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Post by philsbosoxfan on Jan 1, 2019 21:11:18 GMT -5
Baseball's slow offseason is bad for team mascots, their outfits get moldy. There's no debating that.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Jan 1, 2019 21:35:49 GMT -5
You can say that the teams are shooting themselves in the foot though by forcing this on the players though.
If they keep forcing this down their throats, then the players will have no choice but to not play ball. The players union will have to do something drastic to change this system, forcing teams to give in to something that really hurts them down the line (like team control over a player for instance).
I don't want to confuse my points. I WANT to see MLB to be more like the NBA, but it is nothing like the NBA at the moment. I want to see max contracts set where the hometown team can offer the most money and years, but yet keeps the years down for negotiations sake. Seeing player control down to 4 or 5 years with a hometown team that has the power of restricted free agency involved in the last year of control.
You can do this without a cap too in baseball. The NBA forces a cap to just stop teams from acquiring more than 3 superstars on one team at one time, which hurts the balance in that league in terms of competition.
I just think the NBA's model is the way to go here without the cap.
-Gets the players paid sooner. -Stops players from asking too many years, which causes long holdouts in negations. -Gives the hometown team a advantage to signing their own players or a high draft pick (in restricted free agency) if they're a cheap team. -Creates more of a frenzy on Day one of free agency, which maybe helps the game's interest by fans.
I also like the draft idea in the off-season, but that's a different topic for a different day.
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Post by patford on Jan 1, 2019 23:22:20 GMT -5
I think a lot of it is there are a lot of good young players around the league and just about every team has in the back of their mind the problem of resigning those young players. It isn't just the Sox. A bumb or two down the road other teams are going to have the same issue. It's a complicated formula with many repercussions. One thing teams should bank on and plan around is financial and related rule changes just coincidentally happening when it would be most beneficial to the Yankees. In other words figure out right now when the "crunch" is going to hit the Yankees and then plan all in on cap expansion and any other change of rules which will help the Yankees.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jan 1, 2019 23:55:39 GMT -5
You can say that the teams are shooting themselves in the foot though by forcing this on the players though. If they keep forcing this down their throats, then the players will have no choice but to not play ball. The players union will have to do something drastic to change this system, forcing teams to give in to something that really hurts them down the line (like team control over a player for instance). I don't want to confuse my points. I WANT to see MLB to be more like the NBA, but it is nothing like the NBA at the moment. I want to see max contracts set where the hometown team can offer the most money and years, but yet keeps the years down for negotiations sake. Seeing player control down to 4 or 5 years with a hometown team that has the power of restricted free agency involved in the last year of control. You can do this without a cap too in baseball. The NBA forces a cap to just stop teams from acquiring more than 3 superstars on one team at one time, which hurts the balance in that league in terms of competition. I just think the NBA's model is the way to go here without the cap. -Gets the players paid sooner. -Stops players from asking too many years, which causes long holdouts in negations. -Gives the hometown team a advantage to signing their own players or a high draft pick (in restricted free agency) if they're a cheap team. -Creates more of a frenzy on Day one of free agency, which maybe helps the game's interest by fans. I also like the draft idea in the off-season, but that's a different topic for a different day. Literally, what you are describing is forcing players to make less money so that you as a fan are happy with inconsequential things like having them sign sooner in the offseason. That's a bad thing for an inconsequential "benefit". I disagree that a "frenzy on day one of free agency" would do much to help interest in the game. Again, you're describing the kind of thing that super fans care about. I don't believe that in a 37000-seat ballpark, more than a couple hundred would care about that kind of thing.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Jan 2, 2019 0:29:12 GMT -5
The issue is how broke the economic system is in Baseball compared to Football and Basketball. Of those three sports only in Baseball can only a few teams afford the best free agents. Only in Baseball are there no spending floors. That is the issue. I don't care if teams tank in sports, it's the smart play for a bunch of them. Yet only in Baseball does it really effect the free agent market.
