Do we have competitive balance right now?

[Invader3K]

Part 1

Part 2

Really excellent article. I'd encourage any baseball and sports fan to read it. I don't follow hockey, but I am starting to think I may want to get into the NHL, just because their system seems to make so much more sense for all the teams, not just a select few big market clubs.

 

I like a lot of his ideas...I think some would have to be tweaked. He proposed 7 teams from each league enter the post-season (including four wildcards in each league), which would mean literally half the AL would make the playoffs. Something like this would probably make more sense once MLB takes the logical step of expanding to an even 32 teams. I do like the idea of the one game "shoot outs" between the wild cards, and having the second round (current first round, essentially) be a full seven game playoff.

 

He also laid out how illogical and stupid MLB's current draft is. Hopefully, I think virtually everyone involved with baseball understands that fact, and hopefully major changes to the June draft are on the near horizon, including fixing the broken system of recruiting international players.

[Tbadder]

This was a very good article. But it poined out one thing that has to happen first--the lock out. If MLB locked out its players for one entire year, we could get down to brass tacks. Players hold every advantage and will bleed the fans, who ultimately pay, for as much as we're worth. I especially like the percentage pay--which I would make 60%--and both a floor and ceiling idea with raises built in based on how well teams do financially. We must tie management and union together. But this will never happen. And it won't happen because of big market owners. Just like the slotted draft; it's an impossiblity because it benefits the Yankees and Red Sox and Tigers too much.

[Invader3K]

I could live without seeing MLB for a year or so if it meant major changes to a broken system.

[bklynbrewcrew]

Fantastic article and I too would be more than happy to see a lockout if a salary cap was the end result. It would be great if fans of every team had the feeling that their team can be competeive year in and year out if they make smart baseball decisions.

[logan82]

A salary cap would kill a lot of what makes baseball fun. It would end midseason trades for the most part. Instead of trading players for prospects, we would get a bunch of unexciting contract trading. Tweak the revenue sharing, make all players go through the draft to play in MLB, slot the draft and tweak the compensation for free agents. I know fans think keeping their own players is important, but the way players develop makes it harder to turn around a team quickly through the draft.

[danzig6767]

My associate at Perfect Game, Allan Simpson, has scribed an incredible two-part story addressing, as he puts it, an uninspiring 2009 season, and a troubled overall state of the game. He adds several suggestions of how to change it, from top to bottom, doing so in the second part pointing to the NHL (not the more popular comparisons to the NFL and NBA). You may not agree with some of his points, but you have to give him a lot of credit for the amount of time and effort he put into this feature. Please take the time to read both of these from beginning to end:

 

Part 1

Part 2

 

Thanks for the link Colby, that was a great read and i didn't find much of anything Simpson wrote that i disagreed with. While others here obviously disagree on a cap and whether they like say the NFL economic model better, something Simpson talked about and others here mentioned that badly needs fixing is the MLB draft. If small market teams are already going to deal with being bent over the sink via having such vastly lower payrolls, it's a double ream job by them having to deal with the draft setup where top talents can make it hard for small market teams to draft them along with international young players being basically free agents for larger market teams to bid on.

[Baldkin]

This was a very good article. But it poined out one thing that has to happen first--the lock out. If MLB locked out its players for one entire year, we could get down to brass tacks. Players hold every advantage and will bleed the fans, who ultimately pay, for as much as we're worth.

Its not the players who are the problem with competitive balance. Its the lack of revenue sharing for media contracts. The owners locking out the players would not make the Steinbrenners give the Pirates any more money.

[Invader3K]

Its not the players who are the problem with competitive balance. Its the lack of revenue sharing for media contracts. The owners locking out the players would not make the Steinbrenners give the Pirates any more money.

Then the smaller market teams should just threaten to form a new league and be done with it. Let the Yankees, Red Sox, and others play amongst each other for a full season and see how that goes.

 

No other league has a media revenue system as messed up as MLB, to my knowledge. At least they have it set up so everyone shares the internet and MLB Network income.

[Thurston Fluff]

If the Yankees win it all and there is no excitement generated by it I think we might see baseball as a whole wake and uneven playing field as a real problem. It's one thing to have big market teams win a lot if it generates interest in the baseball world as a whole but quite another if all it does is make the rest of the baseball world yawn. It's probably the only way to really change the thinking of the owners.

