That’s what we’ve been saying!
So you’re all for a salary cap/floor?
Why do you need the cap? Just implement the floor - there already is a luxury tax that seems to be pretty effective in limiting team salaries. The top MLB team salary is currently $235 million, adjusted for inflation this really hasn’t risen in about 20 years.
If owners are so concerned about imbalance and the effect that it has on the growth of the game, they don’t need the players permission to implement a floor. Instead, they offer the floor, but then demand more in salary concessions to implement it - with the vague promise that somehow the players will benefit in the long term from increase competition.
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Yeah for sure - I’m fine with only a floor. But a floor w/o a cap seems to be a non-starter. Every other cap system also has a floor.
Again, it would be nice if the national baseball writers made even the tiniest effort to explain to their readers that a cap always means a floor as well. But no, they decided instead to take up the “righteous cause” of Scott Boras and the executive committee of superstars. I’m sure Max Scherzer will return the favor and stand in the picket line when Jeff Passan wants to unionize Yahoo sports.
Funny how the rank-and-file outvoted the superstars 26-4 on accepting the CBA. Seems like incentives weren’t completely aligned there. Rank-and-file would benefit from a floor more than the superstars.
Lifelong Braves fan here…
I think the Freddie Freeman situation is most analagous to when Albert Pujols came up for a new deal in St. Louis. He was homegrown, with a dazzling peak that cemented 1st ballot HOF status WITH a title for the Cardinals, and they let him leave for the Angels and a quarter of a billion dollars, 10 year deal.
I love Freddie, and would have liked to see him retire as a Brave. He’s been tight with Chipper Jones his whole career, and thought about what it means to play for just one team.
But the writing was on the wall when he didn’t sign an extension last offseason. That pretty much guaranteed he’d at least test the market to see what’s out there. Then he led the Braves to the title, which upped the ante.
The Braves FO looked at it and rightly figured they could get 4.5 years younger for almost the same production, and they made the smart decision. Freddie’s from SoCal… the Dodgers are swimming in cash with their TV deal, and won’t care about what he costs in his late 30’s when they can just buy him out or otherwise move on from him as he descends past his peak.
Both the Braves and Freddie got what they wanted here.
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Yeah there are these situations that happen. But at least the Braves tried to compete. Same as the Chiefs tried to compete with Tyreek Hill but the price was just too high and Hill wanted to chase max money. As a fan I can accept that.
But with the Royals, we always knew Beltran would be gone. And everyone knew we had zero chance to keep Hos, Moose or Cain after 2017. That’s what tanking for windows looks like.
I flew back to KC for their last game just to say thanks. But it would have been a lot nicer to keep those guys, even if we sucked with them. We sure sucked without them.
I also went to George Brett’s last game and I’ll probably go to Salvy’s last game. But after that will there ever be another?
https://twitter.com/cdgoldstein/status/1488619502787088384
https://twitter.com/cdgoldstein/status/1488621060706738193
This is TV only and does not include revenue sharing.
And then here’s a BREF estimate on the total national + local pot split from 2018:
In Major League Baseball, 48% of local revenues are subject to revenue sharing and are distributed equally among all 30 teams, with each team receiving 3.3% of the total sum generated. As a result, in 2018, each team received $118 million from this pot. Teams also receive a share of national revenues, which were estimated to be $91 million per team, also in 2018.
So that was $209M back in 2018. That’s just from SHARING though and doesn’t include the non-share revenue splits and also things that may not be subject to sharing. Pretty easy to imagine that every team is seeing at least $250M+ in revenues now. But yeah sure, tell me how there are teams with $40M payrolls waiting for a “window” to compete. It is all bullshit. It’s straight up Hollywood accounting because the books are closed and these grifters can lie their faces off.
You know what would fix this?
guillotines
Yes well we’ve tried all the nasty words and it’s not working. Maybe we should look to other sports for examples of what does work.
Right, words don’t work. That’s why we need guillotines. This isn’t, uhh, the Mickey Mouse Club or whatever where we all vote on it and then the billionaires do what we say.
Or, assuming guillotines is not a solution that’s likely to happen any time soon, we could push for a salary cap and floor.
I don’t care about who’s in the wrong. I just want baseball to suck less.
IMO the NHL’s salary cap system works very well for competitive balance. More than half the league have team payrolls in the same $80 million to $90 million band. Some teams that are rebuilding have less than that, but only a couple of teams are genuinely cheap, small market teams. And those teams usually spend about $70 million because there is a salary floor.
The one big drawback to the NHL cap system is that cap mismanagement is a death sentence. A team with 2 or 3 bad contracts cannot win.
Reminder to those with T-Mobile - the free year of MLB.tv promo starts today. Just signed up.
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Thanks, just signed up for this.
Drafted in my 11-team fantasy league (deep rosters, 5x5 roto) on Saturday.
C: Garver
1B: Votto
2B: France
3B: Mondesi
SS: Bichette
MI: Lindor
CI: McMahon
Inf: E Escobar
OF: Tucker, S Marte, Teoscar Hernandez, Eloy, Wil Myers
Util: Nelson Cruz
Bench: Avisail Garcia, Adolis Garcia, B Belt
SP: Urias, Alcantara, Lynn (ouch), Snell, Means, Urquidy, Ynoa, Gonsolin
RP: Gallegos, Rogers, Melancon, Trivino
ESPN’s rankings were all messed up (points league rankings), so there were some absurd values to exploit. S Marte and Teoscar Hernandez were both ranked like 100+ rofl.
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https://twitter.com/cdgoldstein/status/1488678424579350531
With the revenue split, it probably comes in just under $80M. So tack on the $60M from national TV and the Rays are starting with nearly $140M in revenue for 2022. That is TV only and does not include streaming, tickets, parking, merchandise, concessions, advertising partnerships, or literally any other source of revenue including total purse sharing other than TV. Not unthinkable that they could see $300M in 2022. Their majority partner is another guy who claims they’ve lost money every year (lol). He’s currently being sued by a group of minority owners who claim he withheld financial information, bought additional shares far below market value, and secretly transferred the team to an unknown holding company:
For the second time in a year, a group of minority Tampa Bay Rays owners have sued companies held by principal owner Stuart Sternberg, alleging they withheld documents key to a review of the team’s finances.
Five limited partners who collectively own about 9.6 percent of the Rays claim the team has held back records related to Sternberg’s gradual consolidation of control over the franchise, as well as documents concerning “a half-billion dollars in taxable income” from 2017 to 2019, much of that through a broadcast deal with what is now Bally Sports Sun.
As they sought to review the team’s financial records, the partners say they were given documents that were “incomplete” and had “obviously altered dates, or … no dates at all.”
The Rays are straight up cooking the books on minority owners of the team. Baseball’s problem is much deeper than some quick-fix salary cap tweak that’s never going to happen, and Bernie calling them baseball oligarchs is entirely accurate.
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So, in places where pitch clocks are used, do games end on pitch clock violations? Like bases loaded, bottom of ninth, 3-2 count, and a pitch clock violation causes ball four and allows the winning run to score? Personally, I think the game would move faster if they just allowed the “quick pitch”. If like 10 seconds have passed since the previous pitch, shouldn’t the pitcher be able to throw the next pitch? If the batter “isn’t ready” that’s his problem.