Easiest fix should be to set a salary floor, yet you just can't do it in Baseball. The revenues are too messed up. So even though my team benefits greatly from this broken system. I want to see it fixed. Only way I see of doing that is sharing TV money like the NBA and NFL do. At the same time I don't see that happening. So you can't fix Baseball, just keep trying bandaids like the luxury tax that has made the problem worse not better. The poor teams still don't spend and now the rich teams are using it as an excuse. The luxury tax doesn't come close to increasing like the teams that pay it revenue does. The whole idea that the Red Sox need to reset at that level is kinda crazy given thier revenue. Yet the poor teams want more money, they won't spend. It's just a really crazy broken system.
I could care less when free agents sign. The issue is they aren't signing because of a broken system. The few teams willing to spend just sit back and wait. Hardly any competition. Fix the economic system and you won't have to worry about free agency. It will fix itself.
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Post by soxcentral on Jan 2, 2019 8:02:25 GMT -5
Some assorted thoughts on this topic. Many have already been said, but just getting some of these in one place that have been rolling about in my head. 1) If you want to say that as a baseball fan, the slow pace of the offseason annoys you personally, that's your personal opinion and completely reasonable. I can relate. It is sorta frustrating to sit and wait. I get that 100%. 2) If you want to say that baseball's slow offseason is bad for the game, I haven't seen a single reasonable, cogent argument to back up that claim yet in this thread or the related discussion last offseason. I've seen nothing that ties the slow offseason to any particular negative effect that doesn't involve an obvious logical fallacy. 3) If you want to say that baseball's slow offseason is bad for teams, I haven't seen a single reasonable, cogent argument to back up that claim yet in this thread or the related discussion last offseason. Teams have the power to offer players more money to get them to sign. If they don't want to, that's their problem. 4) If you want to say that baseball's slow offseason is bad for players, I could perhaps buy that in the sense that the slow pace is because players are no longer getting paid as much. Otherwise, again, I haven't seen a single reasonable, cogent argument to back up that claim beyond something as inconsequential as the player not knowing specifically where he'll be living geographically or something. Players have the ability to sign for offers that are on the table. If they don't want to, that's their problem. 5) It makes no sense to set a deadline for players to sign contracts. All that will do is drive contracts down even further unfairly. 6) Comparison to the NBA makes no sense. That league has a maximum contract for its best players (to oversimplify a bit, but the point stands). The league's best players are literally just deciding which organization they want to play for - they know what they're going to make. 7) Comparison to the NFL, which has a much more draconian salary cap, makes no sense. Yes, MLB has a CBT but most teams come nowhere near it. If there is a finite amount of money to go around, there is incentive to get deals done quicker for both sides. If MLB instituted a true salary cap at a level most teams would pay, then you'd see players signing a lot quicker. (Using Spotrac, NFL salary cap figures range from ~$144.5M to ~$199.0M. www.spotrac.com/nfl/cap/ MLB payrolls ranged from $68.8M to $227M. NINE teams didn't spend half of what the Red Sox did. www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/2018/ ) 8) If you post on this forum, you are not the typical fan who MLB (or any other professional league) is marketing to. The typical baseball fan does not go to an internet forum to talk about it, never mind about the minor league system of a particular franchise. If you are here, you are the outlier, and you are not who leagues are marketing to. It's a thing that comes up when we talk about, say, broadcasters - that broadcaster is not there for you. That broadcaster is there for the 25-50yo (or whatever the main demo is now) who sorta knows what's happening and doesn't know who Michael Chavis is, never mind like, Chad De La Guerra. Because YOU feel a certain way is not indicative of the way the target demo feels or reacts to something. The person that matters is the one in your workplace/class/whatever who is asking you questions about what's going on in the offseason. Because guess what? The person in that demo doesn't follow the offseason nearly as closely as you do. They follow the on-field product, during the season. I think in a discussion like this one, stepping back and recognizing that is crucial to having any sort of intelligent conversation. 