[DuWayne Steurer]

I'd vote 'no' for a salary cap.

 

But when the playoffs look like this......

 

New York

LA X 2

Philadelphia

Boston

St Louis

Denver

Detroit/Minny

 

It's not really indicative of competitive balance.

 

Who's the big spenders missing out? Cubs (of course), Mets (how could they have possibly won with all the injuries), Baltimore (so poorly run it's not even funny), and who else? Seattle? White Sox?

 

Having money to spend doesn't guarantee the playoffs. Not having it guarantees there's only going to be a slim chance for you to begin with.

[endaround]

Baltimore's payroll is less than the Brewer's. I think people need to realize that its The Yankees at over $200m. Then a huge gap down to the Mets and Cubs at around $140m. Detroit and Philly at around $130m. Boston and the Angels at $120m. The Dodgers at 110 and Hosuton at 105. Meaning that the difference in Milwaukee's payroll to the #2 team is less than from #2 to #1.

[Flood Pants]

The single biggest improvement MLB can make to competitive balance is to restructure the playoff system, as the article suggests.

 

Let's compare to the NFL. Each individual team is only competing with three other teams for a division title. And if they don't win the division, there's still two chances to win a wild card spot. In MLB, most teams are competing with 4 other teams (or in the case of the Brewers, 5 other teams) for that division title, with only one chance to get in as a wildcard.

 

On day 1 of the season, any individual NFL team is more likely to make the playoffs than any individual MLB team. Regardless of salary cap, coaching, revenue sharing, or any other factors.

 

Plus, in the MLB, there's a greater disparity between the winning teams and losing teams, so if MLB expanded the playoffs, they probably wouldn't have the NFL's issue of teams getting in without posting a winning record.

[trwi7]

I'm not sure I like two wildcards in each league. What do you do? Give a bye to the two best teams?

 

To me it either has to be a four team playoff with strict slotting system in the draft as well as an international draft and hopefully a salary cap with a floor or go to an eight team playoff and shorten the regular season.

[AJAY]

It's offical. The Yankees just bought the 2009 American League pennant.

 

It's so disgusting what MLB has become these days.

[owbc]

No more playoff spots. That just ensures that the Yankees and Red Sox will make the playoffs every year instead of 80% of the time. I am sick of the playoffs as it is--every year the only question is, will the Yankees and Red Sox be upset or will they make it to the World Series as usual? Out of the last 15 World Series, the Yankees and Red Sox have appeared in 9 and the rest of the AL has made it to 6 of them.

 

The only reason that the top payroll teams do not make the playoffs is if they shoot themselves in the foot. Out of the top 15 payroll teams, 11 finished over .500. Only 5 out of the bottom 15 payroll teams finished over .500. Even scarier is that many of the top teams have discovered player development, so the one advantage that the small market teams had is going away. Same thing happened with the Oakland A's.

 

The Brewers reward for smart player development and a timely trade should have been signing CC Sabathia to a long term extension. Instead, we had our 3 months in the spotlight and then Sabathia went off to the rich team to help them win for the next decade. What happens when Prince Fielder reaches his contract year? It doesn't matter how much he likes Milwaukee, he would have to be an idiot to resign here when someone is going to offer him a $175 million contract. Yeah the NFL has some problems, but if the Packers played under MLB's system, Brett Favre would have been traded to the Giants in about 1997 and the Packers would have gone back to obscurity.

 

I was ok with this system for awhile...it was fine when the Brewers were poorly managed and would have been losers under any system. Now we have a decent core of players and I have to watch them leave to the rich teams one by one. Good luck convincing me to go to 20 games at today's prices+30% in 2012 when Fielder is gone and the Brewers lose 90 games again. I hope they cancel the World Series again if it brings change, but I know it won't because even the small/middle market owners will give in because there's just too much money involved to cancel games, no matter what the benefit to the fans could be.

 

Maybe I'm just upset because of tonight, but I expect a nice, peaceful contract negotiation at the next CBA. Why would it be any different? The current system benefits the owners AND the players--they both are bringing in record dollar amounts. No wonder they keep bringing Selig back. The fans speak with their pocketbook and as long as ticket sales and TV ratings are high, nothing is going to change.

