Arena The Major League Baseball Thread

He's put the team in the right direction to win one. And NL Cy Young Award winner Trevor Bauer was 5 and 4 last season for Cincinnati.

 

Umm

Are you seriously asking?

 

You:

 

More evidence that baseball needs a salary cap. This is why the NFL is a superior product.

 

MLB does not need a cap. It needs proper revenue sharing rules in place. Parity in the NFL is not due to a salary cap. It's due to revenue sharing. It doesn't matter how much the cap is if a team has little to no revenue to meet the cap. You can add a cap, but without revenue sharing, teams like the Twins, Pirates, and Marlins will still spend little to no money. Can't spend what they don't have.

 

Actually, it needs both. Revenue sharing helps, but there will still be a substantial inequity as long as some teams are able to dig into the owner's pockets and spend to their heart's content.

Step 1: Revenue sharing
Step 2: Hard salary cap
Step 3: Give it a couple of years for team budgets to adjust to the revenue sharing and equalize
Step 4: Minimum payroll (to force penny-pinching owners to cough up for a decent team; this might not be needed if everyone plays nice, but the option should at least be on the table)
Step 5: Equity

 

the money is completely rediculous now. the powerball jackpot starts lower than some of these yearly salaries

and before you say you don't care, remember where it comes from: Your Cable Bill

 

i don't have cable.

 

let me guess too much $$$$

 

Salaries don’t increase cable bills. Increased cable deals, driven by demand to broadcast MLB games, increase salaries, as they should. The networks would offer the same money no matter what the players make. Players making less money wouldn’t lower your cable bill, it would just put more money in owners’ pockets.

 

All three of those teams have been to the postseason at least three times in the last decade. Five of the ten highest payroll teams in 2020 made the playoffs. Four of the lowest ten also made the playoffs.

The A's and Rays continually prove that teams can win and win often with a low payroll. The Cardinals and Braves continually prove a mid range payroll is enough for sustainable success. And teams like the Mets and, for a stretch early this century, the Dodgers, have proven that a high payroll in and of itself means nothing.

High payrolls are nice, but smart organizations are better.

Amazing.

 

The "For a stretch early this century...." is only as good for as long as it lasts. I won't deny that the Yankees absolutely broke the bank and put all of their eggs in one basket in 2009 to give GS one last Championship before he passed away. But that being said, they've been more frugal with their finances in the last decade or so; actually paying attention to the Luxury tax threshold. This has been going on without having the pandemic-affected revenue concerns being an issue (i.e. no fans in the stands). Frankly, you can't blame them for not wanting to just donate to the "pot", especially now when the only guaranteed form of revenue is TV and merchandising. I can't speak for the Dodgers as to why/how they just go after whomever they want and are willing to throw money like they have their own printing machine. I guess those lower market teams certainly have LA to thank for that.

 

You know what's really nice about high payroll, though? The fact that you can get attached to a player, and have confidence they'll be in the organization for years to come.

The Yankees, the Dodgers, the Mets. They all offer up the possibility that a face of the franchise type player can spend his entire career there.

The "smart" organizations ... can't ... because part of being "smart" is extracting value for that type of player.

Now, granted, there are also really dumb organizations that trade away face of the franchise type players for "value" reasons (looking at you, Rockies).

But, as a fan of a low payroll team that operates mostly smart ... It really sucks seeing Lindor traded, and knowing the clock is ticking on Ramirez and Bieber.

Yes, I want to see Cleveland win the World Series. More than anything else in sports. But I'd also like to be able to cheer for the individual player, and enjoy his entire prime, if not his entire career.

 

Just so we're clear, a "Smart" organization is essentially one that may not have all the resources to go for the big money players, but they're "smart" enough to maintain a respectable record; and so long as those big money teams (and you can definitely include more than just the Yankees, Dodgers and Mets) don't run away with the standings, the budgeting teams might have a shot at the playoffs. That's smart. How hot or cold am I?

 

Here are some context clues from my post.

Amazing.

 

Salaries have been out of whack for so long, it doesn't even raise an eyebrow anymore.

20 years ago, everyone said the raises were unsustainable. There would be backlash to rising ticket prices and people would turn to other sports, etc.

It's still going. While I am a devoted fan, I have not spent a dollar of my own on the product in many years. Obviously, they do not miss it. My eyes-to-ad revenue, the gifts emblazoned with logos purchased on my behalf, and perhaps just my inclination to discuss the league in a place like this, help to assure that these contracts can go on being bonkers and have no bearing on the health of the game.

It will be until it isn't; and then sportswriters will rush out tome after tome of how they all saw it coming in 1995.

 

One wonders how things would be now if there hadn't been a Strike in '94?

 

There would've been a strike in '95.

 

But a strike in 95 without cancellation of the WS would have made a huge difference than what we went through with the cancelling of the WS in 94. I don't think the exodus of fans would have been as big.

 

I think the loss of the world series, and the potential loss of another was the only thing that led to a deal early in 95. There is a lot of money in that.

But I also believe the WS is not as vital to fans as one might suppose. Most fans of a great many teams cannot even dream of a World Series, and viewership of the series itself has declined and become far more localized around the teams involved since the 70s. The real turn off was millionaires vs. billionaires robbing fans of their traditions, their trips to the ballpark, even their willingness to pay the absurd prices because the wealthy couldn't agree on how to carve up the insanely huge pie.

And summer 2020 looked a lot like 94. I think a lockout may be coming before too long. I think the owners know their tv deals are going to collapse and they will want to get to a cap of some kind as they continue to restructure. The shuffle in the minors was only the beginning. The low hanging fruit.

 

I don't think it was about whether the fans could dream of a WS for their team. It was more along the lines that the WS was cancelled due to a strike. It spoke to the greed, whether real or perceived, and that the players and owners would put greed above the game and the WS was a casualty of that. Their fandoms became a casualty of that.

 

So now Football is over we can look to baseball now.

 

Sad to hear about Pedro Gomez. RIP.

 

wow

 

Geez.

58 years old to boot.