Is the emerging CBA the right one?

[DJL44]

2 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

What does the NCAA have to do with baseball playoffs? I've watched the Twins go into the playoffs as the better of the two teams maybe once this century. Their playoff record pretty much tells the same story too.

It's about the same odds to win the NCAA basketball tournament (once you have made the Sweet Sixteen) as it is to win a 14 team MLB playoff. 

The Twins playoff record in the past 20 years is so bad nobody would believe it was random in a statistical sample. It would be flagged as being rigged.

[nicksaviking]

14 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

It's about the same odds to win the NCAA basketball tournament (once you have made the Sweet Sixteen) as it is to win a 14 team MLB playoff. 

The Twins playoff record in the past 20 years is so bad nobody would believe it was random in a statistical sample. It would be flagged as being rigged.

Right, the Twins playoff chances wouldn't have improved if at the trade deadline they had taken on the contracts of CC Sabathia, Matt Holliday, Carlos Beltran or Cliff Lee, and they also wouldn't have had to sweat losing the prospects to get that caliber of player because they could have paid the appropriate price for the free agents when needed.

[Cap'n Piranha]

14 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

Sounds like nothing is emerging now. But I think the player's strategy of higher minimum salary and higher CBT is bad for the game. In theory it forces the lower payroll teams to pay more while allowing the big payroll teams to spend more so theoretically there's more money going to players, but what I think would happen in practice is the lower payroll teams would spend even less on veterans as they're forced to spend more on the young guys while the big payroll teams would sign even more of the veterans since they can go even higher before hitting the CBT. The only way to actually force the low payroll teams to spend more on payroll is an actual floor. And that isn't coming anytime soon.

Couldn't agree more with this.  I honestly don't know what I'm missing--how can the MLBPA honestly think it will increase payroll to reduce the penalties for exceeding an amount that almost no teams are exceeding, or for that matter, even approaching?  The only fair way forward is for there to be a 50/50 split of all revenue, including any future expansion fees.  I've in the past proposed going one step further, and taking player pay completely out of the hands of the teams, and having the MLBPA divide their share of the revenue however they see fit.

In this system, all players are under contract to the team that holds their rights (whether through drafting/IFA signing) for a specified period of time (12 years for IFA which includes the year of signing if before/during the regular season, 10 years for HS signees, and 7 years for college draftees).  Players in this period get a restricted no-trade clause 2 years before FA (10 teams), and full NTC in the last year before FA.  Players who are a certain amount of years past their initial acquisition (7 for IFA, 5 for HS, 3 for college) must be on the 40 man roster.

Upon entering FA, a player can sign wherever they want, except no team can have more than 15 players on FA contracts, or more than 40 years in future contracts at any given time (example--if a team has 8 players, each on a 5 year deal, they cannot sign any more FA-eligible players, even ones they currently have control over).

This solves just about every issue the owners and players have over pay.  No more salary caps, salary floors, or luxury taxes.  No more service time manipulation.  No more underpaid young guys, no more overpaid old guys.  No more tanking to accumulate assets.

[chpettit19]

9 minutes ago, Cap'n Piranha said:

Couldn't agree more with this.  I honestly don't know what I'm missing--how can the MLBPA honestly think it will increase payroll to reduce the penalties for exceeding an amount that almost no teams are exceeding, or for that matter, even approaching?  The only fair way forward is for there to be a 50/50 split of all revenue, including any future expansion fees.  I've in the past proposed going one step further, and taking player pay completely out of the hands of the teams, and having the MLBPA divide their share of the revenue however they see fit.

In this system, all players are under contract to the team that holds their rights (whether through drafting/IFA signing) for a specified period of time (12 years for IFA which includes the year of signing if before/during the regular season, 10 years for HS signees, and 7 years for college draftees).  Players in this period get a restricted no-trade clause 2 years before FA (10 teams), and full NTC in the last year before FA.  Players who are a certain amount of years past their initial acquisition (7 for IFA, 5 for HS, 3 for college) must be on the 40 man roster.

Upon entering FA, a player can sign wherever they want, except no team can have more than 15 players on FA contracts, or more than 40 years in future contracts at any given time (example--if a team has 8 players, each on a 5 year deal, they cannot sign any more FA-eligible players, even ones they currently have control over).

This solves just about every issue the owners and players have over pay.  No more salary caps, salary floors, or luxury taxes.  No more service time manipulation.  No more underpaid young guys, no more overpaid old guys.  No more tanking to accumulate assets.

I'd have to spend much more time going through that plan to actually say if I like it or not, but I love the creativeness without diving deep enough to run some scenarios through my head. 

[Cap'n Piranha]

4 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

I'd have to spend much more time going through that plan to actually say if I like it or not, but I love the creativeness without diving deep enough to run some scenarios through my head. 

I'm sure there are myriad holes that would need to be plugged up--there's no chance I though of everything, haha.

[Cap'n Piranha]

3 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

You don't think the Pirates would gladly just field a roster of minimum pay players?

