Ideas to Restore the Competitive Balance in Baseball

[TwinsBrewersWorldSeries]

#1- Free Agents- Effective with 2010, a new rule for free agents. The maximum contract ($$$/per year) that a team can offer to a non-hometown player is the average of the top five paid players at that position in MLB. For instance, if the top 5 pitchers in baseball (salary wise) averaged $15 million, then the max offer the yankees could offer Sabathia, would be $15m/year. Only the hometown team has the right to exceed that amount giving a clear advantage to the hometown team (similar to the NBA system). Teams "overpaying" to keep their own players would gradually increase the top salaries, though 95% of players in MLB would not be impacted by this.

#2- Tagging a "franchise player". Each offseason, a team could tag a player as their "franchise player" If a team (such as the Yankees) signed a franchise player, they would need to pay a fee of $20 million to the hometown team in exchange for signing that player. To tag a player, the hometown team must offer a contract of atleast three years at the rate of the top-5 paid players at their position.

#3- To be eligible to use a franchise tag or receive revenue sharing, a team must have a payroll of atleast 60% of the league average.

[AdvantageSchneider]

Why would the hometown team need to offer that much more if the player could not get better than the average of the top 5? You'd need to give up something big to get the player's association to agree to that, like quicker free agency or something like that. I doubt they'd go for even then.

 

You'd have a hard time convincing people that baseball has a comptetive balance problem. Yanks haven't won it in 8 years. Boston's won it twice, but no one else has won it more than once.

[JohnBriggs12]

"You'd have a hard time convincing people that baseball has a competitive balance problem"

 

No you wouldn't. Forget the champion though that usually turns out to be a top 10 payroll team. Look at the teams in the playoffs over the past decade. Oh sure, the occasional small market team gets in there, but it's dominated by the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Mets, Cubs, Cardinals, Astros, White Sox, Braves etc, all who have been there multiple times and all who are considered major market teams.

 

The Rays got in there for one reason. They were so bad for so long, they finally got enough top picks to put it together for one season. And yes the Twins have been very competitive but they play in a division where the biggest markets, are not in the top 5.

[RightFieldCoder]

Outside of the Lions, every NFL team believed it had a legitamate chance to make the playoffs this year. When baseball can offer the same hope for nearly every team every year or every other, then we'll have competitive balance.

[kramnoj]

There is no need to limit the amount of money that players can get. Collectively players are being paid a smaller portion of baseball revenues than just a few years ago.

 

JohnBriggs, you contradicted yourself. You said the White Sox and other big market teams are dominating the playoffs, but the Twins have still been very competitive. Both of those things can't be true. Well run small market teams can manage mid-market payrolls and can compete. For just about any team, the reason they aren't competitive is because of lack of talent in the FO, not the amount of money they spend.

[sbrylski]

For just about any team, the reason they aren't competitive is because of lack of talent in the FO, not the amount of money they spend.

 

The Yankees have actually been pretty dumb with their money - yet they are still competitive.

 

Any team with a great FO may be able to be competitive, but the fact that some teams can have awful FOs and still be competitive year in and year out is pretty blatant competitive imbalance.

[TwinsBrewersWorldSeries]

I can guarantee that baseball revenue goes down in 2009. Corporate sponsorship will be WAY down, and the recession is going to majorly impact the entertainment industry. I agree that player compensation should keep up with revenue streams, but i think Corporate MLB Sponsorships are about to/have burst like the dot.com bubble. Without major corporate sponsorships, MLB will go bankrupt. Its the big corporate deals for suites, TV advertising, marketing deals that provide a huge % of revenue to MLB, and the average fan simply can't afford many current ticket prices let alone increases. I love the Brewers and Twins, but aside from a HUGE game, its hard to stomach/afford paying more than $25/ticket. I'd much rather tailgate in the parking lot all game long.

[kramnoj]

Without major corporate sponsorships, MLB will go bankrupt.

 

This is hyperbole. Teams will adjust their payrolls based on expected revenue. If a team has to non-tender players because of lack of revenue they will do so. National and local TV are guaranteed in rights fees. If suites and tickets stop selling, teams will adjust prices to find a level at which they will sell.

 

Any team with a great FO may be able to be competitive, but the fact that some teams can have awful FOs and still be competitive year in and year out is pretty blatant competitive imbalance.

 

The Yankees have made bad, even awful decisions. That doesn't make them and an awful FO. There isn't 100 % competetive balance in baseball, but it's not nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I think some people who compare the NFL and MLB competitive balance don't take into account that a greater percentage of NFL teams make the playoffs, so that a direct comparison can't be made.

