force them to sign mediocre free agents just so the can reach a salary floor? In 2008 the Marlins had the lowest payroll at just under $22 million. Let's say a salary floor is set at $60 million. Is it reasonable to expect the Marlins to almost triple their payroll just like that? All that a salary will do is increase the pay for the mediocre players as desperate teams go after them so they can clear the salary floor.

Very good post. You are right - through most of baseball's history there was no competitive balance. Is that a valid reason for not exploring that opportunity now? Wouldnt the sport be more exciting when every one of the 30 teams had an equal opportunity every year to succeed and when they didnt it would be the organizations fault and their fault alone. I think this would be more exciting. This is one of the reasons the NFL appeals to me.

Good point about the salary floor. Perhaps revenue sharing would be necessary for sometime to balance out the huge gap that we have currently come to. I dont know all the dollars of it but at some point it could work. Perhaps have a very low floor to start. I dont know but when you have one team spending 200+ and one team spending 20 then you have an issue you have to look at.

G Man

Honus Wagner Rules

04-21-2009, 01:29 PM

Very good post. You are right - through most of baseball's history there was no competitive balance. Is that a valid reason for not exploring that opportunity now?
Exploring it is fine. But the main question is would a salary cap/floor make the game more appealing to fans and more profitable? Let's be honest here. The owners and players want to make as much money as they can. Now, we can debate the merits of this, call this being "greedy" or what not. But that is the bottom line.

Wouldnt the sport be more exciting when every one of the 30 teams had an equal opportunity every year to succeed and when they didnt it would be the organizations fault and their fault alone.
In theory this might be true. But if this were to happen I can bet that many many people would lament and complain about how much "parity" there is in baseball. Is baseball more exciting when you have an entire division between 84 and 72 wins? Is an 84 win division winning team an exciting team to watch? Were people jumping up and down and about how exciting the 2005 NL West was with the Padres winning the division title with an 82-80 record? My Giants spent pretty much the entire '05 season under .500. Yet on September 26 they began a four game series with the 1st place Padres being just four games back. The Giants won the first game of the series to pull within three games. Many Giants fans started getting excited about possibly sweeping the Padres and reaching first place. I was stunned. If the giants would have swept the Padres would that have been an exciting thing? To me the answer is "NO!". That would have been an embarrassment to baseball having such as poor team in playoff contention. Fortunately, the Padres won the remaining three games and took the division title.

I think this would be more exciting. This is one of the reasons the NFL appeals to me.
Watching 8-8 and 9-7 teams make the playoffs is not exciting to me.

Good point about the salary floor. Perhaps revenue sharing would be necessary for sometime to balance out the huge gap that we have currently come to. I dont know all the dollars of it but at some point it could work. Perhaps have a very low floor to start. I dont know but when you have one team spending 200+ and one team spending 20 then you have an issue you have to look at.
Why don't the teams that spend $20 million on payroll spend more money? Well they can't because they do not generate enough revenue. Even when the Marlins win they don't draw well. That's not the Yankees or Red Sox fault.

Brad Harris

04-21-2009, 01:50 PM

Why don't the teams that spend $20 million on payroll spend more money? Well they can't because they do not generate enough revenue. Even when the Marlins win they don't draw well. That's not the Yankees or Red Sox fault.
Correct. It is Jeff Loria's fault and his alone.

Bill Burgess

04-21-2009, 02:02 PM

Well, at least we have a subject that stimulates good discussion.

I am totally an advocate for free agency. Always have been, always will. I am not suggesting a salary cap be forced on the players. I was musing in a philosophic mood.

I should have said what I wished the players would do. I am strongly of the opinion that unions often do not act in the best interests of its members. When I was in the postal union in NYC, they constantly stabbed me in the back.

Today, the Players' Union are not acting in the players' best interests or baseball's. That is not a fact, just my opinion. My personal perception.

My opinion is that whatever is in the best interests of the game is in the best interests of the players, and the owners.

What was in the best interests of the game was never followed in the era of the 'reserve clause'. Artificially suppressing player salaries, via their political exemption from the National Sherman Anti-Trust Act, was not in the best interests of the game. Only the owners.

Allowing player salaries to soar out of control by a few prize players is similarly not in the best interests of the game, only those few prize players.

Just because something has never been in force before is not necessarily a strong argument why it should not be tried now. Even as an experimental model.

For the record, I am a lifelong Libertarian, and free market advocate. I hate President Obama 'bail-outs', borrowing, stimulus spending and current economic program, even though I love him and still support him. But his economics are clearly wrong.

But let's not get bogged down in that stuff.

What is so far-fetched for the players to turn against the Players' Union when that union is wrong? What would be so wrong for Giants' pitcher Barry Zito approaching Giants' GM Brian Sabean and saying, "Look. You gave me a fantastic contract for a fortune, but I'm not earning it. Let me take you off the hook and re-negotiate my contract?"

Naive? Maybe. But why not be morally strong enough to do the right thing and let the public call you a fool? The most courageous thing in the world is to find the right thing to do and do it with tenacity.

Didn't wish to start a nasty discussion. Only wanted to stimulate good baseball discussion and do so with honest opinions.

AstrosFan

04-21-2009, 03:08 PM

BB: One would be hard-pressed to find a more vocal advocate for free agency than me. Yet, I also feel that $25m/season for a ball-player is far from 'reasonable', and hurts a franchise.

BH: Fortunately, the right to contract is a God-given right and not subject to your feelings.

Actually, it's just a right. No god had anything to do with it.

BB: That is a joke, ridiculous and ludicrous.

BH: In your opinion.

Um, exactly?

BB: It severely restricts a team's ability to hire other players. I just don't think anyone is worth that amount.

BH: Rodriguez's employer doesn't seem to think so and, in fact, has proven otherwise.

That is a bit undermined by the fact that Rodriguez's employer is the Yankees, a team that is likely the most prominent reason for Bill suggesting it might be time for a cap. When A-Rod signed with the Rangers, Hicks received a lot of criticism because it restricted his ability to sign good pitchers. But I agree with your overall point.

BB: Maybe if Ruth, Cobb or Wagner were playing today, but that's about it.

BH: So it's not the amount of money, it's who's earning it? I wish you'd make up your mind, Bill.

My sentiments exactly. Also, what makes those three so special? What about Mays, Mantle, Williams, Aaron, etc?

BB: I think that sooner of later, a team salary cap will probably come about. I find it inevitable. How or what formula will be important.

BH: You're probably right - unfortunately - as the only thing preventing this is the solidarity of the MLBPA over the issue and let's face it, Don Fehr is no Marvin Miller.

Right with you on this one, Brad.

BB: 2. I wish the Players' Union would suggest limits on the upper limits of a players' salary.

BH: Unless salaries are damaging the industry's profitability (and they never have and aren't likely to any time soon), then this would be contrary to the MLBPA's members' best interests and antithetical to the purpose for which the MLBPA exists.

Bill, is there any reason for a limit? Baseball is highly profitable and competitively balanced, perhaps more so than at any time in its history.

BB: 3. The owners' should also limit their profits.

BH: If only the Soviet Union were still around; you'd have some place to call home.

I get the point, but this was totally uncalled for, Brad.

BB: The aging of older ballparks, and their eventual demolition is one of the saddest spectacles in baseball. Losing Yankee Stadium (2008), Shea, Tiger's (1990) and Comiskey (1990) lost a huge amount of historical beauty from the game.

BH: True, but inevitable. This sadness is soothed, however, by the many beautiful baseball-only parks that have been replacing them since the early Nineties, creating a new wave of "historical beauty" for the game and future generations of fans that shouldn't have been made to sit in crumbling structures a century old.

I went to Yankee Stadium and Shea in their last year. Watching a game at Petco is a much more pleasant experience.

BB: If there had been a revenue sharing plan, whereby the older stadiums could have been continually renovated and upgraded might have allowed some ballparks to continue to enrich the lives of their fans.

BH: There has been a revenue sharing plan in place for more than a decade and yet the owners haven't seen fit to utlize their pooled funds to do anything with respect to stadiums. Whether it's renovating the old ones or building new ones, the clubs would "enrich the lives of their fans" if they did that instead of extorting money from local taxpayers to fund stadium construction projects. Of course, this has nothing to do with the "free agency/salary cap" discussion, does it?

Brad = correct here. Your vision of the older stadiums being continually renovated through the already existing revenue sharing plan is a fantasy, Bill

BB: I know I'll never see a plan like the above in my own lifetime, but maybe the young guys today will live to see it. I think it has to happen, one way or another.

BH: One can only hope you're wrong.

Agreed with Brad.

BB: Relating a player's performance to his stats need not be rigid. If a player refuses to follow his manager's orders, he could be subject to penalties, such a a fine or suspension.

BH: It isn't rigid now. A player's salary is more closely related to his performance under the current system than it would be under your proposal, or a salary cap in general. A player is already subject to a fine or suspension for those kinds of things.

The only thing a salary cap would accomplish is to artificially lower the rate of increase in total payroll for the industry, thus increasing profits for ownership. While that's a positive effect (only for shareholders), the negative effects of a salary cap far outweigh it.

It sounds like you've been drinking too much of Obama's kool-aid to be advocating this kind of baloney, Bill. As someone who I know is an ardent defender of a player's right to contract, I'm stunned that you'd support anything that undermines that right (which a salary cap certainly does.)

Sigh. You were doing so well, and then that unnecessary political potshot. Even if you can rationalize a connection due to your political beliefs about Obama and capitalism, it doesn't change the fact that the statement about Bill "drinking too much of Obama's kool-aid" adds nothing to your point, and only exists as a complaint about policy in Washington. If you had never put that in, the paragraph would have had exactly the same point, without the politics cluttering up a debate about baseball. And that goes without question for the other sides too, Democrat or other. Regardless of whether one can rationalize a connection between a baseball subject and politics, it is still unnecessary, and especially useless in such comments as "drinking too much of [fill in the blank]'s kool-aid."

Brad Harris

04-21-2009, 03:58 PM

Oh come on, guys.

Would the hyperbole have been taken less seriously if I'd just called him a pinko commie and been done with it. ;)

You should know me better than that.

Bill Burgess

04-21-2009, 03:59 PM

OK, my brothers. I may have stirred the pot and deserve what I got. Still, it feels a little weird getting beaten up by my great friend and ally, Brad.

Brad is one of our sharpest analysts and has contributed wonderful insights.

I wasn't suggesting a mandatory salary cap. I was musing that I wished that both players/owners moved towards a sensible middle ground. A common ground that has never existed hithertofor.

When Koufax was earning $125,000./season, it sounded like a lot of dough, until Free Agency made Nolan Ryan the first million dollar pitcher in baseball. Only then did the players realize how much of their deserved standard of living had been stolen from them by the legally-sanctioned 'reserve clause.'

When great players made only a 100 grand, in the 60's/70's, it was an inexcusable waste and misapplication of 'money/power/value', in favor of the owners.

When A-Rod makes his '$154,320/game or $38,580/at bat', that is a similar misapplication of baseball resources.

Why? Well, the truth is I don't know. It's only my personal perception. But I can well imagine if those resources had been funneled into another area to better serve the game, such as ballpark renovation.

Both examples represent a waste of resources to me. Both represent an extreme misapplication of baseball resources. I severely dislike waste in any form. And while I may not be bright enough to define the word 'waste', I recognize it when I see it.