 

I can already give you my predicted World Series winner for 2010...and 2011...and 2012...and 2013...and 2014. There is at least a 33% chance and probably a 50% chance that I will be right. Yes, the Yankees haven't won a World Series since 2000, but those Yankees didn't have Sabathia, Teixiera, and Burnett in addition to a lineup that helped them make the playoffs 14 out of the previous 15 years. With that new stadium and the YES network they are now nearly completely unstoppable. They can have any free agent that they want...and what baseball player wouldn't want to sign a contract that nearly guarantees a World Series ring? They have a $200 million payroll this year, I'm sure it will be even higher next year.

 

I'll still cheer for the Brewers...but the competitive balance situation is likely to get much worse in the next 5 years.

[Ennder]

Yankees haven't won a world series since 2000 and haven't played in one since 2003 so you guys are exaggerating just how much of an advantage they have. Yeah they need to do something with the top few teams but it isn't anywhere near as bad as you are making it out to be. The same teams make the playoffs in the NFL and NBA pretty much every season as well. The bottom few teams rotate out but the strongest teams are pretty much always the same.

[Invader3K]

Well, the NFL and NBA have more playoff spots too, so teams repeating is more likely to happen. The fact that baseball has the fewest playoff spots in the major sports, and yet the same teams repeat regularly, should say a lot about the supposed "parity" that Selig likes to proclaim regularly.

[sheethead]

Yankees haven't won a world series since 2000 and haven't played in one since 2003

 

The Yankees made poor free agent personnel decisions, and they STILL made the playoffs each year since 2003 with the exception of last year. What did they do to compensate? They went out and spent over $300 million to correct their situation. No other team in all of sports has that much power, and the league is only as balanced as their richest and poorest teams allow. The situation is much worse than you like to believe. But as obsessed says, as long as people keep shelling out their money for the slightest hope that their team can compete against a $200+ million payroll, nothing is going to change. Its also relatively easy to predict the Yankees will at least be in the World Series 4 of the next 5 years, and will likely win 2 or 3 of them.

[Invader3K]

I guess the only hope is that come 2011, Mark Attanasio and many of the other smaller market owners demand some real change. I expect it could turn into an ugly fight. If they just quietly sign another CBA deal like last time, I'm going to be extremely disappointed. Pretty much everyone but the largest market teams agree that the draft system is broken, and that there is too much disparity in team payrolls. It's time to quit talking and start doing something to fix it.

[Thurston Fluff]

Even scarier is that many of the top teams have discovered player development, so the one advantage that the small market teams had is going away. Same thing happened with the Oakland A's.

 

The problem with that is they don't have the draft picks to get good prospects. The Yankees, for example, lost it's top two picks and the third round pick is a lot lower than it would appear after all the compensatory sandwich picks are added in. They can go international but they do not get top picks in the daft. That is sort of the catch 22 for some teams and the system as a whole. They can't develop enough of their players internally so they have to sign free agents which means they don't have enough picks left to find good prospects. Thus they are stuck in a cycle of spending to get better. It hurts the big payroll team in the sense that they could have less of a payroll for the same championship caliber team and it drives up the price for future free agents thus they get caught in a never ending cycle of free agent spending that eventually will get so high even they cannot afford all of them. It hurts the lesser payroll teams because they lose their best players.

[TheCrew07]

Even scarier is that many of the top teams have discovered player development, so the one advantage that the small market teams had is going away. Same thing happened with the Oakland A's.

 

The problem with that is they don't have the draft picks to get good prospects. The Yankees, for example, lost it's top two picks and the third round pick is a lot lower than it would appear after all the compensatory sandwich picks are added in. They can go international but they do not get top picks in the daft. That is sort of the catch 22 for some teams and the system as a whole. They can't develop enough of their players internally so they have to sign free agents which means they don't have enough picks left to find good prospects. Thus they are stuck in a cycle of spending to get better. It hurts the big payroll team in the sense that they could have less of a payroll for the same championship caliber team and it drives up the price for future free agents thus they get caught in a never ending cycle of free agent spending that eventually will get so high even they cannot afford all of them. It hurts the lesser payroll teams because they lose their best players.

