HNT
Grizzled HMaM Vet
Horror in General & Everything Else Moderator[/i]
Kiss my tuchis
Posts: 6,296
|
Post by HNT on Apr 22, 2011 12:00:59 GMT -5
A salary cap would solve many problems, but it is more complicated than that. Will it be a soft or hard cap? With a soft cap, you can exceed the limit, but you have to pay a penalty to the league that winds up being shared among the other teams. With a hard cap, you simply cannot exceed that number. Regardless of what decision you make, will you allow franchise tags for teams so that they can exceed the cap to re-sign certain players that they already have? If you do, how many players can be slapped with the Franchise tag? Clearly, you will need to do some of that. Otherwise, you will get serious backlash from the fans and players from the succesful teams and it will not work out. If you want something like this to work, you have to have the whole league willing to participate. The Phillies, for example, might be willing to accept a cap, but they should not have to agree to lose Josh Hamilton in order to do so (or the Mets David Wright, etc.) There has to be some way for a team to protect their interest in the superstars that they have now that are completely integrally associated with a particular franchise.
I think the solution is that in addition to the cap you have to also include some sort of revenue sharing program similar to what the NFL uses. Otherwise, the bottom line is that the teams will never all agree to set the cap at such a low level that every single team can meet it based upon their own revenue. No matter where you set the cap, you will have a situation in which the Yankees and Sox are at the maximum and a team like the Royals is closer but still can't afford to spend the league max on players. If you have revenue sharing like the NFL does, a team like the Yankees and Sox would be required to pay a certain amount of their revenue into a collective pool that is split among all of the teams. It would not be a huge amount, so teams like the YAnkees who make more will still have more, but this will allow every team to at least have operational costs easily covered.
|
|
|
Post by GL on Apr 25, 2011 10:17:36 GMT -5
I'm not all that versed in what other leagues are like (I follow Baseball only and couldn't care less about other sports at all) but it seems like the Hard Cap is most like the one I think should be done. A line in the sand, not one toe goes over, no exceptions. Plus, in order to keep it close, a salary floor will also be put into place, with provisions paid for by merchandising and TV rights to be spread out to other teams in order to keep them close until such time that, by keeping them all together and the quality of players put on such teams allows for more individual revenue to go to the lower-market clubs so that a sharing plan is unneeded anymore. Then, you have every team to be right in the same place as each other (separated from the two floors by 60-70 million, a reasonable amount that I would feel comfortable with, or in other words, every team is between $60 and $120 million, or thereabouts) and that will allow it to be determined by on-field performance and executive management and not by who can replace an injured player with the next-highest replacement.
As for the franchise tags, I wouldn't really put that into place, all that would need to fix that is a restructuring of the payroll system. I don't think anyone is worth $20 million a year, so every single player would be paid below that, at least in terms of baseline salary. Performance bonuses put into contracts for getting to certain milestones in the year (you're a 30-30 player, you get an extra $500,000; place in the top 10 in MVP voting, an extra $500,000; become a league leader in a select category, an extra $750,000 and win a title (Gold Glove, Silver Slugger, Cy Young, etc.) an extra million) that are NOT to be counted in the payroll caps, I wouldn't have a problem with that, and would leave those to the individual teams discretion. Milwaukee wants to pay a player for being a 30-30 player differently than Boston wants to do for a player to reach the same plateau, more power to them, but it would have to be baseline salary that goes into the structuring system and bonuses are exactly that, bonuses. You keep the same amount of money now, lower what players are making and everyone has enough to pay their players without be robbed.
|
|
HNT
Grizzled HMaM Vet
Horror in General & Everything Else Moderator[/i]
Kiss my tuchis
Posts: 6,296
|
Post by HNT on Apr 25, 2011 14:24:54 GMT -5
Inntersting, but I see a few problems. What do you do when the Yankees and REdsox pay bonuses that total 20 million annually for a player and no other team can compete with that structure? What do you do when the bonuses cease to be incentivized, and some teams start to pay bonuses without any performance requirement just to make up the shortfall in salary from the imposed cap? Most critically, your proposal asks players to take a huge salary cut. What is the incentive to sweeten the deal? At best, you have to counteract this decision by significantly raising the league minimum and average salary points. If you don't do those things, the player's union will refuse right away and lock out the season if necessary. If you do those things, you will create a conflict between superstars who won't like it and the vast majority of players who will see potential for their incomes to increase. That is a possible way to get players on board, but it won'tbe easy. Also, you still haven't given any reason why the major market teams should consider it. You have to sweeten the pot some or some folks won't work with you
|
|
|
Post by GL on Apr 26, 2011 10:01:54 GMT -5
Like I said before, the performance bonuses are to be paid out at the team's discretion for whatever cause they may like. The Red Sox want to pay an extra $50,000 for every 50 game played and The Royals don't, fine by me. That's what they are, bonuses, and each team will be allowed to spend whatever they want for whatever they deem worthy of reward. They want to pay exorbitant amounts for doing absolutely nothing, that's their choice to do so. You want to be more economical in your bonus paying, that's your choice to do so as well, but I'm more concerned about the base-line salary. If those are far closer together throughout the league, that's what matters to me.
Now, I admit that it'll be a lot harder to convince everyone on accepting this deal, but I do have a couple areas worked out:
1. Since you can only field 25 men who have to come to $120 with no penny over and $60 with no penny under, it'll be impossible for most teams to buy up expensive, marquee players year-after-year. Thus, they'll have to turn to either longer-term contracts to keep a player there (like Colorado has with Tulowitski and Milwaukee with Braun) so you have a much more cohesive team from year-to-year that stays in contention a lot more often, or you spend more on development and bring more players up that are ready to perform, which should eventually force teams into the keeping-them-around phase mentioned earlier.