I do not believe that thinking in terms of 'need' throws me into the Marxist/socialist camp. Because, if you remember, I am not supporting a 'mandatory' salary cap. Only a voluntary one.

When the owners abused the 'reserve clause', legal or not, they hurt the best interests of baseball. Why is it any different if the pendulum swings to the opposite extreme, and the players are now abusing what the law allows them?

We will see an improvement in baseball when both sides surrender some of their power and allow the billions of dollars that baseball brings in to be used to upgrade ballparks, defray fan prices, etc.

Extremism on either side is unhealthy, selfish and unnecessary. Why must one always take all the law allows? Call me a quixotic dreamer, but I'm not the only one. (John Lennon)

Beady

04-21-2009, 04:01 PM

Bill Burgess

04-21-2009, 04:08 PM

By the way, I oppose any limits on free agency such as the draft, or limiting a players options in his early years.

I only support a voluntary moving to a sensible, common, middle ground. No more.

Brad Harris

04-21-2009, 04:09 PM

OK, my brothers. I may have stirred the pot and deserve what I got. Still, it feels a little weird getting beaten up by my great friend and ally, Brad.
Only tongue-in-cheek, my friend. Only tongue-in-cheek.

I've been trying to type up a comprehensive (and serious) response to your comments, which demonstrates your passion and love for the game that so commands my respect. I apologize the "commie" swipes didn't come across in the spirit they were intended. :( Unfortunately, I've had my half-written post dashed a couple of times since I'm doing this at work. I promise to have a thoughtful and measured response to address further discussion to this evening after I get home (and get some dinner.)

See you guys in a couple hours.

Bill Burgess

04-21-2009, 04:18 PM

I just don't think anyone is worth that amount. Maybe if Ruth, Cobb or Wagner were playing today, but that's about it.
So it's not the amount of money, it's who's earning it? I wish you'd make up your mind, Bill.
3. The owners' should also limit their profits.
If only the Soviet Union were still around; you'd have some place to call home.

I mention Ruth, Cobb and Wagner only because their gifts were so extraordinary that it's reasonable to speculate that the fans would flock to see them today in numbers undreamed of by other players. And it would be a forgone conclusion that the TV people would broadcast ALL their games, thereby generating revenue in ways not realized in the past.

Soviet Union, Brad? My, we're in rare form today. But in an emergency, China, Cuba, North Vietnam or North Korea could fill in in a pinch. :crazy :waving :)

Beady

04-21-2009, 04:24 PM

Not to pick on any individual, but just to point out how narrowly channeled people's thought on these issues tends to be -- it seems a little strange that even a self-described libertarian can think of nothing more dramatic than a little tweaking for a radically restrictive labor regime that I don't think has any parallel in the American economy outside the sports world.

And if people took a fresh look, a little common sense would demonstrate that the unrestricted reserve clause regime was by no means unreservedly in the best interests of the owners. Anybody reading this will know that one of the most fundamental and immutable facts of the baseball business is that teams need a constant flow of fresh talent. In a business like that, how could it possibly be advantageous for management to have a labor regime that took all proven talent off the labor market?

Management had its reasons for imposing the reserve, of course, but they were making a bargain with the devil, and they have been living uneasily with the consequences for 130 years now.

Brad Harris

04-21-2009, 04:24 PM

I severely dislike waste in any form. And while I may not be bright enough to define the word 'waste', I recognize [waste] when I see it.
http://images.chron.com/blogs/txpotomac/selig.jpg
As do we all, brother. As do we all. ;)

Bill Burgess

04-21-2009, 04:26 PM

Only tongue-in-cheek, my friend. Only tongue-in-cheek.

I've been trying to type up a comprehensive (and serious) response to your comments, which demonstrates your passion and love for the game that so commands my respect. I apologize the "commie" swipes didn't come across in the spirit they were intended. :( Unfortunately, I've had my half-written post dashed a couple of times since I'm doing this at work. I promise to have a thoughtful and measured response to address further discussion to this evening after I get home (and get some dinner.)

See you guys in a couple hours.
Shhhhhhh! :shhh::shhh: We were doing so well! Whenever our best minds go into mock attack mode, we goose the viewership and stimulate better discussion.

Nothing will kick a dent in unconditional friendship, Brad. As a matter of fact, I don't even know if I could support a salary cap, in the past, now or ever. I completely, 100% opposed it in the 90's, and even in the ugly fight that cost the sport of Hockey a full season.

But, having said that, it still bothers me that anyone can earn $154,320/game or $38,580/at bat.

Maybe I'm a victim of my own class envy, or old-fashioned jealousy. But it feels like a waste to me.

Honus Wagner Rules

04-21-2009, 05:53 PM

I mention Ruth, Cobb and Wagner only because their gifts were so extraordinary that it's reasonable to speculate that the fans would flock to see them today in numbers undreamed of by other players. And it would be a forgone conclusion that the TV people would broadcast ALL their games, thereby generating revenue in ways not realized in the past.

That's assuming that they could dominate the game today the way they dominated their own eras. I highly doubt that the could. Let's see Ruth try to out homer entire teams today. :D

Honus Wagner Rules

04-21-2009, 05:56 PM

I wonder what the MLB wage structure would look like if there were a completely free labor market, with players bound only by their current contracts.

It's a purely hypothetical question, and one to which I really have no answers, but I think it would help answer a lot of real questions if we knew.

I believe that Charlie Finley once proposed that all players be made free agents after every season. He reasoned that supply would outstrip demand and that player's salaries would be suppressed. The players recognized this and instead only allow a certain number of players to be a FA every off season as to not flood the market with too many players.

Bill Burgess

04-21-2009, 08:01 PM

That's assuming that they could dominate the game today the way they dominated their own eras. I highly doubt that the could. Let's see Ruth try to out homer entire teams today. :D
You misunderstand. I am not saying that the fans should turn out for Babe, Ty or Honus if they played today. I'm saying that their legends are such that the fans would, fair or not.

From what we've all read in the history books all of our lives, we'd all want to see them more than any of the others. Not to say we'd not want to see Waddell, Walter Johnson and Hornsby, but not quite the same as the Big 3 of History.

Call me a hopeless romantic, or sentimental, but that's how I see it.

Honus Wagner Rules

04-21-2009, 09:51 PM

You misunderstand. I am not saying that the fans should turn out for Babe, Ty or Honus if they played today. I'm saying that their legends are such that the fans would, fair or not.

From what we've all read in the history books all of our lives, we'd all want to see them more than any of the others. Not to say we'd not want to see Waddell, Walter Johnson and Hornsby, but not quite the same as the Big 3 of History.

Call me a hopeless romantic, or sentimental, but that's how I see it.

Ok, then I a confused then. Ruth, Cobb, and Wagner are legends precisely because of their exploits on the baseball field in their respective eras. They wouldn't produce those same exploits in today's game.

STLCards2

04-21-2009, 10:23 PM

Lets think in practical terms for a second. So rodriguez makes 25 million per year -how much does he bring in for the organization a year? Knowing this would help me make my decision, I am sure.

How much money did the Yankees make during the years in which A-Rod was the best player on their teams which made the playoffs? How many $$$ did they make filling up their stadium an extra 3-8 times in October, partially due to A-Rod's regular season performances? How many people shelled out money to see A-Rod on the road - much of that money going to the Yankee organization. Of course the Yankees are always a huge draw, but surely A-Rod put some rears into out-of-town seats. How much money has been made for the Yankees in merchandising, etc. off of Rodriguez' name? Have national media stations picked up even more Yankee games since A- Rod has been there? Bottom line: does he make more money for the Yankees than he costs? I have no idea, but if he does, I don't see a single thing wrong with investing the most money into the resources that will net the most profit. Seems pretty reasonable to me. In fact, we should question the business owner who is not willing to invest a lot into something that is going to help his company become more profitable (using legal and ethical means, of course). Of course most of this is irrelevant as the question remains the same - does A-Rod break even? Until I know this, I don't feel I can have an educated opinion.

It would be interesting to see how much of Rodriguez' Ranger contract he "earned". How many seats did he fill in Arlington? Were thousands and thousands of kids around the county were wearing Rangers jerseys who may not have even know the Rangers existed previously? How popular were the Rangers on the road compared to before and after? I bet we would see a much bigger $ creation impact on a team like the Rangers than a team that already is a fool-proof money-maker like the Yankees.

Beady

04-22-2009, 03:18 AM

I believe that Charlie Finley once proposed that all players be made free agents after every season. He reasoned that supply would outstrip demand and that player's salaries would be suppressed. The players recognized this and instead only allow a certain number of players to be a FA every off season as to not flood the market with too many players.

I don't know much about this aspect of it, but I have been told that a group of players, including Jim Bouton, went to Marvin Miller and told him they wanted unrestricted free agency as a matter of principle, but they finally gave in somewhat reluctantly to Miller's argument that a limited system would drive salaries up.

This has always been a contradiction inherent in the reserve system, by the way, going back to its very beginning. By creating an artificial scarcity of talent on the market, it gives anybody who controls talent and is willing to sell it for cash a highly advantageous bargaining position. Usually, this has been club owners, but I don't mean to say that management as a group benefited from this aspect of the system: usually management were the ones pocketing the money from sales under advantageous conditions, but the party paying the money was absolutely always management.

And sometimes either individual players or categories of them have been the ones benefitting. Probably the most striking example of what I'm talking about, although by no means the only one, was the bonus baby craze of the 1950's, when clubs began handing totally untried young prospects very large bonuses by the standard of the day -- up to four or five times a journeyman major league regular's annual salary, and in extreme cases at least as much as the greatest stars in the game were getting -- and they did this in spite of rules that required the bonus player to stay on the 25-man roster, thereby handicapping the team with a useless inexperienced player and hampering the development of the player himself.

I'm sure most management people understood this was crazy, but talent was in sufficiently short supply on the market that they felt they had no choice. I also don't doubt that managements have always had a real reason for living with the reserve clause and the problems it has brought them. Players are not just labor to them: they are their very stock in trade, and control of one's stock in trade is obviously essential in any business. It's perfectly natural that management has always been willing to accept limits on its freedom to contract in the interests of bringing some measure of stability to what, under any circumstances, is a naturally unstable business. On the club's part, the reserve clause was a deal with the devil, but it was a deal they had rational reasons for making.

Bill Burgess

04-22-2009, 07:13 AM

Ok, then I a confused then. Ruth, Cobb, and Wagner are legends precisely because of their exploits on the baseball field in their respective eras. They wouldn't produce those same exploits in today's game.
Like you said, not to the same degree. The improved league quality, mostly from integration, would have caused their original dominance to flatten out with respect to their leagues.

Ruth would not hit as many homers as entire teams and Ty wouldn't be able to hit 157% of L. BA.

Bill Burgess

04-22-2009, 07:23 AM

Brad Harris

04-22-2009, 09:03 AM

I was musing in a philosophic mood.

Today, the Players' Union are not acting in the players' best interests or baseball's. That is....my personal perception.....whatever is in the best interests of the game is in the best interests of the players, and the owners.

What was in the best interests of the game was never followed [before free agency].....Allowing player salaries to soar out of control....is similarly not in the best interests of the game....

Just because [ignoring the best interests of the game, as a whole] has never been [the driving] force before is not....a strong argument why it should not be tried now.
Tried to tie that post up in a nice, neat little ribbon, for purposes of commenting on it. Knowing Bill, I'm pretty confident this is exactly what he was saying. And I wholeheartedly agree with it.

