Zack Greinke to Dodgers - 6 years, $147 million

[trwi7]

Baseball has capped spending on the draft, they've capped spending on international free agents

 

Which hurts small market teams more than it helps them.

[sveumrules]

If Ken Burns is to be believed Baseball is a mirror of American society at large. As such, it seems only natural that the gap between the haves and have nots continues to grow in the sport.

 

The easy fix is to split local TV revenues. Nobody is gonna tune it to watch one team. Say the Dodgers get 250 million a year as reported. They keep 125 million with the other half getting split between their opponents in proportion to the number of televised games they played against the Dodgers. Seems easy enough to me.

[Thurston Fluff]

Nobody talks about it, but the disparity in payrolls cheapens championships for teams that are able to buy their way into contention.

 

While that is spot on to be fair I also think it enhances the joy fans of small market teams feel when they do win. I couldn't fathom following a big market team because it wouldn't mean much to win. If I was a fan of a big market team I would feel relief that we won a World Series not happiness. That just isn't worth investing my time or energy.

[logan82]

The easy fix is to split local TV revenues. Nobody is gonna tune it to watch one team. Say the Dodgers get 250 million a year as reported. They keep 125 million with the other half getting split between their opponents in proportion to the number of televised games they played against the Dodgers. Seems easy enough to me.

That really doesn't work either. Just moves the problem to a divisional level instead of team.

[owbc]

The easy fix is to split local TV revenues. Nobody is gonna tune it to watch one team. Say the Dodgers get 250 million a year as reported. They keep 125 million with the other half getting split between their opponents in proportion to the number of televised games they played against the Dodgers. Seems easy enough to me.

That really doesn't work either. Just moves the problem to a divisional level instead of team.

 

They already essentially do this. 33% of TV revenues are split (equally among all teams).

 

Baseball has a very good revenue sharing program. All of these giant contracts are for players that are at or past their prime, thanks to the free agency rules. As already mentioned, the top teams have to pay more money for each win because they are bidding against each other for free agents. The end of the steroid era seems to have helped also, a contract for ages 30-35 isn't what it was 10 years ago.

 

Nothing has changed for the Brewers. They never have signed a mega free agent deal and they will not in the future. I'll start worrying if the Cardinals sign a $100+ million/year TV deal.

[logan82]

The easy fix is to split local TV revenues. Nobody is gonna tune it to watch one team. Say the Dodgers get 250 million a year as reported. They keep 125 million with the other half getting split between their opponents in proportion to the number of televised games they played against the Dodgers. Seems easy enough to me.

That really doesn't work either. Just moves the problem to a divisional level instead of team.

 

They already essentially do this. 33% of TV revenues are split (equally among all teams).

 

Baseball has a very good revenue sharing program. All of these giant contracts are for players that are at or past their prime, thanks to the free agency rules. As already mentioned, the top teams have to pay more money for each win because they are bidding against each other for free agents. The end of the steroid era seems to have helped also, a contract for ages 30-35 isn't what it was 10 years ago.

 

Nothing has changed for the Brewers. They never have signed a mega free agent deal and they will not in the future. I'll start worrying if the Cardinals sign a $100+ million/year TV deal.

I think 34% of net local revenue.(based on this) So it could be much much less depending on a teams expenses/debt. So you are only knocking the gap down by a third at best.

[endaround]

Baseball has a salary cap. The fact the it doesn't change anything pretty much tells us that having a salary cap doesn't do much.

[Fear The Chorizo]

It's a salary cap, but it's not a hard cap - teams that don't care what their payroll is have no problem shelling out the current luxury tax penalties for going over it with their TV money. As long as the revenue streams that come with being in a large market dwarf those penalties, the cap penalties don't matter to the big market teams.

 

Either that salary cap needs to become a hard cap, or the penalties need to have more teeth in order to improve financial competitive balance among large and small market teams. I think there are already luxury tax escalators for teams that are always over the cap, but I would make them even more harsh. 1st year over the cap - 25 million penalty paid to revenue sharing pool shared by teams not over the cap. 2nd consecutive year over - 50 million penalty. 3rd straight year - 100 million penalty. 4th year - 200 million. Still gives teams the option to blow through their huge revenue, but eventually poor roster management and escalating payrolls would cause even the biggest fish to become cash-strapped and have to contribute huge dollars to revenue sharing.

[torts]

Baseball has a salary cap. The fact the it doesn't change anything pretty much tells us that having a salary cap doesn't do much.

 

 

baseball does not have a salary cap. it has a TAX over a defined dollar amount that any team can choose to go over. the NHL has a salary cap. what MLB has is nothing like what the NHL has/had/will continue to have.

[torts]

also, the fact that only 4 teams have ever gone over the defined dollar amount for the tax shows that its completely useless. to have the tax have ANY effect on competitiveness and equal share of talent it needs to be lowered closer to $100 - 110 million instead of $189 million.

[Ennder]

If baseball adopted a hard salary cap the Brewers would stand no chance, it actually would not end up helping mid market teams. A salary cap helps the really low end teams and the top end teams and screws over the middle tier.

 

The NHL doesn't have a league right now because the salary cap screwed things up so much. Not exactly a good example to point at.

 

A salary cap works somewhat in football because of the league is structured, it simply would not work in baseball.

 

The Dodgers have the highest payroll in baseball, they don't have the best team in baseball. 5 years from now they will still have the highest payroll in baseball and I'm not sure that roster will be one that can put up a winning season since they spent so much on aging talent 5 years out.

[Invader3K]

I remember a few years ago reading a very well reasoned article that explained why a hard cap would not work in baseball. I wish I could find a link or remembered who wrote it.