9) I do think the two slow offseasons in a row are potentially bad for one reason: they portend a near-certain labor stoppage that will be necessary to correct some of the problems that are leading to the slow offseasons. The players have gotten slow played to this point and need to correct it, and I think they now realize the corner they've painted themselves into. I'll be stunned if there's no work stoppage during the next CBA negotiations, because the league's pay structure needs a maassive reset, and that's not something that's going to happen in an offseason unless both sides come in uncharacteristically ready to do just that. Lots to digest here, being on the other side of this there's some here we do agree on..but not all! 1) Agreed, it's frustrating but not the central point of concern, or at least its not my central concern. 2) My main concern, not specifically that the slow offseason is THE PROBLEM, but that it is a symptom of a larger problem that baseball is at fairly high risk for an economic crash in the next decade. This is sort of like predicting the economic crash of 2008 a few years ahead, but one sign is the continued downturn in attendance that has gone on for the past 6 years. I'm not relating the entire drop to a slow offseason or two, but do believe the game's terrible marketing approach is a major contributing factor and killing another offseason of headlines isn't helping. I work in the youth sports industry and talk this stuff all the time with HS/college baseball players and coaches who almost all agree the interest level in baseball at younger ages has declined dramatically over the last decade. Not sure how to quantify that and don't want it to side track the main point, but felt it was worth adding why my feelings are pretty strong on this. 3) Not bad for teams, in fact the opposite. Short-sighted gains. 4) Agreed, and another big concern. In ARod's roundtable with players recently he mentioned when he signed his $25m/yr contract the league was worth $1 billion, now it is worth $10 billion but there are no $75m/yr players. Salaries are being depressed big time, and I think this is the central reason why off-seasons are moving slower. 5). It would make more sense if there was a league minimum cap. 6) My comparison to the NBA would more be for their marketing approach than the exact way they set max contracts. 7). Best idea from the NFL is the minimum, which as you show keeps teams on a much closer level salary-wise than MLB. And right with that is a league where every team has a chance (whether it takes it or not is a separate debate. Separate TV contracts make this much harder in MLB, but there has to be a way to fix this. Everything is fixable. 8). Agreed, but attendance declines league-wide for 6 years straight point to something being wrong from the casual fan's perspective too. Baseball was just as slow and boring to the average fan in 2012, something else is going on here. 9) Agreed.
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 2, 2019 8:57:11 GMT -5
I think one of the biggest points not explicitly stated in Chris' excellent post is that free agency is not the way to win anymore. Free agency has way more losers than winners in the long run. You might get excess value in the beginning of a deal, but you always lose in the end. You win with young home grown players now. You don't win by going out and signing Machado and Harper. That just makes it so there is no possible way to have a complete team. There are way too many busts in free agency that teams cannot get out of. You can't just cut the player and have one year of dead money like in the NFL. You get stuck with years and years of dead money. Teams are forced to play bad players just to try to recover value.
Teams have finally gotten smart. There are no more dumb owners who won't listen to anyone about anything because he just wants some shiny new toy. Literally every rich person has a lot of people employed working with big data to help him get richer and richer. Things have changed really quickly. The shiny new toy model of free agency has died. Players are only going to be offered reasonable salaries from now on, no matter what is in the CBA. Scott Boras can no longer set the market with ridiculously stupid contracts for players who don't come close to deserving them.
I don't see why they cannot just allow teams to cut players, still pay them, but have the money come off the luxury tax figure. And then let that player make even more money if some other teams pays them on top of that.
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Post by maxwellsdemon on Jan 2, 2019 11:47:25 GMT -5
I agree that the free agent bust problem is huge, especially when it encompasses many years of unproductive money at the back end. Perhaps a way around this is to set a tax formula that does a couple of things. Eliminate the draft pick penalty so the free agent bizaar comes down to just money which helps the players. Then have the tax escalate with the number of years of the extension with the tax cap dropping each additional year. This helps the teams in that they have leverage against longer term deals but also means players can get more early (higher AAV/shorter term and quicker return to free agency for the young studs). Make the tax rate higher, perhaps dramatically so, and spread the wealth but do so in a way that rewards small market teams (not the Cardinals) who spend on their players rather than just pocket it for the owners.
Haven't really thought through the implications of this nor the methodology, but it seems like something that might work. Also put some of the money into raising minor league salaries and the minimum.
