Foxsports.com Article on Payroll and Winning

[brewcrew00]

I couldn't find the link report here anymore? Not sure if it's just my computer or not as it seems stuff shows up half the time and the other half it's gone. Either way I thought this was a great article about some of the teams who are winning this year with low payrolls and younger players. Mods feel free to move this if I have it in the wrong place.

 

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/7109136

[Baldkin]

Good article.

 

Not really a fan of how he picks and chooses his argument so that "half the teams in contention" are in the bottom half of payroll.... when in reality, he lists 13 teams, 9 of which are in the top 12 of payroll this year. Just doesn't put them all on the fancy chart.

[HebrewHammer]

The book "The Wages of Wins" basically came to the same conclusion.

 

What baseball has done is interesting. They wanted more competitive balance as it's better for the league in general. But there was no way they could achieve this through a salary cap because enough owners opposed it and of course players would never go for it. So baseball found it had to regulate itself and created a system that allows teams to replenish their farm when their FA's are picked off the vine by larger market teams that can afford to pay them too much.

 

So the league has a lot more competitive balance due to this and revenue sharing, all without getting the PA up in arms.

 

Much of this is because of Bud Selig's leadership. He gets a lot of heat and some of it is warranted. But he in a sense saved baseball since the strike by implementing these features. He's created a system of more competitive balance while allowing the so called free market to sustain life.

 

Large market teams still have the advantage of course. But smaller market teams can compete for bits at a time if they draft well and use their compensatory picks well as well as signing the right FA's to fair contracts.

[fondybrewfan]

Here is a dumb question.

 

How were the NFL and the NBA able to get their respective unions to agree to "soft" salary caps? Perhaps it would take a major financial crisis in the MLB to get anything like that done but who knows.

[Invader3K]

I am not sure about the NBA (I just don't follow basketball at all), but in the NFL, if I understand correctly, the player's union basically gave up a lot in order to secure the right to free agency. This included the salary cap, and is why the NFL owners have a lot more leverage with the players than the MLB owners do with their players, if I'm not mistaken.

[endaround]

Because the NFL player's union is a joke. The NBA had a really weak union, and still does to some extent. But the Larry Bird rule pretty much makes the NBA cap a joke anyway. Money is hardly ever the issue in the NBA for winning, it has much more to do with luck of the draft.

[Boy Jeenius]

NFL is a hard cap. Lot's of veterans with big salaries find this out every year. They market the NFL as a singular unit and have the richest of all TV deals pumping $$ into their coffers. Green Bay winning in the 60's when TV became common place in all homes allowed them to agree that all teams work with the exact same rules and dollars. They could not effectively put in a deal where New York and Boston and Philly had the best team every year. TV exec turned commisioner Pete Rozelle was the genius there.

 

NBA was supposed to be a hard cap too until it looked like Larry Bird was not going to be re-signed by the Celtics, so they changed that rule fast.

 

However the NBA is unique in that they took a different path. They partnered up with the players association and essentially made it a marketing company. Instead of teams, they agreed that they could make more $$ by selling the stars of the league and marketing shoes, jersey's etc. In doing this they put in much tougher policies on conduct and a tough drug policy(except for marijuana) and working together it really took off. Everyone became VERY rich, including their marketing partners like Nike. However in doing so, the game has become really boring to people after they reach the age of 35, when the marketing pizzazz junk wears off (like me). I haven't watched an NBA game in 15 years, and I used to love the Bucks.

David Stern is the markerting genius who figured this out. That's why he has so much power, and guys get fined and suspended all the time for seemingly harmless stuff. Anybody who sheds bad light to the people who pay the bills(white middle class) gets slapped down hard. It's also the reason USA is no longer the world power in basketball. Good teams beat good individuals every time. Young players know the way to the NBA is to be a star, not a winner.

 

Baseball owners, historically, have been just plain dumb, with little or no foresight. Selig will be treated kindly by history, for getting this thing squared away by making the unpopular(but often correct) decisions.

[Invader3K]

Here's kind of an aside question: Do people here think we've achieved true parity in baseball with the compensation picks and other factors? Or will things shift back once the big market teams adjust, and we'll be back to New York, LA, Boston, etc. dominating baseball? (I know those places still do to an extent, but you also have teams like Milwaukee, Cleveland, Colorado, etc. contending now).

[HebrewHammer]

Every sport has different issues.

 

It's not fair to call the NFL Union a joke at all. They have many different issues than other sports.

 

The NFL pays out 60% of revenues to players. They generate about 6 billion in income and the players do in fact get most of it. But in the NFL it's a tricky thing. You have 52 guys on a roster and 32 teams. That's a whole lot of players sharing the money! So you don't get the mega deals like in other sports very often. Also, turnover is VERY high in football compared to other sports. Players become ineffective rather rapidly so the union and the owners know they can't have guaranteed deals. It would simply kill the league and no one would win. Thus the signing bonus is where guy gets paid.

 

Football is an interesting game in that it isn't single player dominated. One guy usually isn't going to make or break you. So in effect there's much more player competition for each job and that lowers salaries.