I spent the better part of my evening last night chewing on this and wondering exactly what the "best interests of baseball" are and what that should look like today. And Bill's right. No one today is looking out of the best interests of the game. The owners, led by Butt Selig, are looking out for their pocketbooks. Don Fehr and Gene Orza are looking out for the strength of the MLBPA. The players are looking out for #1. The press is concerned only with selling papers and journalists with making a name for themselves at the expense of trashing others. Congress is concerned only to the extent that their campaign donors won't shut up about something they don't like in baseball or if something (like Jose Canseco's tell-all book) embarrasses some Congressional committee chair by telling him baseball urinated in his backyard. It goes without saying that Scott Boras isn't looking out for the best interests of the game.

Bill's right though: they should. The primary concern of the movers and shakers, the employers and employees, the talent and the backstage help, in and around our national pastime should be advancing the health and vitality of baseball both generally (i.e. the sport) and more specifically (i.e. the professional vehcile). This should be the top priority of anyone who is occupationally or financially dependent on the sport. :crossfingers:

gman5431

04-22-2009, 09:07 AM

It is obvious that other people in this thread are more intellectual than myself and also have a much deeper understand of the whole situation.

As i always do i try to keep the thinking around the issue very basic.

The bottom line is when you have one team paying a single player more than the entire roster of another team - there is an issue that has to be addressed.

G Man

Brad Harris

04-22-2009, 09:27 AM

As i always do i try to keep the thinking around the issue very basic.

The bottom line is when you have one team paying a single player more than the entire roster of another team - there is an issue that has to be addressed.
What issue? This scenario is a straw man for salary cap proponents. I dare you to name one single player who's salary is higher than any team's payroll. You can't! Because your "issue that has to be addressed" doesn't exist.

Your "very basic" thinking revolves around a false perception of the circumstances.

gman5431

04-22-2009, 09:46 AM

What issue? This scenario is a straw man for salary cap proponents. I dare you to name one single player who's salary is higher than any team's payroll. You can't! Because your "issue that has to be addressed" doesn't exist.

Your "very basic" thinking revolves around a false perception of the circumstances.

Huh? Maybe not exactly this year but didnt ARod make 25 mil recently in a year where the Marlins and Rays payrolls were each around 20 mill?

Not sure if it applies this year or not but the exact numbers still bear out the inequities that i am talking about.

Should one teams payroll really be 8-10 times larger than other teams? How is that fair?

G Man

Honus Wagner Rules

04-22-2009, 10:29 AM

Huh? Maybe not exactly this year but didnt ARod make 25 mil recently in a year where the Marlins and Rays payrolls were each around 20 mill?

In 2008 the Rays payroll was $43,820,598. and it's going to go up when their young players start becoming arbitration eligible in a few years.

Not sure if it applies this year or not but the exact numbers still bear out the inequities that i am talking about.

Should one teams payroll really be 8-10 times larger than other teams? How is that fair?
G Man
Again why must baseball be "fair"?

Brad Harris

04-22-2009, 10:31 AM

Huh? Maybe not exactly this year but didnt ARod make 25 mil recently in a year where the Marlins and Rays payrolls were each around 20 mill?
And slavery existed one year, but it doesn't this year. Does that mean it's still a problem too?

Not sure if it applies this year or not but the exact numbers still bear out the inequities that i am talking about.
The exact numbers do not bear that out because it does not apply. You are consistently trying to prove a point by referring to facts which specifically contradict your point.

Should one teams payroll really be 8-10 times larger than other teams? How is that fair?
No team's payroll is "8-10 times larger" than any other's.

If you're going to argue a point, please at least be willing to make an effort to get your facts straight.

gman5431

04-22-2009, 11:42 AM

In 2008 the Rays payroll was $43,820,598. and it's going to go up when their young players start becoming arbitration eligible in a few years.

Again why must baseball be "fair"?

Right, i know the Rays payroll had gone up recently. But they wont be able to afford all of the young stars they have now. In essence they will serve as a farm team to the big market teams like the Yankees when their current stars reach free agency.

So you are okay with an unfair playing field? Interesting. I'm not. I would like to see teams succeed based SOLEY on the organization performance and shwred moves, not which players they can afford and cannot.

G Man

gman5431

04-22-2009, 11:44 AM

And slavery existed one year, but it doesn't this year. Does that mean it's still a problem too?

The exact numbers do not bear that out because it does not apply. You are consistently trying to prove a point by referring to facts which specifically contradict your point.

No team's payroll is "8-10 times larger" than any other's.

If you're going to argue a point, please at least be willing to make an effort to get your facts straight.

Comparing slavery to baseball? Not sure that applicable but even then slavery is a century and a half old.

The exact numbers do bear this out. I didnt want to look them up, but i do have my fact straight. I'll look them up.....

G Man

gman5431

04-22-2009, 11:46 AM

Rank Team Payroll
1 New York Yankees $209,081,579
2 New York Mets $138,685,197
3 Detroit Tigers $138,683,978
4 Boston Red Sox $138,292,937
5 Chicago White Sox $121,152,667
6 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim $119,216,333
7 Chicago Cubs $118,595,833
8 Los Angeles Dodgers $118,536,038
9 Seattle Mariners $117,993,982
10 Atlanta Braves $102,424,018
11 St. Louis Cardinals $100,624,450
12 Toronto Blue Jays $98,641,957
13 Philadelphia Phillies $98,269,881
14 Houston Astros $88,930,415
15 Milwaukee Brewers $81,004,167
16 Cleveland Indians $78,970,067
17 San Francisco Giants $76,904,500
18 Cincinnati Reds $74,277,695
19 San Diego Padres $73,677,617
20 Colorado Rockies $68,655,500
21 Texas Rangers $68,239,551
22 Baltimore Orioles $67,196,248
23 Arizona Diamondbacks $66,202,713
24 Minnesota Twins $62,182,767
25 Kansas City Royals $58,245,500
26 Washington Nationals $54,961,000
27 Pittsburgh Pirates $49,365,283
28 Oakland Athletics $47,967,126
29 Tampa Bay Rays $43,820,598
30 Florida Marlins $21,836,500

From wikipedia, here they are. Looks to me like the Marlins is 21.8 mill and the NYY is 209 mill. By my math that is over 9.5 times bigger. So seems right in the 8-10 times bigger range i quoted earlier, without looking. So it appears i do have my facts correct and have no idea what you are referring too.

The Yankees have a payroll over 4 times larger than a team in their own division.

G Man

gman5431

04-22-2009, 11:50 AM

Has ARod at 33 mill, Jeter at 21.6 mill and Tex at 20.6 mill. So they have one player, A Rod who makes over 11 mill more than the entire Florida team and two others who are pretty close.

So 3/4ths of the infield make more than quite a few major league teams. Those are facts (this is from USA Today) - so they do bear out my point. Have no idea what you are talking about.

G Man

Honus Wagner Rules

04-22-2009, 12:14 PM

Right, i know the Rays payroll had gone up recently. But they wont be able to afford all of the young stars they have now. In essence they will serve as a farm team to the big market teams like the Yankees when their current stars reach free agency.
I'd say most teams can't afford to keep all their best players. I'm sure when the time comes the Rays will decide whop to keep and who to let go. I suspect Evan Longoria will have a long career with the Rays.

So you are okay with an unfair playing field? Interesting. I'm not. I would like to see teams succeed based SOLEY on the organization performance and shwred moves, not which players they can afford and cannot.

G Man
I have no problem with an uneven playing field because a "level" playing field is sheer fantasy. It can't exist in the real world. If I start a new aerospace company do I have a right to tell Boeing or Lockheed Martin to stop spending billions of dollars because I cannot "compete" with that kind of spending? Teams like the Yankees and Mets can spend more money because they simply generate more money.

Ubiquitous

04-22-2009, 12:33 PM

We've had this discussion numerous times (http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=85897)

Ubiquitous

04-22-2009, 12:38 PM

gman5431

04-22-2009, 12:41 PM

I'd say most teams can't afford to keep all their best players. I'm sure when the time comes the Rays will decide whop to keep and who to let go. I suspect Evan Longoria will have a long career with the Rays.

I have no problem with an uneven playing field because a "level" playing field is sheer fantasy. It can't exist in the real world. If I start a new aerospace company do I have a right to tell Boeing or Lockheed Martin to stop spending billions of dollars because I cannot "compete" with that kind of spending? Teams like the Yankees and Mets can spend more money because they simply generate more money.

1. Right, small market teams cannot keep all of their best players. Usually they either sign them to a risky long term deal very early on or lose them to FA or are forced to trade them. Big market teams do have the option of keeping players more easily since they have the finances to do it.

2. One issue i have with your argument - baseball is a sports league, not a economic sector. It works pretty well with the NFL and its the most popular sports league in the USA.

Funny how Brad dipped out of this convo when i looked up the FACTs that showed he had no idea what he was talking about.

G Man

Ubiquitous

04-22-2009, 12:54 PM

There is probably one team that can keep all of its players and sign whomever they want, and that is the Yankees. Outside of them nobody else can do it and there is some question on whether or not the Yankees can actually do it.

2. The NFL was doing just fine before they added a salary cap. The reason the NFL is chugging along just fine has very little to do with the salary cap.

Secondly salary caps will not allow teams to keep their players. In fact it will force teams to lose players even more. The NFL and the NBA are both leagues chalk full of traveling stars and players.

Ubiquitous

04-22-2009, 12:56 PM

How are the Marlins on the pro side of a salary cap/floor? The Marlins and what they have done are strong evidence against salary caps not evidence for them.

gman5431

04-22-2009, 01:06 PM

gman5431

04-22-2009, 01:12 PM

Look, i dont know how its going to be done, ill let someone else figure that out who is much smarter than i.

I will say that i think we will see it sometime in our life because the gap which is already so wide is only going to grow.

When i look at the numbers and once again see one team with a payroll that is almost 1/10th and one team with players that make more than an entire team then there is something wrong with that. People can bring up discussion on standings to their defense by my point remains.

G Man

Honus Wagner Rules

04-22-2009, 01:42 PM

1. Right, small market teams cannot keep all of their best players. Usually they either sign them to a risky long term deal very early on or lose them to FA or are forced to trade them. Big market teams do have the option of keeping players more easily since they have the finances to do it.
Did the Yankees keep Jason Giambi, Randy Johnson, Bobby Abreu, Alfonso Soriano, Roger Clemens, and several other star players?

2. One issue i have with your argument - baseball is a sports league, not a economic sector. It works pretty well with the NFL and its the most popular sports league in the USA.
Are not sports leagues businesses? And a salary cap does not work well in the NFL. The NFL has become a league of mostly mediocre franchises. Lots of 7-9, 8-8, and 9-7 teams mostly. Also, Every off season NFL teams must release players simply to get under the salary cap. That is not a good thing.

Bill Burgess

04-22-2009, 02:23 PM

We've had this discussion numerous times (http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=85897)
Well, so what? One might be hard-pressed to name a substantive subject we haven't discussed many times before.

We have done greatest player, greatest hitter, greatest pitcher, and greatest ever at each position many, many times.

I selected this topic to go over again because at work, someone asked me if the salary cap was going to pass. Jackie and I looked at each other and wondered if we had missed something.