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Post by jerrygarciaparra on Jan 2, 2019 12:38:41 GMT -5
I think one of the biggest points not explicitly stated in Chris' excellent post is that free agency is not the way to win anymore. Free agency has way more losers than winners in the long run. You might get excess value in the beginning of a deal, but you always lose in the end. You win with young home grown players now. You don't win by going out and signing Machado and Harper. That just makes it so there is no possible way to have a complete team. There are way too many busts in free agency that teams cannot get out of. You can't just cut the player and have one year of dead money like in the NFL. You get stuck with years and years of dead money. Teams are forced to play bad players just to try to recover value. Teams have finally gotten smart. There are no more dumb owners who won't listen to anyone about anything because he just wants some shiny new toy. Literally every rich person has a lot of people employed working with big data to help him get richer and richer. Things have changed really quickly. The shiny new toy model of free agency has died. Players are only going to be offered reasonable salaries from now on, no matter what is in the CBA. Scott Boras can no longer set the market with ridiculously stupid contracts for players who don't come close to deserving them. I don't see why they cannot just allow teams to cut players, still pay them, but have the money come off the luxury tax figure. And then let that player make even more money if some other teams pays them on top of that. I don't really know if it is "smart" to avoid FA market. Maybe it was your choice if words, and the market has inefficiencies, for sure. But teams can overpay, and in the context of a 25 man roster, will overpay, and still win championships or field competitive ballclubs. I know this is going to come across as crass, but it really does come down to a shift in philosophy brought about by the changing face of the employees running front offices, vis a vis math geeks. The unintended, perhaps, consequence has been one factor in the suppression of player wages. The only math that really needs to be done is to know that industry revenues are higher than ever. The franchises, worth more than ever What he have here is mostly risk avoidance behavior. There are systematic issues, as umass explained, but teams not participating in the FA market, with it's inefficiencies, is bad management, IMO. But I can gaurantee the owners love the improvement to the bottom line.
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 2, 2019 13:11:49 GMT -5
I think one of the biggest points not explicitly stated in Chris' excellent post is that free agency is not the way to win anymore. Free agency has way more losers than winners in the long run. You might get excess value in the beginning of a deal, but you always lose in the end. You win with young home grown players now. You don't win by going out and signing Machado and Harper. That just makes it so there is no possible way to have a complete team. There are way too many busts in free agency that teams cannot get out of. You can't just cut the player and have one year of dead money like in the NFL. You get stuck with years and years of dead money. Teams are forced to play bad players just to try to recover value. Teams have finally gotten smart. There are no more dumb owners who won't listen to anyone about anything because he just wants some shiny new toy. Literally every rich person has a lot of people employed working with big data to help him get richer and richer. Things have changed really quickly. The shiny new toy model of free agency has died. Players are only going to be offered reasonable salaries from now on, no matter what is in the CBA. Scott Boras can no longer set the market with ridiculously stupid contracts for players who don't come close to deserving them. I don't see why they cannot just allow teams to cut players, still pay them, but have the money come off the luxury tax figure. And then let that player make even more money if some other teams pays them on top of that. I don't really know if it is "smart" to avoid FA market. Maybe it was your choice if words, and the market has inefficiencies, for sure. But teams can overpay, and in the context of a 25 man roster, will overpay, and still win championships or field competitive ballclubs. I know this is going to come across as crass, but it really does come down to a shift in philosophy brought about by the changing face of the employees running front offices, vis a vis math geeks. The unintended, perhaps, consequence has been one factor in the suppression of player wages. The only math that really needs to be done is to know that industry revenues are higher than ever. The franchises, worth more than ever What he have here is mostly risk avoidance behavior. There are systematic issues, as umass explained, but teams not participating in the FA market, with it's inefficiencies, is bad management, IMO. But I can gaurantee the owners love the improvement to the bottom line. I didn't say anything about avoiding FA completely. I meant that teams are no longer acting like drunken sailors because they end up regretting it. This slowdown of FA idiocy is caused by intelligence and the lack of PEDs that make players avoid a steep decline for 5+ extra years. But go ahead and blame math geeks for teams no longer being stupid. It's actually a compliment. The thing is, you can't fix the problem by forcing teams to be dumb again. That's going to end up being the problem in the next CBA negotiations. The players are probably going to try that angle first instead of focusing on the players that actually deserve the money the most. The players who are best now, not the best 5 years ago. Scott Boras is going to whine and cry because he won't be able to get contracts for Chris Davis anymore, but who actually wants that and how is that good for baseball? If Chris Davis is reasonably paid his $161 million, then Mookie Betts deserves $161 billion before he even hits free agency.