 

Football will never have guaranteed deals like baseball or basketball. The nature of the spot make this impossible. Singing bonuses will rule the sport. You can't compare the types of deals they get. Also factor in the insanely high medical costs associated with the sport. Players are covered for life after playing in the NFL. The NFL also employs many ex-players as does the union and has programs set up to create a life after the game is over. The fact is the players get a large piece of the pie and this is why they aren't up in arms over things. The league works. The players have very little leverage because single players don't dominate and it isn't hard to replace most guys.

 

Basketball has a soft cap but it's fair because it allows teams to keep their stars and not be burdened by the high pay player. But basketball teams employ far fewer players so each player gets a bigger piece of the pie. Injuries aren't as huge a problem.

 

Baseball is unregulated mainly. The owners have been made to police themselves without tampering with the players money. In baseball single players do have great effect.

 

I have no idea if what seems like decent parity will fade now that large market teams are getting smarter about holding onto draft picks and building inside the farm more. If anything it would seem like FA's would become more affordable, but that isn't the case either.

 

I'd imagine there is a good chance our economy becomes so damaged that sports become irrelevant to the common man and these associations either go under or cater exclusively to a larger upper class.

[Crewin06]

Baseball has turned the corner dramatically since around 2000. The biggest achievement that Bud Selig has made in my opinion is the arbitration process for young players.

 

Make no mistake the reason small market teams stand a prayer of competing is because Players like Prince Fielder will remain on a small market team for 6 years before he will make market value. In that time such a player usually has a chance to prove himself instead of juicing up getting 2, 35 homerun seasons before he hits 25 years of age and then being overpaid. Players still make a mint. But it is in such a structure that small teams still stand a prayer.

 

If this was the 90's Fielder and Braun would be getting 15-20 million a year a piece by 08 and 09.

 

Today in 2007 they probably won't make those figures till 2011 and 2013 respectively. Allowing a small market team to build a team around them before they become to expensive.

[bklynbrewcrew]

Small market teams have to be perfect in their talent evaluations and the contracts that they hand out. Teams like the Yankees can make numerous mistakes like Pavano, Igawa, and Farnsworth as can the Red Sox with guys like Lugo and Drew. A team like the Brewers cant afford to give big money to guys like Suppan and have them fall on their face. Can the Brewers compete somewhat with the big markets: yes they can but for how long? Finally things have caught up with Oakland because they had to trade away their best players and the draft has been unkind to say the least. The Brewers should be fine for another 3 or 4 years but at that point Mark A will have to spend big money on guys like Fielder and Braun or watch the team go back to 90 loss seasons. Unless we get a salary cap in baseball at some point it wont matter how good a GM like Doug Melvin is because the battle will always be fought way uphill.

[endaround]

Now Bud gets credit for arbitration?

[vacin8r]

Of course Bud gets credit for arbitration. I completely disagree with his lifetime suspension of shoeless joe however. A .957 OPS in the series should count for something.. In the previous posters defense, Bud does look like Bowie Kuhn in a not at all sort of way.

-Don

[pitchleague]

Bud Selig has nothing to do with the lifetime suspension of Shoeless Joe. Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis handed that down back in the 1920s. Now, I guess you can argue that Bud has the power to re-instate Jackson, but you state that you "completely disagree with his lifetime suspension of shoeless joe" and that is completely wrong.

[monty57]

There will always be small market teams competing. However, the same group of big spenders wins every year, while the small market teams cycle, depending on whose draft picks worked out the best.

 

That said, there are some things that are making a difference. Much of the revenue is now shared amongst the teams. I'm particularly intrigued by things like MLB.tv and Gameday Audio. The Brewers don't sell that many fewer seats than most of the big market teams, so most of the discrepency among big vs. small markets comes from the TV deals. If Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the like are correct (which I'd bet they are), we will soon get much of our television programming directly through the internet routed straight onto our TV screen. As it is currently set up, every team shares the MLB.tv (and I believe all internet) revenue equally. This may be a few years off, but if everyone gets their baseball programming off of MLB.tv or another internet source rather than watching them on FSN or the YES network, most of the revenue discrepencies will be gone.

 

This could be tough to pass, as there are legalities that need to be considered, and it may mean that some people without internet access would not be able to watch baseball, so they could alienate some fans. However, it would infuse a lot of revenue directly into MLB's hands, and that revenue would go evenly to all teams in baseball.

[bklynbrewcrew]

Another example of how this system doesnt work is in regards to the draft. Kids like Rick Porcello price themselves out of the range of KC and slip to the end of the first round where a team like Detroit picks them. Porcello is close to signing for 7 million when he should have been drafted by KC. If the best players dont even wind up with the worst teams through the draft then how is the system fair. There isnt parity now and there never will be without a hard salary cap.

[endaround]

Umm bkynbrecrew, the owners could have had a rookie salary cap. They don't want one.

[bklynbrewcrew]

endaround, the owners actually turned down a rookie cap? Thats prety stupid of them but then again these owners arent very smart.