I hope Bud Selig read this article.
I'm not one of those guys who rip Bud Selig constantly. Things are better in baseball, at least in my opinion, than they were before he became Interim Commissioner for Life. Lately, however, Bud talks like there isn't anything that needs to be fixed in baseball's economic structure. And he's wrong. He's accomplished a lot to make the leagues more competitive and he accomplished those things in spite of the opposition of the most powerful owners in the game AND the union.
I love baseball. I love football too. When I was a kid it was MLB first, NFL second, but like almost everyone I know, that changed in the 80's when it became apparent that MLB was a structurally unfair league. The NFL managed to avoid falling into the trap of favoring its big market teams over its small market teams and I think that, in part, is why the NFL grew exponentially in its fanbase from 1980-2000, while MLB spent much of that time losing fans even as attendance of minor league games boomed. Bud tried to fix that and in many ways he's succeeded, but mid and small market teams are still at a dramatic competitive disadvantage and I don't see Bud doing anything to improve their lot anymore. And I wonder if the absence of institutions in baseball's economic structure designed to support small and mid market teams means that this brief flash of success for clubs like Milwaukee will vanish when Bud is gone, like the 12th century renaissance that preceeded another 300 years of famine, disease and war before european society finally got up off its knees.
Major League Baseball's economic and competitive imbalance isn't fixed. And it's time it's leaders stopped acting like it was.
over 2 years ago
Ted Simmons Speed Camp
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But what's the solution?
It’s pretty easy to write a bitchy, whiny article about how unfair the game is, but propose some realistic solutions, don’t just moan.
I’m not sure there’s an easy solution. Hell, I LIKE the fact that roster construction in MLB differs based on market. There’s a different strategy used for small market teams, for sure. Is that a bad thing? Only if you’re bad at it.
I don’t think every team should be built the same way. I don’t think every team should be restricted to the same payroll band. That makes zero sense. You can’t force teams like the Marlins to spend money, and equally, you can’t force the Yankees to not spend money.
If they impose some sort of salary cap, they NEED to impose a salary cup as well, you CANNOT have one with out the other. If that happens, some teams are going to bitch, and probably disappear. Cut it down to 12 or 14 teams per league, and maybe a salary cap/cup is reasonable.
The NFL, and the NBA (when it had a cap) had salary floors as well.
I can’t imagine that a cap would come without a minimum salary. The competitive imbalance is harder to fix in baseball than it has been in the NFL because many MLB teams generate a majority of their revenue locally through TV contracts they cut on their own. Practically speaking, with games occurring virtually every day, there was no way to negotiate as a league with a network or series of networks to get the games on the air and thus little basis for the argument that the revenue generated by those contracts should be shared. Without the kind of broad based revenue sharing that occurs in the NFL, you’re quite right to suggest that a salary floor might run teams out of business. Once upon a time the large market owners indicated a willingness to share revenue on a much broader scale than they do now if they got a cap in exchange. The union refused to accept a cap and Bud cobbled together the luxury tax to try to balance things out.
I understand those who say they like the fact that roster construction varies based on market but I think you’re seeing less and less of that as time goes on. Virtually every article I read these days on trades and free agency talks about how prospects and draft picks are valued more now than they ever have been in the past. That narrows even further the opportunity small market teams had to build their organizations based on compensatory picks and trades of stars that would soon depart.
I’m not suggesting that the Pirates (and until a few years ago, the Brewers) aren’t on those long losing streaks primarily because they’ve got bad organizations. Clearly they do. My point is that the notion that the problem of the competitive imbalance in baseball isn’t that big of a deal just isn’t true. Not to me anyway, and not to a lot of fans in places like Kansas City and Pittsburgh.
