Do we have competitive balance right now?

[Ennder]

That said, I must be the only person who can't stand it. I feel like the league is almost entirely a bunch of natural 8-8 teams, all battling to see who can be slightly luckier than the others and finish 10-6. I like having big evil teams to hate - its more fun to hate the Red Sox for buying championships than it is to make fun of them for sucking.

 

You aren't the only one. My friends and I were all huge football fans back in the day but since they added the cap pretty much the entire group of us have become bored with football and quit paying attention to anything but the Packer games. Players move around too much, too many mediocre teams, season is decided by lucky bounces and injuries more than other sports. To top all that off the more popular/better teams still have all the advantages since they get to sign players for less where the crappy teams have to overpay to get people to come play for them.

 

It is still fun to watch random games but none of us 'follow' the sport anymore if that makes any sense. The sport just has no personality anymore.

 

If baseball moved to a cap like the NFL has I'd would ruin the sport for me.

[sheethead]

Players move around too much, too many mediocre teams, season is decided by lucky bounces and injuries more than other sports. To top all that off the more popular/better teams still have all the advantages since they get to sign players for less where the crappy teams have to overpay to get people to come play for them.

 

I couldn't tell if you were talking about baseball or football here.

[Ennder]

I couldn't tell if you were talking about baseball or football here.

Yeah, 16 game schedule vs 162 game. Robust minor league system compared to a cap system that puts most of the money into the starters and leaves most teams with little depth and every year a few random players are picked up off the streets to fill in for injured guys. I could see how it would be confusing.

[RightFieldCoder]

I wonder if Packer fans would still be happy if the cap was never created in the NFL. Their team would still suck like it was the 80's, and my Cowboys team could still "buy championships". I hate that the two teams that I follow that are rich (Cowboys and Redwings) now have to follow a cap, but my poor* team is still poor*.

 

 

*I mean poor as a relative term. Obviously the Brewers are a multimillion dollar franchise. Only when compared to a Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Cubs, etc do they become poor.

[Invader3K]

I just don't know if a salary cap would even work very well in MLB. I recall reading some articles a while ago saying that a hard salary cap in MLB would actually just end up exacerbating some of the current problems.

 

It would seem like a minimum salary floor might actually help...force some teams like the Royals, Pirates, and Marlins to bid on more free agents, and keep some of their young cores longer. Of course, as noted earlier, it's hard to criticize the Marlins too much with their current stadium situation they are going to rectify soon, and the fact they've won two World Series Championships in their relatively short existence as a franchise.

 

I think it's becoming extremely clear that the whole draft and international free agent systems have to be completely reworked, though. I just don't think there is any incentive for the big market teams and the players' union to make that happen. Maybe we just have to accept as Brewers fans that once in a while we'll get somewhat lucky and go on a two or three year run at the playoffs, at best, and just be somewhat competitive and hover around .500 the rest of the time, if things work out.

[kramnoj]

Maybe we just have to accept as Brewers fans that once in a while we'll get somewhat lucky and go on a two or three year run at the playoffs, at best, and just be somewhat competitive and hover around .500 the rest of the time, if things work out.

 

That seems pretty close to a description of competitive balance in a sport where 8 of 30 teams make the playoffs.

 

I don't think a salary floor would make bad teams significantly more competitive. It would most likely lead to overpaying of name veterans who aren't worth what they would be paid over a replacement level player.

[Invader3K]

Yeah, but I should have prefaced by saying that 2-3 year window will probably only happen once every 10 years or so. Not quite so palatable then.

[kramnoj]

8 out of 30 is 26.7%. If the Brewers made the playoffs 2-3 years out of 10, that would be in line with that percentage. How often should the Brewers make the playoffs if there is competitive balance?

[JohnBriggs12]

There will never be competitive balance in baseball until teams agree to pool local television money and it's divided equally among every team. That was the key to the NFL's success going way back. The NFL can thank Wellington Mara of the Giants and George Halas of the Bears, the owners of the two largest market teams for realizing the league was as strong as it's weakest member. Those were two great men, and alas baseball was dominated more by the greed of individual owners like Steinbrenner, O'Malley, etc.

 

The problem with baseball recently is that it's let itself become dominated by the Yankees and Red Sox with a huge assist from ESPN.

Before ESPN existed, the Yankee/Red Sox rivalry was still primarily a regional one. ESPN elevated it to far too much prominence at the expense of the rest of the country.

 

I think it would also help balance if they moved the trading deadline back to it's traditional June 15th date. The competition after August 1st is a joke. Trades aren't being made for the right reasons.