[Patrick425]

The player union's argument against the salary cap has always been that it will slow down player salaries. So, this is what I propose:

How about a salary cap that also guarantees that the player's share of the profits will remain at a certain percentage? I have no idea what the true numbers are, but lets say the players are guaranteed 50% of the profits. This would also require total revenue sharing, but let's say MLB total profits are $6 billion. So the players are guaranteed to get a total of $3 billion. The league would set a salary cap ($125 mil? $150 mil?, whatever). If the total league salary did not meet $3 bil, the difference would be paid to the players, pro-rated based on their respective salaries. The union then could not whine about deflation of player salaries.

I'm sure this is oversimplified a little and require more legalize...but that would be the basic gist of it.

[AdvantageSchneider]

"You'd have a hard time convincing people that baseball has a competitive balance problem"

 

No you wouldn't. Forget the champion though that usually turns out to be a top 10 payroll team. Look at the teams in the playoffs over the past decade. Oh sure, the occasional small market team gets in there, but it's dominated by the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Mets, Cubs, Cardinals, Astros, White Sox, Braves etc, all who have been there multiple times and all who are considered major market teams.

Where to start? First I don't really see the Mets, dominating the postseason, neither do the cubs or the white sox. You list the Cardinals as being a big market. As of the 2000 census St. Louis is the 18th largest metro area, hardly a large market.

 

The twins, A's, Indians, Marlins, Dbacks, Padres have all had post season success, none of them are large markets.

 

The Yanks have had a huge payroll advantage for all of 2000 and they haven't won 1 WS title, and last year they missed the playoffs. The Mariners had a 100M payroll and loss 100 games. The Orioles have a top 5 market and have been horrible forever. Payroll is an advantage, no doubt, but it is hardly the determining factor. The reason the pirate and the royals and even the brewers are/were bad for so long had nothing to do with market size and had eveything to do with bad managment.

 

So yes, you are going to have a hard time convincing people that baseball has a competitive balance problem.

 

The competitive balance would be a lot better if they instuted a salary cap of some type, but people aren't going to think baseball has to do something about it based on recent history.

[paul253]

How about a salary cap that also guarantees that the player's share of the profits will remain at a certain percentage?

 

Why do the players deserve a certain percentage of the profits? They may do the things that actually get people to watch, the dirty work if you will, but is that not true of almost every company in America? In every company its the people who show up and make the product that are the equivalent of the players, yet in no private corporation are the employees guaranteed a certain percentage of the profits. Its the owners who are taking all the risk by paying hundreds of millions of dollars for a franchise and then being forced to pay guaranteed contracts to players who may stink it up so bad that the team actually cuts them while still paying them (see Jeffrey Hammonds). The players make plenty of money, and I think they can somehow manage to live off of what they make.

 

I don't mean to sound rude, but anyone who think baseball has competitive balance is nuts. When the last time the Angels, Yankees, and Red Sox all missed the playoffs? It was before they switched to 3 divisions. Just because Oakland, Minnesota, and Tampa Bay sneak in there every now and then doesnt mean everything is fixed.

[Ennder]

Baseball is as competitive as Football without a silly salary cap that creates so much player movement that it isn't even fun to follow the sport anymore. The yankees are obviously an issue as are the bottom 3 or 4 salary teams but then you could say the same of NE and the bottom teams in the NFL.

[kramnoj]

I don't mean to sound rude, but anyone who think baseball has competitive balance is nuts.

 

If it's so completely crazy, you should be able to easily prove that there isn't reasonable competitive balance. Choosing three teams and insisting that they all miss the playoffs in one season doesn't do so.

 

Its the owners who are taking all the risk by paying hundreds of millions of dollars for a franchise and then being forced to pay guaranteed contracts to players who may stink it up so bad that the team actually cuts them while still paying them (see Jeffrey Hammonds).

 

The owners are only obligated to pay money to players they sign to guaranteed contracts. The fact that the Brewers signed Hammonds to an awful deal is the Brewers fault, not Hammonds.

[AJAY]

I get very frustrated with media and fans who try to define competitive balance as having different teams winning championships over a certain time period. I personally don't care if the same team wins ever year or if different teams win every year. None of that means anything to me.

 

To me, competitive balance is about two things. (1) Integrity and (2) Morale.

 

Winning and losing means nothing to me when teams are all operating under severely different economic conditions. Unless there is a level playing field, this sport is a complete joke and the championships and standings will always be tainted. I also can not stand what this system of haves and have-nots has done to destroy the morale in so many communities. When I was a kid, we never referred to certain cities or teams as "small market". Everyone was "major league" back then and it was a lot of fun to be baseball fan. Unfortunately, this sport now has a tremendous way of completely detroying the morale by treating certain markets as second-class citizens. I personally can not stand this and will never tolerate it. No other sport systematically demoralizes communities the way baseball does.