Incidentally, I don’t mean to hold the NFL up as a perfect model of competitive balance, though I think there’s little question they’ve done a better job of dealing with those issues than the MLB has, though that could change in the next year or so. All I’m saying is that I know a handful of fans who walked away from the MLB precisely for that reason and never came back. They get their baseball fix watching the Timber Rattlers and other minor league affiliates, with an annual trip to Miller Park thrown in for fun, but they don’t follow the MLB season anymore.
by Ted Simmons Speed Camp on Sep 9, 2009 9:01 AM CDT up reply actions
This is a tangent
But it would be funny if, in a few years, small market teams won by signing known quantity veterans that teams super-focused on amassing prospects above all else ignored.
You know me Al.
Now that would be interesting to see.
Granted, just about everyone on the roster would be a health risk.
Plus, it seems that pitchers tend to age better than hitters, there could be some issues with offense.
Hmmm, let’s see…
Starters
Pedro Martinez
Jamie Moyer
Randy Johnson
Tim Wakefield
Tom Glavine
Relievers
Trevor Hoffman
John Smoltz
Tom Gordon
Brian Shouse
Arthur Rhodes
C – Ivan Rodriguez
1B – Jim Thome
2B – Ray Durham
SS – Omar Vizquel
3B – Mark Grudzielanek
LF – Brian Giles
CF – Ken Griffey Jr.
RF – Gary Sheffield
Bench
Brad Ausmus
Jason Giambi
Matt Stairs
Jim Edmonds
Chris Gomez
Geoff Jenkins
Craig Counsell
Doesn't even have to be extremely old
Presumably the market for lower tier Type A free agents will dry up further as teams value draft picks more. So forget your own picks, you can’t compete with the big boys that way anymore. Sign those Type A free agents for cheap, even if it means you have to give up your first 5 or 6 picks in a season. Round out the lineup with other so-so veterans. Get bench filler and other depth by picking up the guys other teams can’t protect from the Rule 5 draft since they’ve loaded up on so many young players, all of whom aren’t worth putting on the 40-man roster.
You know me Al.
Last sentence
Should really be “all of whom aren’t able to fit on the 40-man roster.”
This is an aside to my threadjack, but I wonder if any small-market team will get heartless and figure they can’t keep their good young pitching after six years anyway, so they’ll work his arm like pitchers of old (150+ pitch or complete games every start) since his health doesn’t matter past a couple years.
You know me Al.
But won't that cause extreme fatigue in the short term as well?
If you keep throwing a young pitcher like that every start, won’t he either end up injuring himself that season or be so worn down by september that for the last month/playoffs he will just get shelled?
Maybe
Maybe he’ll be able to take it for a couple years before breaking down. Who knows. It’s a crapshoot keeping pitchers healthy anyway, so why shouldn’t a heartless team take the risk in overloading pitchers to maximize their return?
Obviously that’s a bit too…I dunno, retro…to actually do, but if a guy’s only got so many pitches in him, why not use most of them before he’s expensive?
You know me Al.
I don't know, I guess I just see a couple main problems with that.
The first being, as I said, the pitcher in question would probably be so worn down at the end of the season that he won’t be effective for the playoffs/stretch run. Isn’t Dusty Baker being primarily blamed for wrecking Harangs arm?
The second problem, being related to the first, is that with the player under team control for six years, if a team blew his arm out after the second or third year, that is 3-4 wasted years. The team will probably go through pitchers faster then it can produce them. And/or the teams management will have to get real good at guessing when the pitcher is going to blow his arm out and trade him a close to that point as they can.
It’s kind of a cool idea, but I suppose one would have to work out the kinks prior to trying it. Maybe if you pitched the player normally for the first 3-4 years and then go to town until he hits FA?
If the team blew out his arm after 3 years
Then they don’t even have to pay him the raise he would get through arbitration for throwing 250+ innings per year. Maybe it’s not a sustainable way to win, but the current model isn’t any great shakes either.
You know me Al.
That's true.
I guess I didn’t think about arbitration years. It would be an interesting thing to try, but I’m sure the players union would be all over it as soon as they notice what is going on.