So, I thought we might go over the various factors again. And it seems as if many members are eager to argue it out once again. Honestly, recently we haven't had a plethora of interesting, relevant topics in History Forum for a while.

Ubiquitous

04-22-2009, 03:07 PM

I'm not looking up standings and payrolls and doing a bunch of research because i dont feel like it, but i do know that over the long haul it is proven that teams with higher salaries make the playoffs more often. Look at the FA market and the individual player salaries. What teams have the highest paid players? Why are the Yankees in competition more frequently than Tampa Bay, Milw, or Florida? Because their economics allow them to be. There is a system out there that could level the playing field. it would be tough because there is such a large disparity right now but that only speaks to the magnatude of the problem.

G Man

Why should any of those teams go to the playoffs more than the Yankees or even the same amount of times? Did the Rays deserve to go to the playoffs 3 years ago? Did the Brewers? Did the Marlins?

Secondly two of those teams play in the NL and don't have to compete against the Yankee dollars. Florida has won two WS titles which is more than Atlanta, Philadelphia, and the Mets have individually in the last 20 years and combined they can only match the Marlins title count. So why can't the Marlins can't compete?

For years STL and Hous were going to the playoffs in the central, how did the Yankees keep them from competing?

In the last 15 years the SDP have gone to 4 playoffs and a WS. The big market Dodgers have gone to 5 playoffs and no WS.

Arizona in 11 seasons have gone to the playoffs 4 times and won the WS.

Every league has teams that are poorly run and perennially at the bottom. Just because they are there doesn't mean the whole system needs to be changed. Teams that are run well win games, teams that are not run well do not win games. No amount of salary caps or redistribution of wealth is going to change that basic tenet.

Salary caps are not for competitive balance. They are to insure profits for owners.

Ubiquitous

04-22-2009, 03:17 PM

Well, so what? One might be hard-pressed to name a substantive subject we haven't discussed many times before.

We have done greatest player, greatest hitter, greatest pitcher, and greatest ever at each position many, many times.

I selected this topic to go over again because at work, someone asked me if the salary cap was going to pass. Jackie and I looked at each other and wondered if we had missed something.

So, I thought we might go over the various factors again. And it seems as if many members are eager to argue it out once again. Honestly, recently we haven't had a plethora of interesting, relevant topics in History Forum for a while.

For starters I was simply pointing out to people past threads on this issue so if they wanted to see more info they could. But if we wish to delve into it I would question why the question of a salary cap is in the history forum and I guess I could question why this thread isn't simply merged with the other threads.

yanks0714

04-22-2009, 04:17 PM

From the other thread:
There is no salary cap that is going to make any meaningful or positive contributions to the game.

For instance if we make the cap 125 million then only one team in the NL would have been effected last year and a salary floor would have basically onyl effected one team in the NL as well and that team finished with a winning record so why should they be forced to waste money?

Over in the AL virtually everybody was a big spender so why do they need a salary cap? So the Detroit Tigers can compete? Nope they spent 137 million. So the Blue Jays can compete? Nope they spent 97 million dollars. So the Mariners can compete? Nope they spent 117 million. So the Rays can compete? Well, they did go to the World Series so how much more help do they need? Half the AL teams basically spent 100 million or more to field a team. The other half had two teams with winning records, one at .500 and one of the teams went to the World Series. The worst team was a big spender while the have nots for the most part did well (except for Baltimore which had been a big spender for a long time).

So where is the problem? Where is the unfairness? Who can't compete becuase of the big spenders? Milwaukee? Tampa Bay? Minnesota?

I think you know what people mean when they say some teams cannot compete with the Yankees (or the Mets or the Red Sox, etc) but you're choosing not to.

When big time Free Agents are available, such as, say, CC, AJ, and Tex, the Yankees just pull out their wallet and 'buy' them. Most MLB teams simply cannot compete with their dollars. Every single team in MLB would have loved to have signed them. Alas, few can compete with the Yankees bankroll. True, those guys need to now perform on the field. But you have a better chance of CC, AJ, or Tex performing well than the average player those other teams are forced to use instead.

I, for one, don't like it despite being a Yankee fan. I am secretly hoping they fall flat, maye miss the playoffs or an early exit.

Does the salry cap work in the NFL? You say "no". As evidence you point to the 8-8 and 9-7 teams making the playoffs indicative of mediocrity. I say, 'yes'. That mediocrity you see, I see as competitive balance. I think the smart teams can handle the salary cap if they have a GM that can plan ahead. You see guys that have to be dropped to get under the cap. Maybe it's because that team, GM or whoever, didn't play his cards right. Maybe because that player didn't measure up or they have someone ready to take over. The teams do, in fact, hang onto their best players.
Of course, there are always some teams in any sport, like the Detroit Lions, that can't seem to get anything right no matter what they do. How about Connie Mack's losing seasons after he broke up his 2nd dynasty. He excuse was always that he couldn't compete because of $.
As well, you have owners who pocket the $ instead of turning it back into the team. I think the Pirate owners are doing that today. I always suspected Jeffey Loria of doing that as well.

I'd rather see this mediocre 'competitive balance' than free rampart spending of a few teams gobbling up all the attractive free agents thereby greatly increasing their chances of making the playoffs where anything can happen.

Ubiquitous

04-22-2009, 04:37 PM

I think you know what people mean when they say some teams cannot compete with the Yankees (or the Mets or the Red Sox, etc) but you're choosing not to.

When big time Free Agents are available, such as, say, CC, AJ, and Tex, the Yankees just pull out their wallet and 'buy' them. Most MLB teams simply cannot compete with their dollars. Every single team in MLB would have loved to have signed them. Alas, few can compete with the Yankees bankroll. True, those guys need to now perform on the field. But you have a better chance of CC, AJ, or Tex performing well than the average player those other teams are forced to use instead.

Nobody has been able to compete with the Yankees for talent for over ten years now and the Yanks haven't won a series since 2000 and haven't been in one since 2003. Somehow teams have found a way to win and to beat NY.

I, for one, don't like it despite being a Yankee fan. I am secretly hoping they fall flat, maye miss the playoffs or an early exit.

Does the salry cap work in the NFL? You say "no". As evidence you point to the 8-8 and 9-7 teams making the playoffs indicative of mediocrity. I say, 'yes'. That mediocrity you see, I see as competitive balance. I think the smart teams can handle the salary cap if they have a GM that can plan ahead. You see guys that have to be dropped to get under the cap. Maybe it's because that team, GM or whoever, didn't play his cards right. Maybe because that player didn't measure up or they have someone ready to take over. The teams do, in fact, hang onto their best players.
Of course, there are always some teams in any sport, like the Detroit Lions, that can't seem to get anything right no matter what they do. How about Connie Mack's losing seasons after he broke up his 2nd dynasty. He excuse was always that he couldn't compete because of $.
As well, you have owners who pocket the $ instead of turning it back into the team. I think the Pirate owners are doing that today. I always suspected Jeffey Loria of doing that as well.

I'd rather see this mediocre 'competitive balance' than free rampart spending of a few teams gobbling up all the attractive free agents thereby greatly increasing their chances of making the playoffs where anything can happen.

Your competitive balance in the NFL has to do with the scheduling and revenue sharing. Since the NFL shares almost all of its money all of the teams can spend roughly the same amount of money.

It truly amazes me how people wish to see the dark clouds in baseball all while perhaps experiencing one of the games greatest eras of parity. We have 30 teams in the league and almost every single team nowadays has a shot. A fan of almost every single team in the game can go into the season thinking their team has a shot.

Ubiquitous

04-22-2009, 04:56 PM

So what would the salary cap (and floor) be for baseball in 2009?

How about 150 million and 75 million?

If we do that only one team is over the cap and 12 teams are under the cap. Those 12 teams are under by about 120 million dollars or so while the Yanks would be over by 51 million. So we would have inflation and the Yanks juggling the numbers. So perhaps the Yanks don't sign AJ and they don't bring back Jorge. Without juggling the other salaries that is 30 million dollars right there. They then sign guys like Tex and CC to backloaded contracts while deferring pay to ther guys and boom they are down to 150 million with minimal changes. IS the balance of power going to change because the Yanks don't sign AJ and keep Jorge? No it really isn't going to be that much of a difference.

So now we talk about the salary floor. As is there are 12 teams under the floor. The Pirates are about 26 million under the cap. What are they going to do? ARe they going to bust the bank and sign Tex away from the Yanks? And is that really going to make a difference in Pittsburgh? Are they going to go out and sign Derek Bell, KEvin Young, and Pat Meares types to bloated contracts just to make the floor? Is that really going to help?

Currently there are 24 teams that are between the 60 million to 120 million payroll mark. That is pretty darn good. Of the three teams below that mark only one is pretty bad and that is because they are ineptly run. Of the three teams above that mark only one is vastly above it with the other two within close proximity of 120 million.

Baseball has achieved a good level of parity when it comes to payrolls and they did so without a salary cap.

Bill Burgess

04-22-2009, 05:00 PM

Ubiquitous

04-22-2009, 05:14 PM

Last year team payrolls were roughly 45% of revenue in MLB. Last year in the NFL salaries equaled about 62% of revenue.

Bill Burgess

04-22-2009, 05:16 PM

yanks0714

04-22-2009, 05:31 PM

Nobody has been able to compete with the Yankees for talent for over ten years now and the Yanks haven't won a series since 2000 and haven't been in one since 2003. Somehow teams have found a way to win and to beat NY.

How often have the Yankees missed the playoffs in the past 10 years? How about Boston? How often have other teams made the playoff in comparision? The Yankees and to a lesser degree the Red Sox keep making the plaoffs because they gobble up almost any Free Agent they want. Other teams don't. Yes, some teams make the playoffs occasionally.

Your competitive balance in the NFL has to do with the scheduling and revenue sharing. Since the NFL shares almost all of its money all of the teams can spend roughly the same amount of money.

But what you are missing is how they spend that money. The scheduling is, in fact, geared toward averaging out a teams chances by scheduling based on Division record. Parity is your 'mediocrity' definition.

It truly amazes me how people wish to see the dark clouds in baseball all while perhaps experiencing one of the games greatest eras of parity. We have 30 teams in the league and almost every single team nowadays has a shot. A fan of almost every single team in the game can go into the season thinking their team has a shot.

30 teams and you feel every one of them has a shot? Yes, every one of them has a shot because they all play the same number of games. Ask a Pirates fan if they feel they have a shot. Aboutto set a record for most consecutive losing seasons. How about a Royals fan? A Nationals fan? A Reds fan? How about the Giants? Astros? Made it one year because they managed to get Carlos Beltran...then lost him to big money Mets. Seattle fans? A's fans? Marlins fans? Marlins won it all in '97 because Wayne Huzienga 'bought' a championship by signing...you guessed it high priced Free Agents. They've made the playoff, what, 2 or 3 times. Other years they have been awful.
The Devil Rays, for years division/league patsies, figured out a way to keep their young players around for a while.

You pooh-pooh the NFL as "mediocrity" then ignore it when baseballs barely over .500 teams make the playoffs as "parity".

Once in the playoffs, anything can happen in a short series. do you really think the Marlins were better that year than the Yankees? It's not just winning the World Series that big money teams have going for them but how often they actually make the playoffs.