2. I would not be opposed at all if contracts were instead back-loaded, or deferred if you will, so that players have the option of taking more money later on in the deal rather than at the front-end. Say you have a weaker team one year and you tend to be closer to $60 than the $120 figure, take out a little bit more than you normally would in other years so that you're still being paid the same amount for the same total years, it's just a little bit more spread out than it was initially.
3. Naturally, the league average will be raised (I think it's $450,000, but I'm not positive yet that number sounds about right as it is) so a bump will be put in so that lower-salaried players have a bit more to play-for in their careers.
Now the other points I still have to work out, but I've gotten those so far and feel pretty happy with them.
|
|
HNT
Grizzled HMaM Vet
Horror in General & Everything Else Moderator[/i]
Kiss my tuchis
Posts: 6,296
|
Post by HNT on Apr 26, 2011 10:11:11 GMT -5
You've still not addressed any of the problems with baseball's current structure. you say that the problem (and I agree with you) is that the major market teams will pay 20 million poer year for a superstar and no other teams can do so. instead, you propose a system that will prevent anyone from paying that much. But you put no control on incentives. Ok, I'm the Yankees and I sign Albert Pujols for 1 million base salary and an additional 19 million in signing bonuses and incentives to be paid every year of his contract. I am technically under the cap, yet I still overpay for talent and absolutely none of the smaller teams can compete with my pay rate at all
|
|
|
Post by GL on Apr 27, 2011 9:58:52 GMT -5
Well, that is the area of where I'm coming from I've still not gotten completely worked out for exactly those reasons there. Frankly, it's come down more to common sense rather than a set of established rules:
No team is going to be able to sign 25 players to that kind of contract: you've got to be over $60, so signing 25 players to $1 million a year deals equals a $25 million team, under the floor. You can't even do it for $2 million, since that's $50 and again, under the floor. Yes, you're going to have to put together a team with players making more than others, but you've got a floor and a ceiling to keep it within, so you've got to do some work in keeping your team together.
If something needs to be written into the guidelines for handling business, have an impartial 5-man committee from the Baseball Commissioner's office that will review all team's free agent signings, roster moves and trades to ensure that contracts are fair and balanced and everyone stays within the two areas. Dumb, yes, but it's the best I've got at the moment and am still trying to work it out.
|
|
|
Post by GL on May 4, 2011 10:02:52 GMT -5
Congratulations to the Minnesota Twins' Francisco Liriano for throwing the first no-hitter of the 2011 MLB Season against the Chicago White Sox.
|
|
HNT
Grizzled HMaM Vet
Horror in General & Everything Else Moderator[/i]
Kiss my tuchis
Posts: 6,296
|
Post by HNT on May 4, 2011 13:01:58 GMT -5
At this point, I think it is time to point out another major surprise so far this season. This might be the biggest one of all. That is, the Clevelant Indians are really impressive
|
|
|
Post by GL on May 5, 2011 9:41:45 GMT -5
Yes, me too. I'm kicking myself that the only game from them I've seen so far is the opening day pounding the White Sox gave them, but none since. From what I've been able to see on the highlight shows is a team I'd love to watch more often due to their having a lot of things going on that I love with teams: timely hitting, good defense and aggressive base-running, and doing it all with a budget. Barring injuries, I would not be surprised at all to see them deep in October.
|
|
HNT
Grizzled HMaM Vet
Horror in General & Everything Else Moderator[/i]
Kiss my tuchis
Posts: 6,296
|
Post by HNT on May 5, 2011 12:58:33 GMT -5
I am not sold on them as a playoff team just yet. And I certainly wouldn't want to jinx them with excessive expectations. Honestly, I don't know enough about them to know whether they'll be a contender all year or not. They have definitely been impressive thus far. I don't know much of anything about their pitching, and that is probably the most important element to post season success
|
|
|
Post by GL on May 6, 2011 10:02:21 GMT -5
The way the Central's playing out right now, they're the best team. Minnesota and Chicago are supposed to be there but might not get hot enough to climb out of the hole they're in, Detroit's always there because Leyland is one of the best, but right now it's coming down to Cleveland and Kansas City, and I think many are still thinking that high payroll equals playoff team, this small-market club should not be where they are because it's against those laws of baseball. Yet, here I'm going to say it: Barring injuries, they'll play for the AL Pennant. The clips have sold me on them, I think they're one of the best teams in Baseball as a whole, and while I'm not ruling out a team getting hot in the second half and taking the fight to them, I think they'll play deep into October, if not taking it to the World Series.
|
|
|
Post by GL on May 9, 2011 10:08:50 GMT -5
Congratulations to Detroit's Justin Verlander, for throwing both the second No-Hitter of the season and his career.
|
|
|
Post by CT on May 23, 2011 12:50:12 GMT -5
Good season so far, Reds lookin decent.
|
|
|
Post by GL on May 24, 2011 10:04:47 GMT -5
Hmm, mired in a 6-game losing streak, committing tons of errors amidst a low batting average, sending your Opening-Day starter to AAA and just getting swept by your cross-state rival and out-scored in that stretch by 30 some-odd runs doesn't sound like a decent team at this point to me, but we're not at the half-way point yet so there's still some time to turn it around. I can see that happening, but it needs to be pretty quick.
|
|
|
Post by CT on May 25, 2011 13:03:17 GMT -5
Or as the Reds call it...a good year!
JK, you're right we do need to get our act together.
|
|