 

There needs to be full revenue sharing and hard salary cap that protects ALL fans in ALL markets. I don't feel like a second class citizen just because I live in Milwaukee, and so I wish this sport would stop treating me like one. People in Pittsburgh, Kansas City, San Diego, etc. all deserve to have and keep players like Alex Rodriguez, Mark Texeira, CC Sabatha etc. Other sports understand this, but baseball still doesn't get it.

 

This whole stupid system just really infuriates me.

[MadScientist]

The real problem is the extreme difference in local TV revenue. What do the Brewers get from FSN vs what do the yankees get from the YES network? The solution is to put all the TV revenue into a pool to split with all the teams. If the yankees don't like it, then don't let them have the rights to show the team the yankees are playing. They don't exist without the rest of MLB.

[bucks2281]

Unfortunately, this sport now has a tremendous way of completely detroying the morale by treating certain markets as second-class citizens.

 

I would argue that the NBA does this more than MLB. If you're a "small market" team, and you field a poor team, you're basically forgotten about -- much more so than MLB. And that mentality in the NBA starts at the way top from David Stern. Also, it's not fair to completely blame the system for the long-term incompetence of some organizations. Look at the Orioles and Peter Angelos, the Brewers and Wendy, and the current unrest in the Padres organization.

 

Maybe MLB could divide revenue from FOX, ESPN, and Turner in a way to give more revenue to teams with smaller TV/radio contracts. IMO, that's a huge part of the imbalance, and channelling the national media $$ to the poorer clubs would be a start to fixing the problem. A salary cap isn't the answer. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching the NFL, but the ridiculous amount of vanilla teams bores me. I enjoy the free market-ness of MLB, but more revenue sharing AND a restriction on signing multiple Type A free agents would help to make the playing field fairer.

[AJAY]

Also, it's not fair to completely blame the system for the long-term incompetence of some organizations. Look at the Orioles and Peter Angelos, the Brewers and Wendy, and the current unrest in the Padres organization.

 

If a team is incompetent, that is their own fault. But the system still should not have built in advantages for the same franchises year after year.

 

Even the most well-run small market and mid-market organizations are penalized because they have to say goodbye to players they would rather keep. Look at how many players have departed the Twins and Indians for financial reasons. But when the New Yorks and Bostons face rising costs, they just pull out their big checkbooks and sign their players to big contract extensions and never have to rebuild through the draft. In fact, the Red Sox are already talking about going after Joe Mauer in a few years. But you never hear about the Twins or Royals going after Dustin Pedroia or Derek Jeter.

 

It's just incredibly stupid the way things work in this sport.

[danzig6767]

Baseball is as competitive as Football without a silly salary cap that creates so much player movement that it isn't even fun to follow the sport anymore.

Yea that silly salary cap is just killing the ratings, attendance, and interest in the NFL. Regular season games draw better ratings that baseball playoffs and World Series games. Plus, the NFL has 52 man rosters, baseball has 25. Any sport with so many players will have tons of player movement, it's inevitable unless you unfairly denied players the right to free agency. The NFL is also a very violent game, between all the injuries and wear/tear on the body, teams have to make decisions on players potential decline sooner than MLB/NBA. As for the cap, that cap and revenue sharing allowed for a team like Green Bay which is by far the smallest market in pro sports to for over a decade straight to be a near constant playoff participant because they not only had no financial disadvantage that forced them to trade away most of their good players when they got expensive, the Packers were able to keep most of their good players and also get others if they chose to. The economic system in the NFL is the single biggest reason that a team like Green Bay could stay a good team for a long time. It was only when they started making poor decisions that they started to suffer for it, not because they couldn't compete financially with the big market teams.

The yankees are obviously an issue as are the bottom 3 or 4 salary teams but then you could say the same of NE and the bottom teams in the NFL.

There is absolutely no comparison to the Patriots and the Yankees. The Patriots run of success wasn't built on largely financial might over other teams, it was being a very well run organization. Until recently, they rarely were players in the free agent market. Hell, one of the biggest spenders in free agency the last 3-5 years has been the Vikings and they are one of the lowest revenue teams in the NFL. It pretty rare for NFL teams to lose players because they can't compete financially, it's far more often that teams lose players because they did a poor job constructing their team and in overpaying non-productive players, thus eating up cap space that can't be spent on better ones. If say the Patriots had went into free agency like the Yankees did the last 5-6-7 years and made multiple bad big money signings that blew up in their faces, they couldn't have just said screw it, i'll simply go out and buy more players to cover for past mistakes. They'd have capped themselves out and not been able to keep their productive players who were in line for a new contract.