The Free Agency is a method of keeping on going to the playoffs.

yanks0714

04-22-2009, 05:38 PM

Rank Team Payroll
1 New York Yankees $209,081,579
2 New York Mets $138,685,197
3 Detroit Tigers $138,683,978
4 Boston Red Sox $138,292,937
5 Chicago White Sox $121,152,667
6 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim $119,216,333
7 Chicago Cubs $118,595,833
8 Los Angeles Dodgers $118,536,038
9 Seattle Mariners $117,993,982
10 Atlanta Braves $102,424,018
11 St. Louis Cardinals $100,624,450
12 Toronto Blue Jays $98,641,957
13 Philadelphia Phillies $98,269,881
14 Houston Astros $88,930,415
15 Milwaukee Brewers $81,004,167
16 Cleveland Indians $78,970,067
17 San Francisco Giants $76,904,500
18 Cincinnati Reds $74,277,695
19 San Diego Padres $73,677,617
20 Colorado Rockies $68,655,500
21 Texas Rangers $68,239,551
22 Baltimore Orioles $67,196,248
23 Arizona Diamondbacks $66,202,713
24 Minnesota Twins $62,182,767
25 Kansas City Royals $58,245,500
26 Washington Nationals $54,961,000
27 Pittsburgh Pirates $49,365,283
28 Oakland Athletics $47,967,126
29 Tampa Bay Rays $43,820,598
30 Florida Marlins $21,836,500
G Man

In all honesty, how many of those teams do their fans really honestly feel their team has a chance? I say from 17 on down they have virtually no chance, with the exception of Tampa Bay who has done an excellent job of tying up young players to long term contracts.
Plus, #9, Seattle, has virtually no chance. The White Sox have already said they will cut costs if not in contention by mid-season. Jermaine Dye will be gone if they aren't contending. How does that help them?
Houston, at 14, has virtually no chance.
Detroit cut costs by dumping Sheffield.

yanks0714

04-22-2009, 05:41 PM

yanks0714

04-22-2009, 05:48 PM

Secondly two of those teams play in the NL and don't have to compete against the Yankee dollars. Florida has won two WS titles which is more than Atlanta, Philadelphia, and the Mets have individually in the last 20 years and combined they can only match the Marlins title count. So why can't the Marlins can't compete?

So what? We're talking big money. Those NL teams compete agaisnt the Yankees for Free Agents. They lose out.

One of Florida's WS titles, 1997, was Wayne Huzienga buying it. He picked up big name expensive Free Agents. How often have the Marlins made the playoffs total since 1997? A lot less than those free spending teams.

Atlanta dropped salary saying they couldn't keep spending. The Mets spend...they just don't always spend on the right players. Philly did everything right last year. Then lost Pat Burrell to Free Agency to of all teams, the Rays! But Burrell wasn't considered a hot FA.

SilentKiller

04-22-2009, 05:57 PM

You see guys that have to be dropped to get under the cap. Maybe it's because that team, GM or whoever, didn't play his cards right. Maybe because that player didn't measure up or they have someone ready to take over.

This is the part of the NFL I hate the most. The NFL is the only sport where a team signs a guy to a 5 year contract and then cuts him 1 or 2 years later. There's no reason why a guy should get signed to a 5 year contract and then be out of a job a year later because the GM made a mistake. The GM should have to pay for his mistake and suffer the consequences because a contract is a contract. The NFLPA has allowed management to walk over them for too long and the NFL is headed for major labor strife in the near future.

I voted to oppose a salary cap in any form.

Ubiquitous

04-22-2009, 05:58 PM

How often have the Yankees missed the playoffs in the past 10 years? How about Boston? How often have other teams made the playoff in comparision? The Yankees and to a lesser degree the Red Sox keep making the plaoffs because they gobble up almost any Free Agent they want. Other teams don't. Yes, some teams make the playoffs occasionally.

And why shouldn't teams with huge fan bases that spend hundreds of millions of dollars on their team not go to the playoffs a lot?

Have the Padres not been able to go to the playoffs because the Yanks go in year in year out? Have the Tigers? Have the Reds?

But what you are missing is how they spend that money. The scheduling is, in fact, geared toward averaging out a teams chances by scheduling based on Division record. Parity is your 'mediocrity' definition.

I have no idea what any of this means as it relates to my view

30 teams and you feel every one of them has a shot?
I did use the word "almost".

The Astros in the last 15 years have had two losing seasons, been to the playoffs 6 times, and went to the World Series. The A's have been to the playoffs 5 times in the last 10 years. Seattle? Seattle isn't some small market team so I don't know how they enter into this conversation. If they have no shot it is because they have failed to actually put together a good team for awhile now. Marlins? They have won 2 world series and that 1997 team had some free agents but they also contained a lot of home grown talent or talent obtained through good trades. Secondly outside of the firesale years after the first WS victory the Marlins have been pretty respectable to good year in year out. There is no reason to not have hope that the Marlins could do it this year if you are a Marlins fan. The Nationals? It isn't a lack of a cap that is keeping the Nationals from winning games. They are incompetently and corruptly run and have been so for awhile. The Reds? The Reds have played in one of the easiest divisions to win games in now for quite some time and they have failed to capitilize on that fact. The Reds didn't need to spend like the Yankees to win the Central. Royals? Owned by one of the richest human beings on the planet, in a beautiful ballpark, with loyal fans, recieves revenue sharing paychecks, and does nothing with them besides deposit them in the bank. Though some sports writers were selecting them to win the central this year.

Of course there are teams that you shouldn't expect to win anything this year and that will always be the case. But the point is that for almost a decade now almost any team could put it all together and win it all in any given season. That is extremely rare in baseball's history. Look at all the different teams that have gone to the playoffs over the last decade, look at all the different teams that have gone to the series in the last decade. MAny many cities have been given a joyous season to warm them over and give them hope.

You pooh-pooh the NFL as "mediocrity" then ignore it when baseballs barely over .500 teams make the playoffs as "parity".

Well, considering the much stronger unbalanced schedule in the NFL their average teams have a much easier time putting up good enough records to go to the playoffs while not really being a good team. But I'm not sure what I am supposed to say in defense of baseball. A cap isn't going to keep mediocre teams from occasionally making the playoffs. Just like a cap doesn't keep mediocre football teams from making the playoffs.

Once in the playoffs, anything can happen in a short series. do you really think the Marlins were better that year than the Yankees? It's not just winning the World Series that big money teams have going for them but how often they actually make the playoffs.
When the same 8 teams keep going to the playoffs year in and year out you might have a point. But that hasn't happened yet and we have seen many teams make it to the playoffs.

The Free Agency is a method of keeping on going to the playoffs.
The free agency era has been the greatest era of parity in baseball's history.

jalbright

04-22-2009, 06:03 PM

I would like to suggest some ideas.

1. The team cap might be $150,000,000.
2. Simultaneously, an individual cap might be set at $10m at the top end, with an $700,000. at the bottom end.

3. The team with the largest profits might have their profits capped, too.

All of the 'excess money', might go into a fund to be divided, with the team's with the oldest ballparks getting proportionally more for ballpark renovations.

The money allocated to the teams with the newest ballparks, might use their allocated share of the revenue to cut their ticket prices, and subsidize their concessions/parking.

The central idea, as I see it, is to make an effort to use the games' billions, to do the most essential things, serve the fans.

And to me that means keeping your ballpark in better shape and to keep the prices of seeing games by the families lower. If more fans can see games, that will serve the long-term interests of the game, by creating more loyal fans.

The main idea is to make it cheaper to see games, preserve stadiums, and treat the fan better.

If too much goes to prize players, that does not serve the game the best.
If too much goes to the richest team, that does not serve the game the best.

I will never live to see my ideas tried, because power does not surrender itself. Ever. It must be taken forcibly from those who wield it, and the new power-wielder will typically then become the latest abuser.

The problem is power itself.

The players are not likely to give up their power, nor are the "big market" teams. Caps cause their own difficulties, witness how in the NFL teams sometimes jettison long time stars because of the impact of the cap. If you deal with the myriad of issues, the cap itself becomes a Byzantine labyrinth of legalese.

Nevertheless, if the process is to work, the framework would have to be something like the following:

1) Books are open and audited to keep teams from hiding revenue via sweetheart deals. There must be mechanisms to ensure that teams are charged with fair market prices for dealings with their subsidiaries/corporate umbrella brethren (think a TV/radio outlet paying $1 for local broadcast rights to get an idea of the kind of thing I'm thinking of).

2) Players must be guaranteed a minimum percentage of the total take, but in exchange must agree to a maximum percentage paid out to them.

3) Teams must be required to spend a certain minimum on player salaries.

4) The leagues would have to have a fund to pay into to insure that players received the minimum percentage, and that players would have to pay back to if the maximum percentage were exceeded.

5) It would be well to consider some degree of exception to allow long time veterans of a given team to be able to stay even if the team exceeds the cap. This is a knotty problem, but it should be considered.

6) Teams would take 50% of the sum of their local and merchandising revenue and keep it. The remainder would be sent to the league to be divided in a largely even manner, but with some incentives built in for teams to receive more if they make the playoffs, win a pennant, or the Series. The idea is that teams should be able to keep half of the pot they generate to motivate them to maximize how much they get. However, every game has an opponent, and that's the basis for the 50% figure. The Yankees or Red Sox or whomever don't get people to shell out big bucks for intrasquad games--but they will when there's a major league opponent. The opponent is 50% of the equation. Spreading that money around would greatly reduce the inequities.

7) Free agency remains pretty much as it is. This structure would eliminate the problem where it at least appears to many that some franchises are there to develop young players which the big market teams then buy away from them. If money were shared as I suggest, the disparity between teams would be around the levels of the 70's and 80's, when everyone could legitimately play in the free agent market. If all teams have access to all means of talent acquisiton (and have a real shot at keeping good young talent), I think those things are good for the business of MLB as a whole. How serious an issue that certain teams can't compete for top free agents is certainly debatable, though.

The overall concept is that of power sharing by all concerned. Unfortunately, only the have-nots are sure to be on board with such a plan, and they don't have the pull to make it happen. I expect such a plan to be adopted at the earlier of Hades becoming an ice skating rink or a fiscal crisis within the game, and not a moment sooner.

Ubiquitous

04-22-2009, 06:06 PM

So what? We're talking big money. Those NL teams compete agaisnt the Yankees for Free Agents. They lose out.

The NL has a rather good payroll parity right now. The NL is not the big spenders of baseball. The NL competes against other NL teams for playoff spots. If CC goes to the Yanks all NL teams are impacted the same. In fact the NL is basically operating with a salary cap in that they do not have the payroll budget that AL teams have. And judging by attendance the fans don't really care if an NL team doesn't land CC. The NL has consistently drawn more fans to their games than the AL does to their games.

One of Florida's WS titles, 1997, was Wayne Huzienga buying it. He picked up big name expensive Free Agents. How often have the Marlins made the playoffs total since 1997? A lot less than those free spending teams.
How often have they won the WS after 1997? More times than a majority of baseball teams out there. For such a low payroll they have won more games than quite a few teams that pay their players more money than they have.

Bill Burgess

04-22-2009, 06:28 PM

The players are not likely to give up their power, nor are the "big market" teams. Caps cause their own difficulties, witness how in the NFL teams sometimes jettison long time stars because of the impact of the cap. If you deal with the myriad of issues, the cap itself becomes a Byzantine labyrinth of legalese.