[sgtcluels]

8 out of 30 is 26.7%. If the Brewers made the playoffs 2-3 years out of 10, that would be in line with that percentage. How often should the Brewers make the playoffs if there is competitive balance?

0% of the time. Competitive balance doesn't mean everyone gets the exact same number of times in the playoffs. It simply means that it's an even playing field and everyone works with the same. Good FO/Good Staff/Wise Trades makes you.

 

So no, there is no competitive balance. Small market teams can't acquire Top Tier FA due to the deep pockets of others. Salary cap would go a long way in bringing balance and parity to the league.

[Invader3K]

8 out of 30 is 26.7%. If the Brewers made the playoffs 2-3 years out of 10, that would be in line with that percentage. How often should the Brewers make the playoffs if there is competitive balance?

I didn't mean that they would necessarily even make the playoffs 2-3 seasons out of 10. I meant they will have a window of about 2-3 seasons in which they will realistically have a chance to be able to make the playoffs at least once every 10 years. If they make the playoffs once every ten years, that's not very good for a franchise that is trying to be consistently competitive.

 

The problem for teams like the Brewers is that their margin for error is so razor thin. As we've seen, a couple key injuries, or some prospects not panning out can really put a damper on the ability of this franchise to win even two seasons in a row. A team like New York or Boston can always just sign a couple big free agents or the latest hot player out of Japan. The Brewers can't. Basically the Brewers get punished for trying to do things "the right way", the way they were told they would have to do it, but a big market team can make mistakes along the way and pay virtually no consequences.

[kramnoj]

Small market teams can't acquire Top Tier FA due to the deep pockets of others.

 

You don't have to have top tier FA to win.

 

So no, there is no competitive balance.

 

How is that the definition, other than because you say so? The goal of a baseball team is to put a good team in front of the fans that will watch it and have a chance of making the playoffs. How have the Brewers been able to do that, if there wasn't competitive balance?

[joepepsi]

Salary caps punish talent. I think revenue sharing is the more honest way toward competitive balance. It's in the best long term interests of the game to seek competitive balance. Therefore, it should be the teams that make the financial commitment through revenue sharing, instead of forcing players to take pay cuts through a cap.

 

MLB should own all the local cable networks that broadcast major league games. The revenue from these networks could be evenly distributed among all teams.

[drezdn]

One thing I'd like to see in baseball is for the draft to be adjusted so that great players don't trickle down to the rich winning teams solely because they're able to pay more.

[TuesdaysWithRillo]

"And the NBA has one of the most unbalanced leagues imaginable."

 

And guess what.. The league is not unbalanced because one team has more spending power than the other like the MLB is. It is unbalanced because some of the GM's run their teams a lot more efficiently than the others do. Have you checked in on how the New York Knicks are doing lately? I believe they are the NBA's largest market.

[Ennder]

If the Brewers want to sign Braun long term they can do it. There can let other players walk and give him a huge contract and sign him, there is nothing stopping them from doing it. So I think that first premise is offbase to begin with that we just can't hope to ever re-sign anyone. The Brewers can't afford to pay more than he is worth is where the issue comes in, the Yankees can hand out bad contracts and eat the extra cash and be fine with it. This means the Yankees pay more money per win than other teams in general and their salary advantage is almost always overstated (though still very much a real advantage, don't get me wrong).

 

The NFL basically has the same situation. If the Lions want a player they have to pay him more than he is worth because most players would rather take less money and play for the Steelers. This means the Lions have less cap room than the Steelers because they pay every player more than them. This means when a big name goes free agent they rarely end up on a bad team and this concept of an equal salary cap isn't true in reality. Large markets also offer much more side money in endorsements etc. It isn't driven quite as much by the teams revenue but the same basic concept is at work. Good/popular/big market teams have significant advantages over the other teams.

[logan82]

Yes we could sign Braun to a long term contract. Paying Braun what he is worth on the open market would severely limit our flexibility to sign other players and more than likely we would end up with very mediocre team at best.

[Ennder]

Yes we could sign Braun to a long term contract. Paying Braun what he is worth on the open market would severely limit our flexibility to sign other players and more than likely we would end up with very mediocre team at best.

And if Tom Brady were to become a free agent in football the amount the Lions would have to pay him would do the same thing because they would have to blow more competitive teams offers out of the water to make him go there. Baseball's system is far from perfect but my point is more that other sports aren't great and fair either, even the ones with caps.

 

There were maybe 5 teams in baseball that were 'locks' to make the playoffs in baseball to start the year in most peoples minds and at least one of those probably won't actually make it. There were only 4 or 5 that had 'no chance'. They need to keep working on ways to bring the top teams down some and the bottom teams up some but the middle teams in general are set up pretty good right now. I think that 2/3rds of the league are on a pretty even playing field, find ways to fix the other 1/3 instead of just bandaid fixing it with a cap. There have been a number of good suggestions on how to start doing that in this thread so far, it is a work in progress but I like the path they have been taking overall.