Length of schedule
Thats the big difference as to why the NFL’s salaray cap works and MLB it wont.
NFL has a league tv contract, they have a 17 week schedule with a captive audience. The MLB schedule is 10 times as long, and the networks are only willing to broadcast two games a week. Thats 31% of the weekly schedule broadcast nationally. For MLB that would translate to about 27 games a week. That would be 2 to 3 nationally televised games a day. Figure they give you your teams game as one of those games every day and they still need to send out a game and a half or so. Do viewers in markets like Milwaukee care about what happens with the Astros, or Royals, or any other team that might get broadcast that day, for 6 months?
This of course forces individual teams to go out and get their own tv contracts, and why would the Yankees or Red Sox or Cubs want to share that money with the lower income levels of the league? Thats why we have what is in place now. I dont think its ever going to change. The best thing they can do is figure out ways to make the balance more suitable for smaller market teams without bringing up salary caps,
The Brewers just happen to be in a very tough position geographically and economically to make a serious move in this matter. Almost every other team in baseball has huge market sizes and tons of corporate exposure for their teams and fan bases, a lot of what the Brewers could get is lost because of its proximity to Chicago.
Again, I'm aware of why the NFL developed revenue sharing while the MLB did not.
But that’s not a reason why a cap wouldn’t work. It is a reason why large market teams have been resistant to a cap/floor economic structure: because the system as it exists now allows them more opportunities to be successful no matter how many mistakes they make in the draft and in developing their own players.
Your comment about the Brewers suffering because they’re close to Chicago is just flat wrong. The Brewers draw fans to the stadium with the best teams in the league, and the absence of Chicago wouldn’t make the Milwaukee TV market (or any of the other Wisconsin TV markets) any bigger. If lack of proximity to a larger market was all a team needed to land a huge local TV deal the Twins and the Rockies would be rolling in money, and they’re not. The size of the Brewers fanbase is fine as it is. It’s competitive with 80% of the fanbases in the league as far as generating revenue. The problem is the other 20%, like the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers et al, who have opportunities and resources the other clubs will never have.
The large market teams and the union have no obligation to help the small and mid market teams out, not even to the degree they are right now. I just think that if MLB’s goal is to maximize revenue and the fanbase for the league, competitive balance should be of primary concern, and I don’t think it is. If that continues I think the MLB will experience the sort of fade in fan interest it went through from the late 80’s to the mid-90’s.
by Ted Simmons Speed Camp on Sep 9, 2009 1:07 PM CDT up reply actions
Minnesota is a baffler
They have a market size of about 5 million, tons of big corporate money up there, but they play in a toilet (currently) and their owner is one of the biggest tight wads to ever pull a check out of his wallet with a crowbar.
I think the new stadium, and the death of Carl Pohlad could do wonders for the Twins and turn them into a mid market type of team. They will draw huge in the warm months to the new stadium and I bet some of that corporate funding starts to roll in once the economy turns.
I dont know what the Brewer tv contract is, but small market size plays a big part in that. Even with them drawing 3 million 2 years in a row, does it make as much of a dent in revenue if the tv contract is lousy? Especially with the market size only being about 1.5 million, heck if you include the whole state that maybe helps, but how much?
Even with them drawing 3 million 2 years in a row, does it make much of a dent in revenue if the tv contract is lousy?"
No it doesn’t. And that’s the problem. Regardless of how close or far away their competitors are, Milwaukee, Madison and the cities upstate are the size they are, and no matter how good of a negotiator the Brewers put across the table there is only so much money they can get for those markets.
by Ted Simmons Speed Camp on Sep 9, 2009 3:40 PM CDT up reply actions
I agree in broad terms (with TSSC's initial post, that is), but...
teams run like the Pirates ca. 1995-2007 would suck under any economic structure. I’m always a bit irked when writers try to present a simply horridly-run franchise (no matter which sport) as a victim of competitive imbalance. That particular writer tries to do it with about half a dozen examples, but that doesn’t make the implied argument any better.