1. They don't need to get the draft picks to develop good players upfront. Who wouldn't trade 3 draft picks in a single draft for a package of Teixeira, Sabathia, and Burnett if they could afford the salaries? It hurt them in the 2009 draft, but will not affect the 2010 draft and was a very smart move... instead of losing their first round pick 3 straight years signing one player at a time, they loaded up on FA in a single draft year and only gave up 1,2,3 in 2009.

 

2. If they ever let a player walk in FA they will still get compensation picks just like everyone else, comp picks have kept systems like the Dodgers and Red Sox strong even though they are players in the FA market.

[Invader3K]

I just hope that when the Yankees inevitably win the World Series again, at least some of the commentators say the facts and just say "Well, they outspend everyone in the off-season and bought their way to a championship." It won't happen, but it would be nice to get some truth instead of the inevitable sugar-coated talk about the great and historic franchise that's bound to occur. I don't get how their fans can really get all that excited about it either. I remember a few years ago when the Yankees won their last championship, The Daily Show called them, "a rag tag band of millionaire free agents." That about sums up this current Yankees team as well.

[Thurston Fluff]

It hurt them in the 2009 draft, but will not affect the 2010 draft and was a very smart move... instead of losing their first round pick 3 straight years signing one player at a time, they loaded up on FA in a single draft year and only gave up 1,2,3 in 2009.

 

That assumes they won't be getting any free agents in the future which they most certainly will have to. Considering their age at positions like catcher, outfield, the bullpen and rotation they will need to find replacements for a lot of their team in the near future.

 

2. If they ever let a player walk in FA they will still get compensation picks just like everyone else, comp picks have kept systems like the Dodgers and Red Sox strong even though they are players in the FA market.

 

They only let players walk when they are less valuable than the ones they sign. I don't really see those big market teams letting too many class A free agents walk. But for those rare occasions they do every player they let walk they replace with another free agent. I think teams like Boston and L.A. will end up in the same spot as the Yankees are now. So far they have some players they can plug in just as the Yankees did in the 90's. That will change as they get further along in FA market spending sprees. I think some of the market mechanisms in place like draft pick compensation takes a decade or more to effect teams negatively. Teams like Boston have players in their system to take over and they use their FA losses to somewhat compensate for it.

That makes for a long slow march to farm system depletion. As those compensation picks gradually lose ground to other teams, or are fewer and further in between, they end up having to pay to replace them. Just look at what the Yankees looked like in the 90's. They had a stocked farm system, a great team on the field only partially complemented with the best free agents money could buy. Then though trades and draft pick losses their farm got depleted and they ended up with old, expensive players that could only be replaced when they retired or let go as less than type A free agents. They then had to replace them with younger but far more expensive Free agents.

 

That doesn't even take into consideration what the trade market does to these teams. For every mid-season trade these teams make they lose prospects they cannot easily replace. Since most of them resign with those high payroll teams they get no compensation at all in return. Though they get to keep their draft pick which ends up being lost for another free agent signing.

It is a long term problem for big markets but, in the end, a problem none the less.

I guess what I'm saying is while we don't have competitive balance yet the system does have some mechanisms in it that, over time, can level the playing field somewhat. Over time it still takes good management and sound personnel decisions to win constantly. It is far easier to be the Yankees but it is not nearly as impossible to be the Brewers as it used to be.

[Thurston Fluff]

I don't get how their fans can really get all that excited about it either.

 

sorry to double dip but I don't get it either. It's like playing the all madden team against the Lions on playstation. Of course you win more often but what was the point? Just not much fun to win a rigged game and far more frustrating to lose it.

 

I like the fact that Melvin has said on several occasions he thinks small market teams presents the real challenge of running an organization that he likes as GM. We may not get as many world championships as the Yankees but we will never yawn while watching out team win one either.

[kramnoj]

A very large portion of Yankee fans grew up as fans of the team before they had such a huge payroll advantage. Should they not enjoy the team just because things have gone better for them? The All Madden analogy doesn't quite hold up. People who grew up Yankee fans didn't stack the deck in their favor. They just happened to grow up rooting for a team that would have lots of advantages.

 

Of course that doesn't apply to bandwagon fans. The kind of people that have the Yankees and the Cowboys and the Lakers as their favorite teams.