Baseball's Financial System and another strike/lockout...

[Patrick425]

Before the 2015 season, Russell Martin signed a 5 year $82 million contract with the Blue Jays. He was two years older than Grandal is now.

Before the 2014 season, Brian McCann (same age as Grandal now) signed a five year deal with the Yankees for $85 million.

 

The landscape has changed.

 

 

1995 - Jimmy Key - $4,873,700

2018 - Zack Grienke - $34,000,000

 

The landscape has changed

[homer]

Before the 2015 season, Russell Martin signed a 5 year $82 million contract with the Blue Jays. He was two years older than Grandal is now.

Before the 2014 season, Brian McCann (same age as Grandal now) signed a five year deal with the Yankees for $85 million.

 

The landscape has changed.

 

 

1995 - Jimmy Key - $4,873,700

2018 - Zack Grienke - $34,000,000

 

The landscape has changed

 

I have an apple. You have an orange.

 

Greinke signed that deal in 2015.

[DHonks]

A simple solution to much of this. MLB will expand to 32 teams soon. That's 50 more jobs, some will be big salaries

[NievesNoNO]

I think the days of 6-10 year contracts is just about dead. I think some of this conversation revolves around the players are being Drastically under-compensated for their first 6 years in the league. I think for the good-great players yes, they are likely under-compensated for 3 of those years. Using Manny Machado as an example. He's made 27 million over the last 2 seasons. Not full market value but not horrible; I guess you could argue maybe he's 15 million short on full market. I have a hard time saying an unproven rookie should make anything other than the league minimum $500,000ish. If I was a player I'd really focus on years 2-4 in the next CBA. There could be some adjustments there based on performance with a capped limit. Maybe the arbitration process starts a year sooner. I don't necessarily think there's a problem with the that system.

 

I think a salary floor might be a better way to get fair contracts to those veteran players entering FA for the 1st time. Many teams now are taking the position of either we're going to try to win a WS or we're not going to try to win. If each team was forced to spend a moderate amount on payroll you'd at least see the better players given fair money. I mean if you're going to be forced to spend some money you may as well get it spent on the best players.

 

I mean in the end I guess it's up to the player to decide if they're getting a fair amount of the pot. I'd argue they're doing fine. I for sure wouldn't base my argument around wanting 5-6 year deals of guaranteed money for non-guaranteed results but I think there's an opportunity to adjust that year 2-4 window where there's a more significant gap. I don't hear any talk of players returning money for poor seasons or injury.

[Underachiever]

I know this is Deadspin, but it's not a Deadspin article. It's a really great breakdown of the value of wins....the REAL value of wins, and the actual value of free agents, and why teams just aren't paying for big-money free agents anymore.

 

https://deadspin.com/baseball-doesnt-need-collusion-to-turn-off-the-hot-stov-1831644811

 

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

 

"And the numbers were eye-opening: Just about every baseball free agent was being paid more than he was actually worth to his team in terms of the added revenue it would see thanks to extra wins. According to one researcher, Graham Tyler—then an undergrad econ student at Brown, and until recently the Rays’ director of player operations thanks in part to his pioneering studies in this area—teams only earn an extra $1.5 million from each additional win, meaning that a truly rational profit-maximizing owner (more on this in a minute) wouldn’t spend more than $6.75 million a year on a Machado-level talent. Anything more than that, and you’re better off staging a Marlins-style teardown"

 

I'd love to see the study related to this. So, is this saying that the difference to the owner revenue based on mostly park attendance and game day revenue streams for say a 60 win team vs 100 win team is roughly $60 million?

 

I'd like to know what the baseline is that is being used. Are they saying it's 1.5 million per win across the board or at a certain level? I'd have a hard time believing there's any difference in revenue between a 80 win and 85 win team.

 

Perhaps someone could help me understand this better. If salaries are being held down in the first 6/arby years due to the CBA, wouldn't that change the overall math? Or was it accounted for? In the current system, if I have a bunch of minimum salary players, the value of a win would have a lower dollar value than if the pre-FA players were making more. If league-wide, the younger players were making more, would that change to overall value of a win? I'll hang up and listen.

[MrTPlush]

A simple solution to much of this. MLB will expand to 32 teams soon. That's 50 more jobs, some will be big salaries

 

Expansion isn't close enough to fix the next CBA and regardless I don't think the players will settle for that. If mega 6+ year contracts are going to get rare they will want more money in earlier years. While more jobs is great overall you aren't pleasing players on an individual basis.

 

MLB teams were dumb for so long they dug themselves into a hole. I believe the last few years make way more sense, but good luck handing out money like an idiot for years and then suddenly deciding you don't want to do that anymore. The players won't stand for it. I mean would you just accept it if your employer decided he has been overpaying you for years and cuts back your salary/benefits? No, if you had the power these players do you would make sure to get your say in the matter in other ways than.

[bill hAll Star]

I kinda liken this to the last CBA that the NBA had. There was a hilarious era in the early/mid 2000s era where Stephon Marbury, Steve Francis, and others got ridiculous deals that crippled their franchise payrolls for nearly a decade. One of my favorite trade deadlines ever was when Raef Lafrentz's expiring contract was the top ticket. Everyone wanted to clear their bad contracts for it. I get some of the hand-wringing from writers that teams should be able to easily afford Machado/Harper and that both would be worth it (and that is generally true (Harper could be argued a bit)).

 

The NBA changed it so that the contracts were generally shorter. This saved some of the owners from themselves. The only difference here is that right now, the owners/teams are creating these changes by themselves. They're making the contracts shorter for any 2nd tier players and it may even trickle up to Harper/Machado. They're also self-enforcing a salary cap at the luxury tax level.

 

Something will have to be figured out to pay the pre-arby guys a bit better or shorten that timeframe in this next CBA as we all know. And of course that solution is going to have to be reasonable enough to not just allow young, star players to flock to the Yankees after 3 years. It's possible that making guys like Christian Yelich free agents at the 3-year mark will allow the money to start flowing again (I'm not sure he'd have taken the extension if that was the case).

[SoCal Brew Crew Fan]

I wonder how much is an adjustment to the post-steroids era. Players windows are shorter now and teams have adjusted. The pendulum swung from players to owners and the players will likely seek some relief in years of control which seems reasonable.

 

I only care how it impacts competitive balance and the Brewers. Wealthy owners and a powerful, fully empowered union sounds like a fair fight. The hard part is it’s a 3-way negotiation with the owners split by revenue pie. Competitively it’s more balanced than it’s been since the reserve clause. I might not feel like that if my owner was milking it, but Mark A has been great. It’s all about balance. I want to watch the best players play, but if they aren’t wearing Brewers uniforms I won’t care. Hopefully reasonable heads prevail.