 

No economic systen in pro sports is perfect and the big three leagues are different in multiple aspects that would make it quite difficult to just say, put the NFL system in baseball or the NBA system in the other two leagues. One league has 52 man rosters and plays only 16 games. One has 15 man rosters and plays 82 games. One has 25 man rosters, has minor leagues, and plays 162 games. The NFL is able to have all their games televised under large TV deals that can easily split the evenly among all teams, mainly because of the 16 game schedule and partly because football is the most popular sport in this country. Of all the sports, the NFL gives all it's teams the best chance to compete without their market size being such a big factor like baseball does, but there are vast differences between the two leagues that make it a lot easier for the NFL to have the revenue sharing that they do have which plays as big a role or even more than the cap in allowing pretty much all teams to keep and sign multiple top notch players as they free agency eligible.

[danzig6767]

Unfortunately, this sport now has a tremendous way of completely detroying the morale by treating certain markets as second-class citizens.

 

I would argue that the NBA does this more than MLB. If you're a "small market" team, and you field a poor team, you're basically forgotten about -- much more so than MLB. And that mentality in the NBA starts at the way top from David Stern. Also, it's not fair to completely blame the system for the long-term incompetence of some organizations. Look at the Orioles and Peter Angelos, the Brewers and Wendy, and the current unrest in the Padres organization.

The huge factor with the NBA compared to MLB/NFL is in the NBA one single superstar player can have a far more dramatic effect than in the other sports. Look at LeBron James in Cleveland. He alone is easily the biggest reason they are a contender, without James they'd be a .500 team at absolute best. Look at the Spurs, Duncan alone is by far the biggest reason they've been a league force since he got drafted. In the last 20-25 years, only the Pistons have won a ring without a legit superstar. On the flip side, Texas didn't do squat when they had Arod even though he was the best player in baseball. It's just so so hard to be a real contender in the NBA without a big time franchise player.

 

One good thing the NBA does is it allows for franchises to pay their best players more money as they reach free agency than another team offering a free agent contract. That said, if your team lacks a superstar, it won't matter much anyways because teams lacking that true star player usually get stuck in the mud of mediocrity or worse.

 

Like i said in another post, the three leagues are different in multiple ways that cause different challenges when trying to put together labor contracts between it's teams and then the players. I think sometimes fans aren't looking at everything involved with each league when saying so and so should be done in this league like what's done in the other league. It's not that simple at all.

[Ennder]

It pretty rare for NFL teams to lose players because they can't compete financially

 

Every single year dozens of players leave their teams because there just wasn't cap room. There is way more financial movement of players in football than baseball, it isn't comperable at all.

 

If say the Patriots had went into free agency like the Yankees did the last 5-6-7 years and made multiple bad big money signings that blew up in their faces

 

It is a different system with the same basic result. The Yankees have to overpay to get people to play for them because the players know if the yankees want them they'll pay 10-20% more than any other team. The Patriots do it the opposite way, a premium FA will sign with the patriots for 20-30% less than for a team like the Lions. To use two cities as an example, there is more balance between the Tigers and Red Sox than between the Lions and Patriots. It isn't just about the amount of money a team spends, a lot more goes into the equation.

 

As for ratings, you can't compare the two. One sport has 16 games and they play almost all of their games on weekends. Plus what are ratings to do with anything in the first place, Hannah Montana is a highly rated singer and she still can't sing worth a crap. Football ratings are high because it is fast paced, fun to watch and people have short attention spans these days, it doesn't have anything to do with the salary cap.

 

I mean fine if you like a salary cap you like it, I won't convince you otherwise, but if you honestly believe that every team in the NFL is on an even playing field you are just being naive, some teams most certainly still have an advantage. NFL balance is more because the season is so short that 2-3 lucky bounces and being healthier than other teams puts you in the playoffs than the salary cap.

 

If baseball were to set a cap on the highest payroll teams I'd be ok with it. Something like no team can have a salary more than 20% higher than the 4th highest salaried team from the previous year or something like that. But a cap put in place where every team sits at the same cap and thus are forced to lose players they want to keep every single year is just not a system I'd enjoy at all.