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Post by fenwaythehardway on Jan 2, 2019 13:40:39 GMT -5
Literally, what you are describing is forcing players to make less money so that you as a fan are happy with inconsequential things like having them sign sooner in the offseason. That's a bad thing for an inconsequential "benefit". I disagree that a "frenzy on day one of free agency" would do much to help interest in the game. Again, you're describing the kind of thing that super fans care about. I don't believe that in a 37000-seat ballpark, more than a couple hundred would care about that kind of thing. Big picture, MLB's fan interest problem is a demographic one. The audience is largely white, male, and gets older every year. Any proposal to "increase fan interest" that doesn't address that demographic reality is not a serious solution to the problem.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Jan 2, 2019 13:47:15 GMT -5
You can say that the teams are shooting themselves in the foot though by forcing this on the players though. If they keep forcing this down their throats, then the players will have no choice but to not play ball. The players union will have to do something drastic to change this system, forcing teams to give in to something that really hurts them down the line (like team control over a player for instance). I don't want to confuse my points. I WANT to see MLB to be more like the NBA, but it is nothing like the NBA at the moment. I want to see max contracts set where the hometown team can offer the most money and years, but yet keeps the years down for negotiations sake. Seeing player control down to 4 or 5 years with a hometown team that has the power of restricted free agency involved in the last year of control. You can do this without a cap too in baseball. The NBA forces a cap to just stop teams from acquiring more than 3 superstars on one team at one time, which hurts the balance in that league in terms of competition. I just think the NBA's model is the way to go here without the cap. -Gets the players paid sooner. -Stops players from asking too many years, which causes long holdouts in negations. -Gives the hometown team a advantage to signing their own players or a high draft pick (in restricted free agency) if they're a cheap team. -Creates more of a frenzy on Day one of free agency, which maybe helps the game's interest by fans. I also like the draft idea in the off-season, but that's a different topic for a different day. Literally, what you are describing is forcing players to make less money so that you as a fan are happy with inconsequential things like having them sign sooner in the offseason. That's a bad thing for an inconsequential "benefit". I disagree that a "frenzy on day one of free agency" would do much to help interest in the game. Again, you're describing the kind of thing that super fans care about. I don't believe that in a 37000-seat ballpark, more than a couple hundred would care about that kind of thing. Maybe the years will be capped in free agency but the AAV shouldn't be. That'd be one way the players could control a little bit on how much they can potentially earn. They aren't going to get the years in free agency anyways, so minus well make it a official rule to not go past say 6 years for a team and 7 years for the hometown team. I'm all for anyway that baseball can expand interest. Even if it doesn't help in context. At least try to put in a effort.