Nevertheless, if the process is to work, the framework would have to be something like the following:

1) Books are open and audited to keep teams from hiding revenue via sweetheart deals. There must be mechanisms to ensure that teams are charged with fair market prices for dealings with their subsidiaries/corporate umbrella brethren (think a TV/radio outlet paying $1 for local broadcast rights to get an idea of the kind of thing I'm thinking of).

2) Players must be guaranteed a minimum percentage of the total take, but in exchange must agree to a maximum percentage paid out to them.

3) Teams must be required to spend a certain minimum on player salaries.

4) The leagues would have to have a fund to pay into to insure that players received the minimum percentage, and that players would have to pay back to if the maximum percentage were exceeded.

5) It would be well to consider some degree of exception to allow long time veterans of a given team to be able to stay even if the team exceeds the cap. This is a knotty problem, but it should be considered.

6) Teams would take 50% of the sum of their local and merchandising revenue and keep it. The remainder would be sent to the league to be divided in a largely even manner, but with some incentives built in for teams to receive more if they make the playoffs, win a pennant, or the Series. The idea is that teams should be able to keep half of the pot they generate to motivate them to maximize how much they get. However, every game has an opponent, and that's the basis for the 50% figure. The Yankees or Red Sox or whomever don't get people to shell out big bucks for intrasquad games--but they will when there's a major league opponent. The opponent is 50% of the equation. Spreading that money around would greatly reduce the inequities.

7) Free agency remains pretty much as it is. This structure would eliminate the problem where it at least appears to many that some franchises are there to develop young players which the big market teams then buy away from them. If money were shared as I suggest, the disparity between teams would be around the levels of the 70's and 80's, when everyone could legitimately play in the free agent market. If all teams have access to all means of talent acquisition (and have a real shot at keeping good young talent), I think those things are good for the business of MLB as a whole. How serious an issue that certain teams can't compete for top free agents is certainly debatable, though.

The overall concept is that of power sharing by all concerned. Unfortunately, only the have-nots are sure to be on board with such a plan, and they don't have the pull to make it happen. I expect such a plan to be adopted at the earlier of Hades becoming an ice skating rink or a fiscal crisis within the game, and not a moment sooner.
Jim! You're singing my Song! I agree that revenue sharing is another term for 'power sharing'.

For any formula to work, it would need to have exceptions and flexibility built into it. But I also agree that we are musing our serene fantasies, and there is no power driving anyone to give up or share their power.

The good of the game is an altruistic, Utopian, quixotic fantasy that no one is even concerned with. And as long as all are fixated on maximizing their own power/money bases, we will continue to muse our dreams on this leisurely afternoon, and sip our mint juleps, while ballparks keep deteriorating, competitive balance remains an idle dream, and Hell continues to keep the furnaces at full blast.

leecemark

04-22-2009, 06:37 PM

--I am not finding anyreal historical discussion here. Moving to Current Events.

Brad Harris

04-22-2009, 08:35 PM

Funny how Brad dipped out of this convo when i looked up the FACTs that showed he had no idea what he was talking about.
I'm leaving this alone and give you enough rope to hang yourself.

I was away from the computer and where or why isn't your concern. This is a message board and I was neither losing an argument to you nor am I in the habit of bailing on active participation in a debate.

As for who has "no idea what he was talking about," there's something to be said for getting your facts straight before you make your contentions. There's also something to be said for not using Wikipedia, or for confirming your data by checking multiple sources. But facts are usually inconvenient where your arguments are concerned, I've noticed.

The lowest 2009 payroll of any MLB team is the Marlins at just under $37 million.

- 2009 Opening Day payrolls (http://content.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/salaries/totalpayroll.aspx?year=2009) as reported by USA Today.
- Same figure reported on the Business of Baseball website (http://www.bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3160:inside-the-numbers-mlb-opening-day-payrolls-for-2009&catid=26:editorials&Itemid=39).
- Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/04/09/ap6273486.html) confirms it too.

First of all you can't be bothered to look something up before you go shooting your mouth off. Then, when you're questioned on it, you go look up the wrong thing - the wiki article you quoted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_teams_by_payroll) is for 2008 payrolls, not this year - and finally you have to insult me because I'm not around to respond to your lazy research and persistently false posts.

My exception to your post earlier today still stands:
- There is no individual player earning more than the lowest team payroll this year.
- The Yankees' payroll is not 8-10 times greater than the lowest payroll in baseball.

You consistently post throughout this board that your opinion is based, as often as not, on...well hell if I know, but it's often something besides factual information. You've frequently posted that "that's the just way you feel" or something to that effect when pressed to explain your opinions on something. As your behavior here shows, you evidently don't want to take the time to look into the facts and adjust your opinions accordingly and if you do "research," it's sloppy and often wrong.

If you want to throw your opinion in the ring, you're most welcome to do so. I just ask that you've got something more to back it up with than your own sensibilities, gut feelings and the like. Otherwise I can ask any random seven-year old kid at the ballpark and his opinion is just as likely to have any substance as yours.

Bill Burgess

04-22-2009, 09:19 PM

My brothers. Please. There is just no call to get testy, surly or insulting. This is pleasant baseball chat, after all. No need to take ourselves so seriously.

Now I'm in Current Events. Great. Haven't visited them more than once or twice in 8 years. I thought our subject was historical enough to qualify for History Forum. Guess I was wrong. Again.

But whenever I can get Leecemark, Brad Harris, Jalbright, ubiquitous, Honus Wagner Rules, RuthMayBonds in the same thread, I must be doing something right. Or something awful.

Honus Wagner Rules

04-22-2009, 09:46 PM

I think this all goes down to whether a salary cap will create more "parity"? I have my doubts. I know some like to hammer the Yankees. But I feel teams like the Pirates should shoulder some blame as well. They told everyone that if they gota new ballpark they can build a cotending ballclub, that they could retain players and sign free agents. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are still ineptly run. Forcing the Mets and Cubs to spent less monet on payroll will not turn the Pirates into winners.

gman5431

04-23-2009, 07:01 AM

Did the Yankees keep Jason Giambi, Randy Johnson, Bobby Abreu, Alfonso Soriano, Roger Clemens, and several other star players?

The Yankees chose not to keep these players. Not only that they gave them contracts that turned out to be horrible but they can live to see another day. If a small market franchise makes that large of an investment and it doesnt pan out, they are hamstrung for a decade.

Giambi - didnt turn out in NY the way he had in Oakland and they obviously didnt want to resign him - they got Tex instead

Johnson - traded him

Abreu - didnt want him back, he was signed late and for incentive laden contract

Soriano - traded him to get ARod, the highest paid player in baseball

Clemens - they overpaid to bring him back for part season in his last year, then he didnt come back the next year

In none of these situations was it that the Yankees WANTED to bring the player back and couldnt. Since they are the biggest of the big markets they can decide without having to weigh the financial contraints like other teams do as the overriding factor.

Are not sports leagues businesses? And a salary cap does not work well in the NFL. The NFL has become a league of mostly mediocre franchises. Lots of 7-9, 8-8, and 9-7 teams mostly. Also, Every off season NFL teams must release players simply to get under the salary cap. That is not a good thing.

In my mind, that is the reason the salary cap DOES work well in the NFL - parity is a reality. And there are still teams that continue to succeed year in and year out (Steelers, Pats, Colts, etc). Sure, the system isnt perfect but its a better situation than having one teams spending 10 times others in the league.

G Man

gman5431

04-23-2009, 07:08 AM

I think you know what people mean when they say some teams cannot compete with the Yankees (or the Mets or the Red Sox, etc) but you're choosing not to.

When big time Free Agents are available, such as, say, CC, AJ, and Tex, the Yankees just pull out their wallet and 'buy' them. Most MLB teams simply cannot compete with their dollars. Every single team in MLB would have loved to have signed them. Alas, few can compete with the Yankees bankroll. True, those guys need to now perform on the field. But you have a better chance of CC, AJ, or Tex performing well than the average player those other teams are forced to use instead.

I, for one, don't like it despite being a Yankee fan. I am secretly hoping they fall flat, maye miss the playoffs or an early exit.

Does the salry cap work in the NFL? You say "no". As evidence you point to the 8-8 and 9-7 teams making the playoffs indicative of mediocrity. I say, 'yes'. That mediocrity you see, I see as competitive balance. I think the smart teams can handle the salary cap if they have a GM that can plan ahead. You see guys that have to be dropped to get under the cap. Maybe it's because that team, GM or whoever, didn't play his cards right. Maybe because that player didn't measure up or they have someone ready to take over. The teams do, in fact, hang onto their best players.
Of course, there are always some teams in any sport, like the Detroit Lions, that can't seem to get anything right no matter what they do. How about Connie Mack's losing seasons after he broke up his 2nd dynasty. He excuse was always that he couldn't compete because of $.
As well, you have owners who pocket the $ instead of turning it back into the team. I think the Pirate owners are doing that today. I always suspected Jeffey Loria of doing that as well.

I'd rather see this mediocre 'competitive balance' than free rampart spending of a few teams gobbling up all the attractive free agents thereby greatly increasing their chances of making the playoffs where anything can happen.

Great post. I tell you what brother - you are a rare bread - a Yankee fan who actually gets it. Congrats on that. I completely agree with your first part, that explains my thoughts on baseball completely. Same thing with teh NFL, its balanced.

G Man

gman5431

04-23-2009, 07:12 AM

Excellent point. Those big money teams make the playoffs more often than those teams scrapping about.

And thats really the bottom line for me - money does talk. Over time, years and years, the big market teams will make the playoffs more consistently. Not only can they buy the best talent but its the small teams best players that they are buying.

G Man

gman5431

04-23-2009, 07:23 AM

I'm leaving this alone and give you enough rope to hang yourself.

I was away from the computer and where or why isn't your concern. This is a message board and I was neither losing an argument to you nor am I in the habit of bailing on active participation in a debate.

As for who has "no idea what he was talking about," there's something to be said for getting your facts straight before you make your contentions. There's also something to be said for not using Wikipedia, or for confirming your data by checking multiple sources. But facts are usually inconvenient where your arguments are concerned, I've noticed.

The lowest 2009 payroll of any MLB team is the Marlins at just under $37 million.

- 2009 Opening Day payrolls (http://content.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/salaries/totalpayroll.aspx?year=2009) as reported by USA Today.
- Same figure reported on the Business of Baseball website (http://www.bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3160:inside-the-numbers-mlb-opening-day-payrolls-for-2009&catid=26:editorials&Itemid=39).
- Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/04/09/ap6273486.html) confirms it too.

First of all you can't be bothered to look something up before you go shooting your mouth off. Then, when you're questioned on it, you go look up the wrong thing - the wiki article you quoted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_teams_by_payroll) is for 2008 payrolls, not this year - and finally you have to insult me because I'm not around to respond to your lazy research and persistently false posts.

My exception to your post earlier today still stands:
- There is no individual player earning more than the lowest team payroll this year.
- The Yankees' payroll is not 8-10 times greater than the lowest payroll in baseball.

You consistently post throughout this board that your opinion is based, as often as not, on...well hell if I know, but it's often something besides factual information. You've frequently posted that "that's the just way you feel" or something to that effect when pressed to explain your opinions on something. As your behavior here shows, you evidently don't want to take the time to look into the facts and adjust your opinions accordingly and if you do "research," it's sloppy and often wrong.

If you want to throw your opinion in the ring, you're most welcome to do so. I just ask that you've got something more to back it up with than your own sensibilities, gut feelings and the like. Otherwise I can ask any random seven-year old kid at the ballpark and his opinion is just as likely to have any substance as yours.