That's absolutely true.
I mentioned in that in the incredibly long response to Mykenk’s comment. Some teams are just run poorly. The Pirates have been one of those teams and so were the Brewers for a very long time. Economic structural changes won’t change that. But it could increase the number of methods by which those teams can be run well, and that’s good for baseball.
by Ted Simmons Speed Camp on Sep 9, 2009 12:58 PM CDT up reply actions
The elephant in the room is always the law of unintended consequences, though.
Bud and MLB tried to level the playing field with the luxury tax and (by previous standards) copious amounts of revenue sharing money, but all it did (okay, not all, but most visibly) was to allow a small handful of cheapskate owners to pocket more money and allow their teams to suck even more badly than before without having to take a corresponding financial bath, and that issue wasn’t even touched upon by the writer as a potential reason for the recent explosion in the number of lengthy losing-season streaks. Anyway, I’m not convinced that the salary cap/floor combination is the unassailable cure-all that it’s often seen as, just on general scepticism about any large-scale system change.
That's true.
But they went that route only after it became clear that they couldn’t get the union to accept a cap. What followed was more limited revenue sharing than what was first envisioned (if memory serves) and no salary floor for the cheap owners. That’s exactly why the current system doesn’t work. It offers some sharing of revenue but not enough to get the teams within shouting distance of each other on salary, and thus provides less incentive to spend it on players than it should, and lets the owners inclined to pocket the money get away with that decision.
by Ted Simmons Speed Camp on Sep 9, 2009 3:45 PM CDT up reply actions
How much revenue sharing money do you want teams to receive?
Both Florida teams received $30+ million in 2006 in revenue sharing alone, according to this article, and while I can’t find it right now, I’m pretty sure I’ve read that the Brewers got some $40 million in centralized money in a recent year (revenue sharing + MLBAM profits + various other stuff). The lack of a salary floor is just one loophole in the revenue sharing system – the other is that it’s currently based on actual revenues, rather than market size. There’s nearly no penalty for mismanaging a mid- or large-market team so that its revenues look like that of a small market, because that just serves to increase your slice of the revshare pie.
Meanwhile, the Crew actually try to build their fan and revenue base, and in return they’re probably getting hosed on the revenue sharing side in subsequent years, even while they remain as small-market as ever. Fix that issue and you just might see enough problems disappear that an intrusive salary cap system would not be needed after all.
Or, to summarize my position...
I think I disagree that there’s far too little money in the revenue sharing pool – maybe it should be a little more, but not anywhere near what (I think) you seem to be envisioning. There’s just far too great a proportion that goes to undeserving recipients right now. On that note, I think I wouldn’t mind a salary floor alone, tied directly to the size of the revenue sharing intake; perhaps with a rolling window of a few years, so teams can have a low payroll while they’re rebuilding, under the condition that the saved money is spent on payroll in later years when their developed players get expensive.
Baseballthinkfactory tends to have lengthy threads on this issue, and while it might push me into devil’s advocate territory, I do have to agree with one assertion that occasionally surfaces there: There’s nothing wrong with the fact that, say, the Yankees are reaching the playoffs more often than, say, the Royals. It’s economically optimal for MLB as a whole that franchises with a greater number of fans (imperfectly proxied by market size) should have more on-field success than smaller-market teams.
You “just” need to design the system such that those smaller-market teams do have a credible opportunity of reaching the playoffs in some years (i.e. expecting any system to make all small-market teams competitive all the time is economic insanity, unless you’re the NFL and every team has essentially a national presence), both to keep the league as a whole from becoming too clearly tiered and to keep the large-market teams honest. That’s clearly not the case right now, but I don’t think the outcomes produced by the current system are as far away from that as is commonly claimed.
And by "some years", I mean some consecutive years.
