Really, Bud? We have competitive balance?

[nate82]

To be fair, he did say "We have more competitive balance than we've ever had,".

 

Which is probably true.

That is not probably true it is the truth. It is more competitively balanced than it has ever been that doesn't mean it is completely competitively balanced. It is far from that and the NFL and other sports are far from being 100% balanced which would be a pipe dream.

[crewfan]

It seems to me that its not what teams actually make it to the playoffs and the series, but after a small market team has a big year, the players stock goes way up. The following year they can no longer afford many of the players contracts that got them there the previous year. Most of the larger market teams get into a playoff streak and stay competitive for a number of years while the low budget teams usually have one "spike on the graph" then drop right back down for a longer time.

[GenoSeligPrieb]

The part I cringed at, was when Bud declared they "dealt with it", in the past tense, as if to imply that the problem was fixed.

 

Sure, it's wonderful that the Rays and Brewers qualified for the playoffs. But who else qualified? Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles again, and Chicago again. Those teams also have such large population bases, that they fill their own parks, drive up higher TV ratings for bigger advertising rates, and their insufferable fans buy up the tickets to road games, and drown out the home crowds, by sheer force of their numbers. The Cubs and White Sox are on a superstation, with national followings, the Red Sox share a superstation with the Yankees (ESPN, of course), and the Angels' AL West competitors can't come close to leveling the financial playing field against them.

 

Hell, if not for the heroics from our portly friend, Wes Helms, we could very well have been aced out by the New York Mets, and then what would we have?

 

I'll admit that the competitive balance is a little BETTER than it had been, but I'll declare it fully restored when I see a free-spending team with a huge population base to draw from, lose a major free agent they'd WANT to retain, because they're capped out, and a better-managed team like the Brewers can sign away a Derek Jeter from the Yankees or the Twins can steal away a Kevin Youkilis from Boston.

 

I'll hold my breath for that day to come, without a cap.

[1992casey]

Several posts above contained extremely long quotes of previous messages and required editing. Please note the board quote guidelines.

[mothershipconnection]

I don't want a salary floor, because I think that just overpays mediocrity.

 

If they went with a very aggressive redistribution system, I think a floor would be an acceptable policy if it were a reasonable "salary and player acquisition" floor. If it were set up at $50MM and a team were only at $45MM, then they just draft a superior player with signability concerns or use it to compete in the international signing bonus game. But yeah, setting a floor on MLB salary, unless it's really low ($35-40MM), would be a bad idea.

 

A hard cap would kill baseball as we know it. A hard cap means you'll never see a Sabtahia trade again.

 

I don't think it'd be an issue as long as the cap is kept high. I think a $125MM hard cap would be just fine. Rich teams still have a big edge, but some of the ridiculousness of it is curbed. It would at least make teams think twice before signing 7 year free agent deals with injury or declining skills risks.

[1992casey]

The part I cringed at, was when Bud declared they "dealt with it", in the past tense, as if to imply that the problem was fixed.

Bingo! It's not just baseball where you'll see statements like this. You'll find them everywhere: from business execs and managers, government officials, or whatever. There are tons of cases like this one where the reality is actually that there's a marked improvement, but that there's also still more to be done.

 

It could be worse, though. You'll also find situations where the problem is declared "fixed" before any time kicks in to be able to make such a statement. Selig's statements don't fall into that category. (Yuku does this pretty often, though. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif)

 

I'd have like to have heard something like "What we've seen is absolutely great, but there's still room to do more to level the playing field."

[logan82]

I don't think it is accurate to look only at teams that won championships if we talk about competitive balance. We need to look at which teams make the playoffs as well since the playoffs are pretty random after you make it in. That way we take luck out of the equation.