Haha, good post.

I'm no baseball researcher, thats for sure. I dont look up fact but you pressed me into action. Ok, so my assertions were a year old. So it was 2008 when one player made more than an entire team and it was 2008 when one team had a payroll almost 10 times that of another team. In 2009, one team makes 37 and one player makes 33 and one team is still has 5 times more payroll than another. My numbers are off and i make my points in generalities without quoting exact figures.

But thats just it, i'm talking about the philosophies and the underlying problems. I'm not counting quarters and pennies. The exact figures still bring my point to bear - there is an issue of inequality in payrolls. The small market teams cannot compete with the big market teams in the FA market and risk losing their stars to these teams down the road. In some respects they serve as a farm team to the big market teams. Some people choose to ignore these facts.

Thanks for providing me with the exact numbers and figures - i think it just helped me solidify my stance that there is a huge gap in payrolls. Sorry you dont like my posting style and sorry i dont have a PHD in english and subscribe to the modern SABR mathematics theories and all that.

G Man

Ubiquitous

04-23-2009, 07:49 AM

So we have had free agency for over 30 years now. It has been years and years and yet we have 8 different teams win the world series in the last 10 years. We have had 15 different teams play in the World Series. We have had 20 different teams make the playoffs in just the last 4 years and 24 teams in the last 10 years.

There are 8 slots a year for the playoffs which means that there were 32 possible slots over the last 4 years and those slots were filled by 20 different teams.

In the last 4 years the NFL has sent 26 teams to the playoffs. The NFL has 48 possible slots in those 4 years and they were filled by 26 teams.

Each NFL team appearing in the playoffs appeared 1.85 times over the last 4 years. Over in baseballl the playoff team appeared 1.6 times over the last 4 years.

You are more likely to see the same playoff teams year in and year out in the NFL than you are in MLB over the last 4 years.

The NFL had two teams play every year in the playoffs and three teams play 3 outr of the 4 years. Over in baseball you had no team play in all the playoffs and you had 3 teams play in 3 out of 4. Again you are more likely to see the same team continually going to the playoffs year in and year out in the NFL than you are in baseball.

THe NFL has had 7 different Super Bowl winners over the last 10 years and 14 different teams make the Super Bowl. MLB beats them by one in each category.

The NFL has the salary cap and yet teams in the NFL and in MLB go to the playoffs at about the same rate. How is this possible if years and years of free agency allows big markets to gobble up all the players? What is happening right now shouldn't be possibl and yet it is happening. Baseball without a salary cap is doing as good of a job if not better and getting more teams to compete than the NFL is doing.

Ubiquitous

04-23-2009, 07:51 AM

Who makes 33 million dollars?

gman5431

04-23-2009, 07:58 AM

Who makes 33 million dollars?

Alex Rodriguez.

G Man

Ubiquitous

04-23-2009, 08:03 AM

The Yankees chose not to keep these players. Not only that they gave them contracts that turned out to be horrible but they can live to see another day. If a small market franchise makes that large of an investment and it doesnt pan out, they are hamstrung for a decade.

But since they can't pay the free agent they don't make the mistake and thus they are not hamstrung for a decade. Whereas if you have a salary cap and some team signs one of these guys and they flop the team can and will be in salary cap hell for quite some time. The A's were better off not signing Giambi. Randy Johnson was signed to a free agent contract by the Arizona Diamondbacks. They had him for 6 seasons which included a second contract signing with Arizona. Roger Clemens opted to go to Houston for three seasons. Bobby Abreu was originally on the Phillies, another large market team when he was traded to the Yanks. ARod was on the Rangers a team that could afford to spend with the big boys and did so. Same with Tex.

Did the Yanks sign Zito? Or Blalock, or Varitek, or Burrell, or Dunn, or Ramirez, or Furcal, or Jones, or Wood, or the 9 million other pitchers besides AJ and CC? Somehow teams have managed to sign preeminent FA like Thome, Ramirez, ARod, IRod, and a whole host of other players while the Yankees have existed.

gman5431

04-23-2009, 08:07 AM

But since they can't pay the free agent they don't make the mistake and thus they are not hamstrung for a decade. Whereas if you have a salary cap and some team signs one of these guys and they flop the team can and will be in salary cap hell for quite some time. The A's were better off not signing Giambi. Randy Johnson was signed to a free agent contract by the Arizona Diamondbacks. They had him for 6 seasons which included a second contract signing with Arizona. Roger Clemens opted to go to Houston for three seasons. Bobby Abreu was originally on the Phillies, another large market team when he was traded to the Yanks. ARod was on the Rangers a team that could afford to spend with the big boys and did so. Same with Tex.

Did the Yanks sign Zito? Or Blalock, or Varitek, or Burrell, or Dunn, or Ramirez, or Furcal, or Jones, or Wood, or the 9 million other pitchers besides AJ and CC? Somehow teams have managed to sign preeminent FA like Thome, Ramirez, ARod, IRod, and a whole host of other players while the Yankees have existed.

Well they cant sign everyone because there are only 25 spots on the roster. They get first pick on who to sign and if they wanted to sign Zito, Manny, etc then they could have. They chose not to. The Marlins didnt get to make any choices on these guys and neither did many other teams.

G Man

Ubiquitous

04-23-2009, 08:24 AM

The Marlins did get to make a choice on those players they chose not to pursue them. They could have but they chose not to. Pretty much every single team in the majors could afford to have an 80 million dollar payroll if they wanted it and almost any team could have a 100 million dollar payroll if they wanted it. Right now the only team I doubt could do that is the Nationals because they are so poorly run but they too could probably do it.

The Marlins going into this season could have spent almost 70 million dollars a year on free agents if they wanted too. They chose not too I fail to see how that is the Yankees fault.

Regardless of whether or not the Yankees choose to pursue a free agent or not the fact is that over the last 10 years many premium players have gone via free agency to non-Yankee teams and those teams have gone to the playoffs. The Yankees despite the rhetoric being bandied about here do not gobble up all of the best players in the game year after year and despite the fact that the Yanks have gone the free agent route recently that strategy has not turned into WS titles or appearances. So how valuable can these free agents truly be?

gman5431

04-23-2009, 08:26 AM

Ubiquitous

04-23-2009, 08:37 AM

Look at their revenue streams. Forget payroll and focus on how much money is coming in.

The with the lowest revenue last year was the Marlins at 139 million dollars. The team with the highest revenue was the Yankees at 375 million. The Yanks make 2.7 times more money than the Marlins yet last year the difference in payroll wasn't 2.7 times greater. It was much greater than that. In fact to keep payroll on the same scale as revenue the Marlins needed to spend 77 million last year on payroll, instead they spent about 22 million.

They are the frontrunner for overspendings but there are other big market teams too in LA, NY, and Chicago to name a few.

And why shouldn't they? The bulk of fans in MLB and the bulk of the money that fills the MLB coffers come from large market teams. Why shouldn't the eight largest teams get better players? MLB is not better off if Pittsburgh and Cincin are the dominant teams and Chicago and LA are the doormats. Secondly, these other large market teams do not spend extravagantly. There is virtually reasonable salary cap in the world that is going to alter these teams spending habits. I've said it before but outside of the Yankees and say the Marlins we have a pretty good payroll ratio in baseball. The big spenders (outside of NYY) don't spend ridiculously as compared to the moderate spenders and the moderate spenders don't spend tons more than the conservative spenders.

Ubiquitous

04-23-2009, 08:39 AM

Is the whole playoff comparison going to be simply ignored? I would think that if someone is for a salary cap because they believe it is so effective in the NFL then they should explain this rather large flaw in their argument. With the flaw being that baseball teams and football teams go to the playoffs about the same amount of times even though baseball has fewer playoff spots and fewer teams than the NFL.

gman5431

04-23-2009, 08:44 AM

I'm not going to argue the dollars and revenue and all that. You have a good argument and i cant dispute it, but i will say i doubt it is that cut and dry. There are other expenses and what not. I'm not really sure we can accept those numbers as the hard facts.

So you are okay with the big market teams having the competitive advantage from year to year? I guess maybe its because i'm in a small market city, but i think it would be nice to have a level playing field so that good front office moves, player development, etc were the deciding factor of team preformance rather than how much money you have.

G Man

Ubiquitous

04-23-2009, 08:49 AM

Small market teams win games and go to the playoffs, they even win World Series.

Teams that make more money win games and go to the playoffs. This is true in baseball it is true in football.

gman5431

04-23-2009, 08:54 AM

Small market teams win games and go to the playoffs, they even win World Series.

Teams that make more money win games and go to the playoffs. This is true in baseball it is true in football.

It is. But over the long haul the big market teams make the playoffs more frequently. Like i mentioned before i have seen stats backing this up but i'm not interested in looking them up really.

G Man

Ubiquitous

04-23-2009, 09:05 AM

And that is true in football as well. Large market teams in all sports will always have an advantage over the smaller markets. A salary cap doesn't change that. A salary cap simply keeps salaries in check and guarantees fixed costs and profits to owners. It isn't like every single NFL team maxes out their salary cap and it is also possible for larger market teams to spend significantly more on their players than smaller market teams. Last year the Oakland Raiders spent 152 million dollars on payroll while the KC Chiefs spent 83 million.

Trying to devise a system like the NFL for MLB is wrong. They are apples and oranges. The NFL creates parity through better revenue sharing, unbalanced schedules, and a draft system that produces quicker and more reliable results. The salary cap doesn't create parity in football and installing one in baseball isn't going to create parity.

gman5431

04-23-2009, 09:27 AM

I agree that the NFL and MLB are different and should be treated as such. I agree that big market teams will inheriently have a advantage over the small market teams to some extent. I think there should be a salary range, cap and floor to keep this in check to some point. When you have one team with 200 mill payroll and others in the 30-50 range that doesnt make sense. And the gap is only going to get wider as it has over the last couple decades.

G Man

Ubiquitous

04-23-2009, 11:57 AM

But it isn't the ceiling that is the problem it is the bottom that is the problem. The Florida Marlins are one of the most profitable if not the most profitable team in the game. In 2006 the Marlins had before taxes a profit of 43.3 million dollars. Nobody else was even close to them. LAst year they had a profit of 43.7 million dollars. This time there was one other team that was close. Take a guess as to who it was. Nope, nope, and nope. It was the Washington Nationals. Outside of those two teams nobody was close to them. In 2007 the MArlins were not in first place because they were surpassed by the Nationals who made a profit of 43.7 million. The Marlins "only" made a profit of 35.6 million that year.

gman5431

04-23-2009, 12:09 PM

Ubiquitous

04-23-2009, 12:19 PM

Below is a chart of payrolls and profit in 2008. First column of numbers is the profit they had in 2008, then their rank in profit, followed by their payroll rank, and the last ranking is their ranking if they were to put all of their profits into payroll.

There definately should be a floor too.

So what should the ceiling be?

Bill Burgess

04-23-2009, 02:11 PM

Small market teams win games and go to the playoffs, they even win World Series.
The Oakland A's come to mind. Small market, small payroll, win games, field good teams. They even had 2 glory periods in the past.

Honus Wagner Rules

04-23-2009, 02:27 PM

The Oakland A's come to mind. Small market, small payroll, win games, field good teams. They even had 2 glory periods in the past.