The major knock on the current situation (as the Brewers are finding out right now) isn’t that small-market teams can’t reach the playoffs, but that the margin for error is so thin that it’s extremely difficult to do it even for a couple of years in a row. I think the situation would be more palatable for many if a team like the Brewers could actually be a credible playoff threat for, say, three or four years in a row (even if not reaching them in all years…we are in a six-team division, after all), even if that would entail a similar amount of serious rebuilding time subsequently.
That 3-4 year window is what the NFL has.
There are anomalies, like the Patriots, but for the most part even teams that land and control a hall of fame player at a crucial position for a decade are really only title contenders for 3-4 years. And if they’re able to hold that window open for longer periods of times, good for them. I’m certainly not advocating for a system that prevents a well run organization from benefiting from their prowess.
I think your suspicion that there would be less concern if teams could, through good management, have 3-4 years of actual contention before market pressures tore them apart is pretty accurate. But for the small and mid-market teams, that’s not the case.
by Ted Simmons Speed Camp on Sep 9, 2009 8:23 PM CDT up reply actions
I wouldn't mind seeing a salary floor alone either if its tied to the amount of revenue sharing each team receives.
I think that would build some trust into the system for larger market owners and make them less likely to balk at the idea of writing checks to the other teams.
I’ve heard that argument about the Yankees in the playoffs and the series being good for baseball before. I think its crap. I don’t disagree with the obvious that a Yankees/Cubs series would probably break viewership records and thus make it easier to cash a big check when the next national TV contract comes due. But the NFL has managed to survive Superbowls and playoff games involving teams like Jacksonville, Buffalo and Tampa Bay, all while continually drawing more and more money from the networks with each passing contract. And they don’t utilize an economic structure that increases the chances that the Giants and Cowboys will be successful more often than their small market counterparts. And I don’t see why it is that you think that every NFL team has a “national presence” that baseball teams lack, particularly in an era where internet feeds, the MLB network and full season “ticket” channels permit anyone anywhere to follow any team they want. Under those circumstances, the Royals lack a national following not because it’s difficult to follow them outside of their geographical region, but because they suffer from being a poorly run franchise AND structurally diminished chances of success regardless of the merits of their front office.
But the truth is that there are more people that agree with you than me and that’s why the system is what it is. Baseball fans don’t care much about the inequities in the game because it’s the game itself they love regardless of the success or failure of particular franchises. I think many of the folks on this site are about 80% baseball fan and 20% Brewer fan. I’m the other way around which is why the inequities in the system chafes me so badly. The lack of concern among many (probably most) baseball fans and the unlikelihood that it will ever change makes me wish I could walk away like those friends of mine did some 15 odd years ago.
But I can’t. I’ve tried. It doesn’t take.
You win. I give.
Later.
by Ted Simmons Speed Camp on Sep 9, 2009 8:37 PM CDT up reply actions
FWIW, "national presence" was in reference to two things...
One, the TV situation already alluded to by backtocali. Monday Night Football has been a TV institution for how many decades now? Compared to that, the ability to follow the Royals from anywhere via the ‘net just hasn’t had enough time to produce similar results. Maybe in 20 years every MLB team will have sizable numbers of fans all across the country in a way that arguably only the Cubs, Yankees, Red Sox and Braves do right now, and perhaps at that time the weekly highlight game on ESPN or wherever will have the same reputation that MNF does now. I find it hard to blame Bud et al. for not having already overcome that particular structural difference between the two sports, especially when the “fans who have left” that you’ve alluded to have found their sanctuary in an even more localized fandom by e.g. following the Timber Rattlers. (I assume those folks aren’t located in California or something.)
The other issue is the betting industry. NFL teams have a national presence in that everybody everywhere wants to bet on all the games and thus follows all the teams to some degree, and while that’s not exactly what I would consider “fandom”, it does give the NFL a hell of a lot of captive eyeballs that MLB just can’t compete with (and I’m not sure I would want them to). And here, too, it helps that the NFL season consists of relatively few discrete events, compared to the lengthy baseball season.
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