[sheethead]

The NBA is a different animal, because you only need one impact player to be competitive. Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, etc. have made their respective teams competitive. If James goes to NY guess what, they are contenders. The NBA is the most individualized team sport there is.

 

As for MLB, take the 8 playoff spots and decrease that number by 1 or 2, because the Red Sox and/or Yankees are shoo-ins year in and year out. There will never be balance as long as some teams control their own broadcasting rights. Its not fair to say there is balance when one team can spend $200+ million a year on payroll while others are struggling to hit $60-70 million. They all get farm systems and draft picks, but some teams get to cherry pick others for their best farmed players. That system is not going to produce balance.

 

Yeah, 16 game schedule vs 162 game. Robust minor league system compared to a cap system that puts most of the money into the starters and leaves most teams with little depth and every year a few random players are picked up off the streets to fill in for injured guys. I could see how it would be confusing.

 

If you would have put it this way in the first place it would have made sense. But you said:

 

Players move around too much, too many mediocre teams, season is decided by lucky bounces and injuries more than other sports. To top all that off the more popular/better teams still have all the advantages since they get to sign players for less where the crappy teams have to overpay to get people to come play for them.

 

All of those descriptions refer as much to MLB as they do to the NFL with the exception of the "lucky bounces," which I would argue is not even close to how NFL seasons are decided. Maybe a game here or there, but I disagree teams make it to the playoffs because of a lucky bounce any more than a team could make it to the playoffs in MLB with a lucky bounce or bad call.

[Ennder]

All of those descriptions refer as much to MLB as they do to the NFL

 

Small market MLB teams don't really overpay free agents, large market teams have to overpay to get guys usually. Injuries play a larger role in the NFL than MLB as well.

 

Lucky bounces obviously don't play a role in the best teams but there are usually 2-3 teams in the race in the last week that just had a few lucky hops. Look at the 2008 vs 2007 packers as an example, the 2008 squad was probably a better team but the luck went the opposite way for the two teams and ended up with incredibly different records when both were probably around .500 teams.

[logan82]

I don't think people are really worried about the bottom teams as much as the middle teams that all have to compete for half the playoff spots. I also think people want to see sustained success from their team or at the very least see the top teams have trouble sustaining success. I don't think that will ever happen. There is always going to be some disparity. I think all the other major sport prove that.

[sheethead]

And if Tom Brady were to become a free agent in football the amount the Lions would have to pay him would do the same thing because they would have to blow more competitive teams offers out of the water to make him go there.

 

Now imagine if the New York Giants could sign Tom Brady for whatever money anyone else could afford plus some without affecting their bottom line or ability to sign Randy Moss and Larry Fitzgerald. Then they can still go after another 2 or 3 top free agents, still draft players, and have access to overseas players that no body else has access to. I could never get on board with saying the NFL would be better with the Giants beating up on a patsy AFL team every year than the way it is now.

 

The NFL has it right, and is entertaining for 85% of franchises year in and year out. MLB is what it is, a handful of teams that get to play by a different set of circumstances than most teams, and another handful of teams that are handcuffed to the point of not being competitive for two decades at a time. The only perceived balance is created by teams catching lightning in a bottle with young players once in a while, but the overall model precludes a competitive league top to bottom.

[sheethead]

Small market MLB teams don't really overpay free agents, large market teams have to overpay to get guys usually. Injuries play a larger role in the NFL than MLB as well.

 

There is a "small market tax" to get get free agents. Its a reverse discounting that occurs, whether it can be quantified or not.

 

Look at the 2008 vs 2007 packers as an example, the 2008 squad was probably a better team but the luck went the opposite way for the two teams and ended up with incredibly different records when both were probably around .500 teams.

 

Do you really believe that? Look at the stats, much like you do in baseball, and you may think otherwise. The defense could not stop anybody last year, and that was the difference. It usually is in the NFL.

[Ennder]

The packers defense broke down from injuries more than anything...

 

 

Well I should have stuck to my guns with the agree to disagree that I mentioned at the beginning~. I admit baseball isn't perfect but the NFL does not have true competitive balance either, people just like to point at the cap and assume it makes everything perfect when it isn't anywhere close to the truth.

[sheethead]

I am a baseball fan first, but the system in place in MLB handcuffs GMs of certain teams far more than the system in place in the NFL handcuffs GMs of similar markets. MLB will never get there due to the impossibility of shared broadcast rights. It is what it is.