I believe the A's had the highest payroll in all of baseball at one point in the late 1980s-early 1990s

yanks0714

04-24-2009, 06:19 AM

When statements are made that the NL is not competing with the Yankees, preventing any NL team from reaching the playoffs, I take exception to that kind of thinking.

When an attractive Free Agent comes on the market, such as CC, AJ, or Tex the NL teams are most certianly competing with the Yankees. They are bidding against the Yankees, that is essentially competing against the Yankees financially.

A few questions to consider:

* would any NL (or any other AL team) have liked to have have had CC, AJ, or Tex sign with them?

* Would CC, AJ, or Tex have made a NL team (or any other AL team) better?

* By signing one or more of those three players, have increased that NL (or any other AL team) chances of making the playoffs?

* If a NL team (or any other AL team) had signed one or more would it have increased that teams chances of winning the World Series?

* By not being able to sign those Free Agents does it deprive those NL teams (or any other AL team) from putting a better product on the field?

* By the Yankees signing whomever they wish to sign by throwing $ at the Free Agents not upset the financial realm of MLB teams of a 'fair fight' on a level playing field?

I feel the answer to all questions is 'Yes'.
In plain words then, those teams could not, for whatever reason, fairly compete with the Yankees financially in pursuing high priced Free Agents.

Bill Burgess

04-24-2009, 08:13 AM

The Oakland A's come to mind. Small market, small payroll, win games, field good teams. They even had 2 glory periods in the past.
I believe the A's had the highest payroll in all of baseball at one point in the late 1980s-early 1990s
Of course, I enjoy nothing more than being proved wrong.

Ubiquitous

04-24-2009, 08:50 AM

yanks0714

04-24-2009, 05:19 PM

When the NL loses out to the Yanks on a free agent they all lose out equally and none of them are blocked from the playoffs because of the Yanks. This isn't like the Yanks signing a player that the Rays wanted and then the Rays have to play against the Yanks and the new player a lot as well as fight them for a playoff spot.

The NL consistently draws more fans to their games than the AL

I honestly cant' believe you are saying that. We must be looking at this from entirely different viewpoints. either I am totally missing your point or you are totaling missing my point.

My point is that if one of those NL teams were able to obubid the Yankees for CC, AJ, or Tex then that gives them an advantage over their NL counterparts. And that advantage could push them into the playoffs ahead of the other NL teams.

To me, you seem to fixiated on the actual games being played during the season only saying well, none of those NL have CC, AJ, or Tex. That is absolutely true. Bit the prep for the season is during the winter free agent signings. But if one NL team could have signed one of CC, AJ, or Tex don't you think that would give them an advantage and better chance of making the playoffs over their NL competition?

I notice you didn't answer any of my questions. You again simply went back to the actual season where none of the NL teams have CC, AJ, or Tex.

That is the advantage the Yankees have over ALL MLB teams. Whoever they want they can get by throwing $ at them, unless the player has a distinct adversion to playing for them, or New York, or East Coast. it was clearly stated during the winter that CC preferred to play on the West Coast, not New York. But the Yankees made an offer he couldn't refuse.

SilentKiller

04-24-2009, 07:04 PM

I honestly cant' believe you are saying that. We must be looking at this from entirely different viewpoints. either I am totally missing your point or you are totaling missing my point.

That is the advantage the Yankees have over ALL MLB teams. Whoever they want they can get by throwing $ at them, unless the player has a distinct adversion to playing for them, or New York, or East Coast. it was clearly stated during the winter that CC preferred to play on the West Coast, not New York. But the Yankees made an offer he couldn't refuse.

Any player can refuse any offer. If CC wanted to play on the West Coast so much he would have taken less money from a West Coast team and signed there. It's not unprecedented for a player to sign with a team for less money than another team offered such as Greg Maddux signing with the Braves back in the day.

Ubiquitous

04-24-2009, 09:54 PM

Well, I don't care if a NL team would have liked to have signed CC, I' m sure the local semi-pro team down the street wanted to sign him too. What someone wants means very little to me. Secondly a lot of teams could have had CC. For instance Florida could have signed CC they chose instead to make huge amounts of profit instead of making their team better.

Yes, CC would have made a team better. But so what? Drafting Jose Reyes or cloning Babe Ruth would make a team better.

Yes by signing CC they could go to the playoffs or not, or go and not because of CC or not go and not be because of CC. Teams could also go to the playoffs because they develop their farm system and make shrewd trades.

No, not signing CC does not deprive the NL of putting out a quality product.

No, the Yankees are not bad for business. In fact the Yankees help make all the teams richer. Fox isn't paying huge amounts of money so the nation can watch Pitt-Cincin games.

I honestly cant' believe you are saying that

NL teams do not compete with the Yanks or any other AL team for a playoff spot. All the NL could get is dregs of the league and there are still going to be 4 playoff teams coming out of the NL every year. Secondly despite all the hyperbole about the Yanks many teams have premium players and many teams have signed premium free agents.

Philadelphia got Thome when Thome was considered the best first basemen available. STL got Mark McGwire when McGwire was considered one of the best players in the game. SFG got Barry Bonds when he was the greatest player of all time. The Rangers got ARod when he was the greatest SS of all time. Boston got Manny when he was the best outfielder available in the game. Anaheim got Vlad when he was considered the best outfielder available. Arizona got Randy Johnson. Curt Schilling never played for NY, Pedro never played for NY. Greg Maddux never played for NY. Andruw Jones and Chipper Jones never were NY'ers. The simple fact of the matter is that NY does not get all the players, the games has many very good to great players, and despite whatever edge you think the Yankees have they haven't won a WS since 2000, didn't even make the playoffs last year, and haven't won a postseason series since 2004. Everybody keeps talking about how life is so unfair in baseball because the Yanks can do whatever they want but you all keep ignoring the facts. And those facts are that baseball has seen tremendous parity recently. Baseball is doing as good of a job or better than football right now. And finally the Yanks are dominating baseball. They haven't dominated baseball for about a decade now. For all this talk of the Yanks being able to do whatever they want outside of a few years in the 70's and a five year period in the late 90's the Yanks haven't been able to dominate the free agency era.

Altitude

04-27-2009, 12:19 AM

I would love a salary cap. At least it would give small market teams a fighting chance at getting one of those 4 spots.

I would love for a Yankee, Red Sox, Cubs fan to see it on the Rockies, Royals, Pirates, Marlins perspective.

Ubiquitous

04-27-2009, 06:48 AM

The Florida Marlins make the largest profit in baseball and have won two WS championships in less than 15 years. Cub fans would love to see the world in Marlin fans perspective.

The KC Royals are owned by one of the richest human beings on the planet.

The Rockies are not some small market team, they had a payroll of 74 million dollars last year and had a profit of 24 million dollars. The Rockies could have easily had a 100 million dollar payroll last year. They chose not too.

As for the Pirates, the only reason they are not the worst run team in the game is because the Natinals exist. A salary cap wouldn't change the incompetence that the Pirates had to endure for over a decade.

Mr. Red

04-27-2009, 09:26 AM

Out of curiosity, where do you think a price floor should be placed? Phrased another way, at what price would a floor have the maximum benefits for baseball?

Jennifer

04-27-2009, 10:07 AM

I'm leaving this alone and give you enough rope to hang yourself.

I was away from the computer and where or why isn't your concern. This is a message board and I was neither losing an argument to you nor am I in the habit of bailing on active participation in a debate.

As for who has "no idea what he was talking about," there's something to be said for getting your facts straight before you make your contentions. There's also something to be said for not using Wikipedia, or for confirming your data by checking multiple sources. But facts are usually inconvenient where your arguments are concerned, I've noticed.

The lowest 2009 payroll of any MLB team is the Marlins at just under $37 million.

- 2009 Opening Day payrolls (http://content.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/salaries/totalpayroll.aspx?year=2009) as reported by USA Today.
- Same figure reported on the Business of Baseball website (http://www.bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3160:inside-the-numbers-mlb-opening-day-payrolls-for-2009&catid=26:editorials&Itemid=39).
- Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/04/09/ap6273486.html) confirms it too.

First of all you can't be bothered to look something up before you go shooting your mouth off. Then, when you're questioned on it, you go look up the wrong thing - the wiki article you quoted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_teams_by_payroll) is for 2008 payrolls, not this year - and finally you have to insult me because I'm not around to respond to your lazy research and persistently false posts.

My exception to your post earlier today still stands:
- There is no individual player earning more than the lowest team payroll this year.
- The Yankees' payroll is not 8-10 times greater than the lowest payroll in baseball.

You consistently post throughout this board that your opinion is based, as often as not, on...well hell if I know, but it's often something besides factual information. You've frequently posted that "that's the just way you feel" or something to that effect when pressed to explain your opinions on something. As your behavior here shows, you evidently don't want to take the time to look into the facts and adjust your opinions accordingly and if you do "research," it's sloppy and often wrong.

If you want to throw your opinion in the ring, you're most welcome to do so. I just ask that you've got something more to back it up with than your own sensibilities, gut feelings and the like. Otherwise I can ask any random seven-year old kid at the ballpark and his opinion is just as likely to have any substance as yours.Sorry, to disappoint you but USA Today's team totals are not correct. USA Today in the numbers it posted had a typo for Troy Glaus understating his salary by over $10 million. They subsequently corrected his salary but didn't correct the Card team totals page or the MLB team page totals.

Moreover, using USA Today's number for team comparisons is problematic for a number of reasons such as salary is attributed to the team a player is playing for not the team paying his salary. The best example is Sheffield. USA Today shows Sheffield in its list of Mets at $14 million when in fact the Mets are paying him only $400,000 and the Tigers $13.6 million.

At the risk of being accused of self-promotion:

http://www.swerbsblurbs.com/article_detail.php?id=4539

Ubiquitous

04-27-2009, 12:33 PM

Out of curiosity, where do you think a price floor should be placed? Phrased another way, at what price would a floor have the maximum benefits for baseball?

There should be no floor. Pay restrictions of any kind are counter-productive. The Florida Marlins have a good young team that is winning games and a salary floor would make that much more harder to pull off. The Marlins don't need a 100 million dollar payroll to compete and win games. Minnesota doesn't need a 100 million dollar payroll to compete. Forcing teams to spend X dollars doesn't make a team better.

Bill Burgess

04-27-2009, 02:39 PM

There should be no floor. Pay restrictions of any kind are counter-productive. The Florida Marlins have a good young team that is winning games and a salary floor would make that much more harder to pull off. The Marlins don't need a 100 million dollar payroll to compete and win games. Minnesota doesn't need a 100 million dollar payroll to compete. Forcing teams to spend X dollars doesn't make a team better.
From your responses, can one safely infer that in this particular area (free agency), you are a 100% free market, laissez-faire, capitalist libertarian?

Can one assume that you are an economic libertarian in any other areas? Or should one only assume your free market principles with respect to baseball salaries?

Because there are many other issues that are related. Such as teams receiving tax support from their cities. Do you also oppose cities offering tax benefits to baseball teams to induce them to re-locate to their areas. And the cities then sometimes float municipal bonds to pass the costs along to the property owners in their areas.

As a free market economic libertarian, are you also appalled and dismayed that cities would so distort market forces to 'lure' sports teams to their areas, in the hopes that the sports teams will be such an attraction that they 'will pay for themselves' down the road.

I guess what I'm curious about is just how libertarian are you with respect to general economics? I think it's a legitimate baseball question. Since we all know that baseball is really a business.