Ideas to Restore the Competitive Balance in Baseball

[brucrustu]

Slot the salaries in the baseball draft so the KC Royals are not skipping a player because they know they will not be able to sign them.

 

Agreed

Making sure the best players get drafted by the teams with best draft position is the key. Teams will control those guys for years to come, thus improving the poor team.

I would add that there should also be a penalty for a non-signed drafted player, or big time compensation for the team with which he did not sign.

I'm sure this is easier said than done.

My rough plan

 

Slotting salaries and bonuses would be first.

 

Next make players declare eligible for the draft. Eligible payers are in the drafting teams control for five years for high schoolers and three for college players.

 

If they are not signed in this time; they must re-enter the draft at the conclusion. The team receives equal value replacement pick.

 

Later rounds would provide for drafting non-declared eligible players. These players can only be out of high school or juco. Contracts and bonuses severely limited. No penalty for not signing, and no compensation for the teams.

 

If you were declared eligible and not drafted you could sign anywhere for the same limited money as non eligible players.

[LouisEly]

Someone should tell the Lions fans that they are in the NFL and there is parity. Not to mention that the Lions haven't really been competitive since Barry Sanders was with the Lions. The salary cap in the NFL has very little to do with the parity in the NFL.

 

Oh, you still need to make good personnel decisions. The Lions are an example of what happens when you make poor personnel decisions - their failure is in spite of the revenue sharing. Without revenue parity though, the lower revenue teams have zero margin for error, and that's the point. Teams like the A's, Twins, and Rays may occasionally make the playoffs if they make almost perfect personnel decisions, but they don't make the World Series. Before you mention the Marlins, remember they bought their first World Series with free agents (Bobby Bonilla, Moises Alou, Devon White, Kevin Brown, Alex Fernandez, Al Leiter, plus other role players like Dennis Cook, etc.). Granted they also made some very good trades (Sheffield, Nen, Floyd), but they couldn't have done it without the free agents and if they weren't able to pay Sheffield $6M (remember, 1997) per year on top of those guys. I'd argue that their 2003 World Series was partially bought too with free agents: Ivan Rodriguez, Derreck Lee (acquired for Kevin Brown, whom they signed as a free agent prior to 1997), and were willing to take on Ugueth Urbina's salary for former first round pick and now superstar Adrian Gonzalez. Now they did make some great trades (Lee, Lowell, Willis, Pierre) and some good draft picks (Beckett, Penney), which goes back to the first point about having to make good personnel decisions, but they couldn't have done it if they weren't willing to pay Rodriguez $10M/year.

[Crewin06]

Someone on Sportsbubbler separated TV Market Size and playoff appearances for both football and Baseball here

 

http://community.sportsbu...r.com/forums/t/68412.aspx

 

from 1995 to present 46 playoff teams were from the top 10 markets, 36 playoff teams were from the middle markets, and 29 playoff teams were from the bottom 10 markets. The flaw in this though is Atlanta was catagorized as a bottom 10 market when they had a national and one of the richest TV deals out there. If you put Atlanta in the top 10 and throw out Washington who spent most of the period in Montreal for which there is no statistics for TV Market size the data looks alot worse.

 

Top 10 Markets: 54 appearances

Middle 9 Markets: 39 appearances

Bottom 9 Markets: 18 appearances

 

Football on the other hand was 62 appearances for the top 10 markets, 52 apppearances for the middle 12 markets and 55 appearances for the bottom 10 markets

 

BTW the middle markets for baseball consisted of the 6th largest TV market to the 15th largest TV Market while the top 10 consisted of the top 5 TV markets and Atlanta who had a national TV Deal.

[Patrick425]

I don't agree that the salary cap is not an effective tool to level the playing field. You can point to the WS contestants over the last 8 years and the fact that the Yankees have not been in the series since 03'. However, teams like Milwaukee and Tampa Bay and Colorado may enjoy short term successes, but teams like NY, Boston, LA, Chicago, etc are virtually guaranteed success year after year after year under the current system. When the young all-stars from Milwaukee, TB, etc have played out their arby years, it's pretty much a given that only a handful of teams will be able to bid for their services.

 

Even if you are against the cap, don't you find it annoying that some players are out of reach for the KCs, Pittsburgh's, Minnesota's, & Milwaukee's of the baseball world? Look at Daisuke Matsuzaka. There may have been 2 or 3 teams that could have even considered paying what it took just to be able to negotiate with him. Every year there are FA's like CC, Burnett, Texeria, K-Rod, Manny that only maybe 6 or 7 teams have a realistic chance of signing. Then, owners of small market teams get chastised for not wanting to spend their money on the likes of Randy Wolf or some Injury risk player like Smoltz. Can you really blame them? Sports is supposed to be about all of the fans and not just the fans of a handful of teams.

 

Whether a salary cap is the answer or not, the system is broken. Don't let the short term successes of teams like Tampa Bay fool you. I think baseball is heading for disaster unless the Union begins to realize that there are 30 teams in the league not just 6 or 7.

[Ennder]

Football on the other hand was 62 appearances for the top 10 markets, 52 apppearances for the middle 12 markets and 55 appearances for the bottom 10 markets

 

Of course you can't just throw out some of the data for baseball for personal reasons and the football markets work a little different since it is all about endorsement value which is partially a function of market size but partially of winning history (the Lions are a 'small market team' in football as an example). Not to mention it is a LOT easier for a mediocre team to make the playoffs in the NFL, a 7-9 team with 2 lucky bounces can make the wild card while a sub .500 talent team in baseball has almost no chance at the playoffs. Also football has a greater percentage of teams in the playoffs each season than baseball.

 

I think if you really want to compare them you would look at teams that didn't come anywhere close to making the playoffs. Teams that were at least 2 STDs away from a playoff shot. The Lions went 0-16 last year, when was the last time a baseball team went 0-162, just sayin.