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 2, 2019 13:58:28 GMT -5
Literally, what you are describing is forcing players to make less money so that you as a fan are happy with inconsequential things like having them sign sooner in the offseason. That's a bad thing for an inconsequential "benefit". I disagree that a "frenzy on day one of free agency" would do much to help interest in the game. Again, you're describing the kind of thing that super fans care about. I don't believe that in a 37000-seat ballpark, more than a couple hundred would care about that kind of thing. Maybe the years will be capped in free agency but the AAV shouldn't be. That'd be one way the players could control a little bit on how much they can potentially earn. They aren't going to get the years in free agency anyways, so minus well make it a official rule to not go past say 6 years for a team and 7 years for the hometown team. I'm all for anyway that baseball can expand interest. Even if it doesn't help in context. At least try to put in a effort. Everything they might try has unintended consequences. If you cap AAV or years, that leads to the midtier free agents getting grossly overpaid or signed to too many years. I think they have to get really creative to improve things. Such as half of all salaries are based on WAR total bonuses.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Jan 2, 2019 14:48:45 GMT -5
Maybe the years will be capped in free agency but the AAV shouldn't be. That'd be one way the players could control a little bit on how much they can potentially earn. They aren't going to get the years in free agency anyways, so minus well make it a official rule to not go past say 6 years for a team and 7 years for the hometown team. I'm all for anyway that baseball can expand interest. Even if it doesn't help in context. At least try to put in a effort. Everything they might try has unintended consequences. If you cap AAV or years, that leads to the midtier free agents getting grossly overpaid or signed to too many years. I think they have to get really creative to improve things. Such as half of all salaries are based on WAR total bonuses. Mid tier free agents getting too much money shouldn't be a problem though. There's nothing saying you have to give the max number of years. I don't think WAR will ever be a calculous when it comes to paygrade because there's so many different values that can make a player look better or worse when based off WAR (say a fWAR versus a bWAR) for example. I would want bWAR if I was a everyday player and fWAR as a pitcher.
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 2, 2019 15:37:09 GMT -5
Everything they might try has unintended consequences. If you cap AAV or years, that leads to the midtier free agents getting grossly overpaid or signed to too many years. I think they have to get really creative to improve things. Such as half of all salaries are based on WAR total bonuses. Mid tier free agents getting too much money shouldn't be a problem though. There's nothing saying you have to give the max number of years. I don't think WAR will ever be a calculous when it comes to paygrade because there's so many different values that can make a player look better or worse when based off WAR (say a fWAR versus a bWAR) for example. I would want bWAR if I was a everyday player and fWAR as a pitcher. I didn't mean literally fWAR or bWAR. I meant something that ties actual performance to their salary that they all agree on. They'd still get guaranteed salaries, but teams would love to actually pay for actual performance rather than performance from years ago I'd imagine. And maybe these bonuses would be paid from a pool of all baseball revenue so that poor teams can't cry about having players that are too good. Or that could replace the revenue sharing so that money is going directly to players instead of cheap owners' pockets. This is one way that the best players could get paid the most money. They already do this somewhat with arbitration, this is just an expansion of that. They set max salaries and length in the NHL and that led to mid-tier players getting way overpaid. There is nothing saying you have to give max years, but that's the tiebreaker between two teams bidding on them, after they lost out on the other max contract players.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Jan 2, 2019 15:46:46 GMT -5
I don't really know if it is "smart" to avoid FA market. Maybe it was your choice if words, and the market has inefficiencies, for sure. But teams can overpay, and in the context of a 25 man roster, will overpay, and still win championships or field competitive ballclubs. I know this is going to come across as crass, but it really does come down to a shift in philosophy brought about by the changing face of the employees running front offices, vis a vis math geeks. The unintended, perhaps, consequence has been one factor in the suppression of player wages. The only math that really needs to be done is to know that industry revenues are higher than ever. The franchises, worth more than ever What he have here is mostly risk avoidance behavior. There are systematic issues, as umass explained, but teams not participating in the FA market, with it's inefficiencies, is bad management, IMO. But I can gaurantee the owners love the improvement to the bottom line. I didn't say anything about avoiding FA completely. I meant that teams are no longer acting like drunken sailors because they end up regretting it. This slowdown of FA idiocy is caused by intelligence and the lack of PEDs that make players avoid a steep decline for 5+ extra years. But go ahead and blame math geeks for teams no longer being stupid. It's actually a compliment. The