[Prince James]

I always thought that without a salary cap, MLB should convert to the Euro-style multi-tier division thing they do with soccer. Go ahead, pay as much or as little as you want, but just know that if your team finishes as the bottom couple of spots, your team moves down to tier 2, and a few other teams move up one division. How cool would it be (and good for attendance) if a minor league team were battling to be promoted into the majors, or if the Yankees were battling to stay at the Major League level. This would work well with college football too.

 

Nonetheless, I think the Yankees have been angering people due to their status, attitude, and money long before any of us were born. I find it much more fun to just root for them to fail, and enjoy the national media dissecting the team and its issues when they lose 3 games in a row. This same attitude can be applied to the Red Sox.

 

I fear what a salary cap may do to baseball. Would this shorten player's contracts/careeers with a team? Would it shorten a player's overall career length? Who knows, but I have a feeling it will cause more harm than good.

[jjfanec]

It pretty rare for NFL teams to lose players because they can't compete financially

Every single year dozens of players leave their teams because there just wasn't cap room. There is way more financial movement of players in football than baseball, it isn't comperable at all.

Actually, I do not think that is accurate. There are some positions where there is a lot of movement in the NFL, but lets look at 3 big positions QB, RB, WR. Last year the big FA qb was Chad Pennington (who was cut), the big RB was Michael Turner (who was not a starter) and the big receiver was Bernard Berrian (Randy Moss resigned with the Pats). At other positions like CB there was really only one big guy in Asante Samuel. The reality lower teir guys move around a lot in the NFL but the top guys do not, unless it is through trades. Just a quick glance at the Pro Bowl rosters this year show that Turner, Jeff Faneca, and Samuel are the only guys I know of who were free agents this offseason. So, out of 80 players only 3 were free agents. The Franchise Tag allows football teams to keep their players as well.

Big name players move in football but I would not say at the rate of baseball. This year Tex, CC and Burnett left their teams and they were not even all-stars. The all-start probably leaving their teams include Manny, Sheets, Wood, Crede, and Varitek. Throw in solid players like Abreu, Dunn, Ibanez, Bradley, Fuentes, Hoffman, Hudson, Burrell, not to mention guys like Santana who would have been free agents had they not been traded and signed by their new teams.

Big players leave small market teams all the time in baseball. They are just traded instead of let go into FA, which would not have to happen with a salary cap. Most of your top players would stay and your middle teir guys would be the ones moving around.

[Ennder]

The players the teams build around do stay somewhat but you can't really 'build' a team around a single position in baseball so it is just an apples to oranges comparison. A salary cap wouldn't have kept Sabathia with the Brewers and probably wouldn't have kept Sheets either. Sabathia would have still gone to a team with better endorsement opportunities and Sheets still would have been looking for a longer term deal and we don't seem to want to offer one. Baseball and Football have very different setups so pretty hard to do straight up comparisons of the two. Most good baseball players get one big payday when they hit free agency and sign a long term large contract, players with long careers or players who aren't good enough to get a long deal get more.

[whizkid]

Why do the players deserve a certain percentage of the profits? They may do the things that actually get people to watch, the dirty work if you will, but is that not true of almost every company in America? In every company its the people who show up and make the product that are the equivalent of the players, yet in no private corporation are the employees guaranteed a certain percentage of the profits.

 

The players are the product, they don't make the product. Think of them as the raw materials of a product which does make up a given percentage of any product's cost. They are the top small fraction of 1% in the world in what they do. They aren't like assembly line workers or programmers or middle managers who can much more easily be replaced. They are as rare in talent as the CEOs of large corporations who are guaranteed certain things when they join a company.

[jjfanec]

My comment was made to show your comment about there being more player movement in the NFL than in MLB as being a false statement. However, I do agree with a lot of what you just said. I think the big difference is the guaranteed money in MLB compared to the NFL. The NFL's contracts not being all guaranteed makes keeping players easier. I actually think CC would have been able to stay in Milwaukee under the NFL policy because the long term deal would not have been near as crippling in the future. Also a cap also caps the high end salaries in a league. A-Rod would not have gotten his contract in the NFL because a cap keeps from huge contracts. In MLB you can definitely build a team around players like you do in the NFL. In the NFL you build around a QB, RB or defense. Under a cap in MLB you would have to choose if you wanted to put most of your money in your starting pitching, if you wanted to build around offense, or if you wanted to go for all around solid. The Brewers would choose to build around Braun, Fielder, Hardy, CC and Yo, like the Packers would build around Rodgers, Jennings, Driver, Grant, Kampman and Woodson.

It is interesting to think of what MLB the salary cap in MLB would be. Last year the average payroll was 90 million. I do not know how a cap would work around an average like that but 90 million is 9 million more for the current Brewers roster. I am sure the Marlins would love a salary cap.