[Point Beer Is Best]

We'll never live to see a total level playing field for income/salary distribution, but what about a system that allows teams to hang onto their stars a little while longer? The MLBPA would probably never go for an NFL-style "franchise-tag" because the player could potentially lose out on hundreds of millions of guaranteed dollars they would get in the open market.

 

But what about expanding the team control over a player from 6 years of service time to 7 or 8? The trade-off would be that players would be eligible for salary arbitration after 2 years, instead of 3. A very small percentage of players make it long enough to cash in on these huge deals, but most members of the union will benefit from getting a bump from the minimum after just a couple of years. It may entice bigger stars to sign long-term deals with their own clubs, rather than assuming the risk of waiting it out.

[Ennder]

Baseball can definitely do more to even the playing field it just isn't as big a deal as the actual dollars make it look like. If you actually look at year to year competitiveness over the past 10 seasons baseball isn't much different than any other sport. The NFL looks like it has a lot of parity but that is more because of the short schedule and the fact it is unbalanced to help weaker teams as much as anything. There are all kinds of good ideas thrown around for improving the sport but a hard cap won't work just because of the games structure. It is more balanced than it was 5 years ago so things have headed in the right direction even if they aren't there just yet.

[JohnBriggs12]

Bill Veeck said it back in 1952, when he proposed teams split revenues from televised games 50/50. He basically said it takes 2 teams to provide the game (entertainment for the fans), and therefore any revenue generated for televising the game should be split equally between the teams participating. Without either team, there is no game to watch. Why should one team benefit because more of the people watching are fans of that team?

 

In football, the big markets don't control the game. That's because pioneers such as George Halas and Wellington Mara were willing to sacrifice team revenues to grow the game and knew that meant keeping all franchises on an equal footing. Had the NFL had guys like Jerry Jones owning teams back then, football would have the same problem as baseball does now.

 

This stuff that it couldn't happen because baseball is so different is nonsense that's perpetrated by guys that still benefit from the status quo, namely the big market owners. It would take a sea change and won't happen but it could.

[logan82]

TV is the largest driving force behind the gap in revenue between teams. TV wise baseball and football are drastically different. The NFL is basically a few national TV contracts while baseball is 30ish different local contracts. Baseball has 10 times as many games on all days of the week which makes a large national contract practically impossible. Take away the local TV contracts and revenues get much much closer.

[Roderick]

also, the fact that only 4 teams have ever gone over the defined dollar amount for the tax shows that its completely useless. to have the tax have ANY effect on competitiveness and equal share of talent it needs to be lowered closer to $100 - 110 million instead of $189 million.

 

Obviously at those thresholds the union would balk unless some sort of floor was also instituted to require the teams to not just pocket the money (see Cincy Bengals of the NFL). And that floor would probably be too high without more media revenue pooling.

[Thurston Fluff]

Baseball doesn't need a cap provided they allow any team to move anywhere they want. AS it stands teams can't move to the biggest markets because the current teams there won't allow anyone to move there. I'd have to think the Yankee's income would go down if Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan all had their own team. Same with LA. Since all teams are not free to move to the best markets it is hardly a fair system. Thus the need to adjust the system itself.

[owbc]

I agree that the current system can be improved by getting more teams to pay into the luxury tax and increasing the penalties for going over. It should be possible to negotiate that in the next CBA in exchange for some sort of salary floor. I don't think it needs to be a hard floor but just some sort of accountability. It would also be nice to have a way to reward teams like the Brewers for having success in a small market, perhaps some of the revenue sharing should be tied to wins or attendance.

[SRB]

Baseball doesn't need a cap provided they allow any team to move anywhere they want. AS it stands teams can't move to the biggest markets because the current teams there won't allow anyone to move there. I'd have to think the Yankee's income would go down if Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan all had their own team. Same with LA. Since all teams are not free to move to the best markets it is hardly a fair system. Thus the need to adjust the system itself.

E.g.: the Athletics trying to move to San Jose (huge market) but the Giants won't let them.

[Crew2323]

You can watch Greinke's press conference here:

 

http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?topic_id=16646644&c_id=LA&content_id=25524357

 

Even though he was only here a short time, he'll go down as one of my favorite Brewer players ever.

[monty57]

Baseball has 10 times as many games on all days of the week which makes a large national contract practically impossible.

 

It will take time (at least as long as these new TV deals are signed for), but eventually, I believe all baseball will be viewed through some mix of MLB TV on the television and MLB.tv on the internet (I think in the not-too-distant future all TV will go through the internet, but that's for another discussion). At that point, we would come as close as we ever have to having economic equality in baseball. MLB would get all the ad revenue and/or pay-for-view revenue without sharing it with the networks, so baseball will have a lot more money, but it will be evenly split because that's what (I believe) Selig put into the contract for MLB TV and MLB internet content.

 

I'd guess that's why so many teams/networks are signing long-term deals now. The teams want to keep their advantage as long as possible, and the networks don't want to lose the ad revenue. Until (and if) that happens, the Brewers are going to once again be "small market," as their paltry raise in revenue from their TV deals can't hope to compete with the deals being signed by many other teams.

[markedman5]

So apparently Zack negotiated a 3 year opt out into this deal which probably explains why it came in slightly lower then was speculated.

 

Smart move by Zack.....if he doesn't like it there or if he pitches great he can opt out and if he struggles or gets hurt he can just opt in.

[jerichoholicninja]

So apparently Zack negotiated a 3 year opt out into this deal which probably explains why it came in slightly lower then was speculated.

 

Smart move by Zack.....if he doesn't like it there or if he pitches great he can opt out and if he struggles or gets hurt he can just opt in.

 

The opt out is becoming pretty standard in big money contracts.

[Ennder]

Sports will move away from TV and towards the internet in the next 10 years so that will mix things up considerably. It is hard to really predict how the media market is going to work in the future.