thing is, you can't fix the problem by forcing teams to be dumb again. That's going to end up being the problem in the next CBA negotiations. The players are probably going to try that angle first instead of focusing on the players that actually deserve the money the most. The players who are best now, not the best 5 years ago. Scott Boras is going to whine and cry because he won't be able to get contracts for Chris Davis anymore, but who actually wants that and how is that good for baseball? If Chris Davis is reasonably paid his $161 million, then Mookie Betts deserves $161 billion before he even hits free agency. I feel like you make a good point about one part of the problem, but I don't think it's that big of one. Reducing the years isn't what we are seeing. For example Martinez got 5 years not 7 or 8. Yet the bigger issue is that no one really wanted the guy even at 5 years. No teams even made big offers at 3 and 4 years. The issue is teams don't want to spend money. Not because teams aren't drunken sailors, because they don't have it, the luxary tax, and because so many teams are rebuilding. Look at this year the Yankees get involved and guys like Corbin, Eovaldi, and Happ get good contracts. The big market teams are in on Machado and Harper so they are going to get paid. The economic system is so broken in Baseball that having teams like the Yankees and Dodgers not spend kills the market along with the rebuilding teams. Based on revenue the Yankees and Dodgers should have spent minimum a 100 million more last year, heck likely more. In every other sport spending is based off of revenue, yet not in Baseball. Heck 90% of this board thinks the Red Sox need to reset the tax as thier revenues keep going up. Based off of revenues the Red Sox spent what they should have last year, one of the few teams that did among the top revenue teams. Based off of revenues you should have a bunch of teams paying the tax, yet it's not happening. Given the tax level and revenues we should have seen all-time high luxary tax bills, not some of the lowest ever. The idea of paying Betts that type of money would kill the current system even more. You would force the poor teams to trade great players after like one year. Instead of adding to their teams, the A's and Astros would be trading everyone. Tampa would never even have a chance. You need to fix the problem of revenue and the luxury tax isn't the answer, its become the problem. A sport that doesn't like change needs to make some radical changes or this issue is only going to get worse.
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 2, 2019 15:55:14 GMT -5
One way for some team to force the issue is to start offering contracts that game the system.
Like for Chris Sale, they could get creative and do this:
31 2020 $40,000,000 32 2021 $40,000,000 33 2022 $40,000,000 34 2023 $40,000,000 35 2024 $40,000,000 36 2025 $40,000,000 37 2026 $35,000,000 38 2027 $20,000,000 39 2028 $19,000,000 40 2029 $550,000 41 2030 $550,000 42 2031 $550,000 43 2032 $550,000 44 2033 $550,000 45 2034 $550,000 $317,300,000
This makes it effectively a 9/314M contract since he would likely retire at age 39, but with a tax calculation of $21.1M, instead of $35.2M.
Of course, MLB has to approve every contract, so if they push back on that, you have to make it slightly more subtle until they did accept it. They would then have to come up with rules about contract lengths.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Jan 2, 2019 16:30:03 GMT -5
NHL teams tried that and they just didn't approve the contracts and then changed the rules outlawing it.
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Post by pedrofanforever45 on Jan 2, 2019 17:32:04 GMT -5
Mid tier free agents getting too much money shouldn't be a problem though. There's nothing saying you have to give the max number of years. I don't think WAR will ever be a calculous when it comes to paygrade because there's so many different values that can make a player look better or worse when based off WAR (say a fWAR versus a bWAR) for example. I would want bWAR if I was a everyday player and fWAR as a pitcher. I didn't mean literally fWAR or bWAR. I meant something that ties actual performance to their salary that they all agree on. They'd still get guaranteed salaries, but teams would love to actually pay for actual performance rather than performance from years ago I'd imagine. And maybe these bonuses would be paid from a pool of all baseball revenue so that poor teams can't cry about having players that are too good. Or that could replace the revenue sharing so that money is going directly to players instead of cheap owners' pockets. This is one way that the best players could get paid the most money. They already do this somewhat with arbitration, this is just an expansion of that. They set max salaries and length in the NHL and that led to mid-tier players getting way overpaid. There is nothing saying you have to give max years, but that's the tiebreaker between two teams bidding on them, after they lost out on the other max contract players. May the best team win the bidding war with the second part. The players union would never complain about anyone getting too much money. No matter what formula they use for whichever WAR they use, they'll have to use different ones for pitchers versus position players. I'm not sure if they'll be a set WAR system the players can agree on. There's so many ways you can value a player. One team's WAR value system could be totally different from the other. How is MLB supposed to agree on one set system to value a player when value could be different from one team to the next? That's kind of the point I'm making. I used bWAR and fWAR as a example in this case.
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 2, 2019 17:48:52 GMT -5
NHL teams tried that and they just didn't approve the contracts and then changed the rules outlawing it. Yes, exactly. That's why I said it for a team to push the issue outlawing stupid contracts (including the ones that are being discussed for Harper and Machado). There shouldn't be any 13 year contracts.
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Post by jimed14 on Jan 2, 2019 17:49:54 GMT -5
I didn't mean literally fWAR or bWAR. I meant something that ties actual performance to their salary that they all agree on. They'd still get guaranteed salaries, but teams would love to actually pay for actual performance rather than performance from years ago I'd imagine. And maybe these bonuses would be paid from a pool of all baseball revenue so that poor teams can't cry about having players that are too good. Or that could replace the revenue sharing so that money is going directly to players instead of cheap owners' pockets. This is one way that the best players could get paid the most money. They already do this somewhat with arbitration, this is just an expansion of that. They set max salaries and length in the NHL and that led to mid-tier players getting way overpaid. There is nothing saying you have to give max years, but that's the tiebreaker between two teams bidding on them, after they lost out on the other max contract players. May the best team win the bidding war with the second part. The players union would never complain about anyone getting too much money. No matter what formula they use for whichever WAR they use, they'll have to use different ones for pitchers versus position players. I'm not sure if they'll be a set WAR system the players can agree on. There's so many ways you can value a player. One team's WAR value system could be totally different from the other. How is MLB supposed to agree on one set system to value a player when value could be different from one team to the next? That's kind of the point I'm making. I used bWAR and fWAR as a example in this case. Don't get hung up on WAR. Just pretend I never said it and instead mentioned an expansion of arbitration. They already have a system in place to value players.
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Post by umassgrad2005 on Jan 2, 2019 20:22:14 GMT -5
4) Agreed, and another big concern. In ARod's roundtable with players recently he mentioned when he signed his $25m/yr contract the league was worth $1 billion, now it is worth $10 billion but there are no $75m/yr players. Salaries are being depressed big time, and I think this is the central reason why off-seasons are moving slower. There's a deadspin article that says that, after accounting for inflation, mlb revenues have about doubled since ARod's contract was signed and player salaries have gone up by about 40%. That's not completely equitable and may not be entirely fair, but is nothing close to what recent rhetoric around the league would have you believe the disparity is or what ARod's statement would imply. This might be the real issue with baseball's long, uneventful offseason. When there isn't real news someone will make some up. Exactly. I see no reason why value plays into salaries, it's about revenue. Nevermind ARods and Manny's deals were so high there was a market correction for like 5 years after they signed. Also has there been an ARod type player that hit the the free agent market that was that good and that young? If Mike Trout hit the market at age 24 I can only imagine what he'd get paid. Arod was 24, going into his age 25 season when he was a free agent. The type of thing you just don't see often. Machado is a year older and not nearly as good. ARod should stick to keeping Jennifer Lopez happy.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Jan 2, 2019 20:53:31 GMT -5
The major problem with "teams figured out FA is a bad investment" is that, meanwhile, the system by definition grossly underpays players before they hit free agency. If players aren't going to make up for it on the back end, then they need to push to overhaul things on the front end. The three years of team control piece, for example, is asinine, and the arbitration system is also just stupid.
If the players have any stones, they should push for a complete overhaul of that entire system. They won't and will settle for something far short of that. The question is just how far they'll push.
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Post by soxcentral on Jan 2, 2019 21:16:20 GMT -5
So here's a chart that might help with the 'Do players get paid fairly?' question. For reference, NFL players are guaranteed 47% of revenue, NBA between 49-51%, and NHL 50%. EDIT: It seems in reading the thread that these figures are only what was reported to MLB, meaning teams who own TV stations did not include profits there in these figures. So, if this is accurate, MLB players in 2017 received 44.8% of revenues not including local TV money. https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/7sq2j1/mlb_payroll_as_a_percentage_of_revenue_for_all_30/
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Post by soxcentral on Jan 2, 2019 21:52:58 GMT -5
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