No, there's no chance they would.  Because there's nothing stopping them from doing that now--and yet they don't.

[DJL44]

25 minutes ago, Cap'n Piranha said:

No, there's no chance they would.  Because there's nothing stopping them from doing that now--and yet they don't.

There are 8 players on the Pirates payroll who aren't making the minimum. Of those, only 4 are making above the $4M average MLB salary. One of those player was suspended and doesn't actually get paid. They're about $18M above minimum payroll. They get roughly $250M in revenue sharing cash.

[Cap'n Piranha]

1 hour ago, DJL44 said:

There are 8 players on the Pirates payroll who aren't making the minimum. Of those, only 4 are making above the $4M average MLB salary. One of those player was suspended and doesn't actually get paid. They're about $18M above minimum payroll. They get roughly $250M in revenue sharing cash.

So in short, they don't have 26 players making the minimum.  Got it.

 

And for what it's worth, the Pirates are just about at the bottom of their bottoming out.  OF COURSE their payroll is low.  But go back 6 years to 2016, when they were coming off of 3 straight playoff years, including a 98 win year in 2015, and the payroll was $99M, under the same owner as today

I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand.  Bad teams who expect to be bad don't pay for veterans so they can lose 90 games instead of 100.  But once those teams start getting good, they invariably start spending.

Also, what is your source on that revenue sharing number?  The closest I could find was about $210M in an article that incidentally quotes a guy saying payroll is only about 16% of the variation between teams in winning percentage (take that for what you will).  According to this, the Pirates would be much better off spending $100M on scouts and analytic capabilities than players, none of which would show up in payroll figures.

Therein is a part of the debate that I've yet to see mentioned--when payroll is excluded, it is far more expensive to field a competitive club today than it was even 10 years ago.  Between draft/international signing money, MiLB pay, 5-6 full coaching staffs, roving instructors, a full baseball operations suite (including dozens if not hundreds of analytics guys), stadium operation and upkeep, travel expenses, and more, I would guess that every single team wishing to be at all competitive is paying $100M or more a year.  That would mean MLB teams are paying $3B a year before a single player is payed or game is played.  In that sense, players are actually getting the lion's share of the remaining revenue (approx $7B, players made $4B last year).

https://triblive.com/sports/bucco-baseball-lacking-dollars-and-sense/

[DJL44]

3 hours ago, Cap'n Piranha said:

(including dozens if not hundreds of analytics guys)

A typical analytics department is more like a dozen guys. The teams pool their money to get the data. You don't need hundreds of guys analyzing the same data.

The Braves are publicly traded so they have to open their books. 

The Braves Made Some Money in 2021 | FanGraphs Baseball

[Major League Ready]

On 3/1/2022 at 3:40 PM, chpettit19 said:

Sounds like nothing is emerging now. But I think the player's strategy of higher minimum salary and higher CBT is bad for the game. In theory it forces the lower payroll teams to pay more while allowing the big payroll teams to spend more so theoretically there's more money going to players, but what I think would happen in practice is the lower payroll teams would spend even less on veterans as they're forced to spend more on the young guys while the big payroll teams would sign even more of the veterans since they can go even higher before hitting the CBT. The only way to actually force the low payroll teams to spend more on payroll is an actual floor. And that isn't coming anytime soon.

Last year $2.12B was payed to players making $10M or more.  Obviously, a handful of them were arbitration awards but let's say somewhere around $2B was post arbitration contracts,  These terms have little to do with how much teams spend.  Most businesses reallocate spending on an annual basis.  If all 30 teams wanted to spend 3/4 od what they spend now, what would stop them?  Their best chance for increased spending is increasing the CBT.  Those teams have $250-$300M incremental revenue over the league average.  They will spend if the penalties are not severe.  That's why the big push when it impacts only a few teams.  Of course, two-thirds of the league does not want to be even more disadvantaged.  Therefore, we have a stalemate.

[chpettit19]

25 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

Last year $2.12B was payed to players making $10M or more.  Obviously, a handful of them were arbitration awards but let's say somewhere around $2B was post arbitration contracts,  These terms have little to do with how much teams spend.  Most businesses reallocate spending on an annual basis.  If all 30 teams wanted to spend 3/4 od what they spend now, what would stop them?  Their best chance for increased spending is increasing the CBT.  Those teams have $250-$300M incremental revenue over the league average.  They will spend if the penalties are not severe.  That's why the big push when it impacts only a few teams.  Of course, two-thirds of the league does not want to be even more disadvantaged.  Therefore, we have a stalemate.

I honestly don't know if you're agreeing with me or what your point is here. What would stop them from spending 3/4 of what they spend now? A floor. That's why I said a floor is the way to get low payroll teams to pay more. And because 2/3 of the league doesn't want to spend more they won't sign off on a floor and that's why I said it wasn't coming anytime soon.

Or the other option is to blow the whole system up. No more CBT. No more revenue sharing. Make the low payroll teams figure out a way to be competitive without their guaranteed money from the other owners. But this is the same conversation we had last night on a different thread.

[Brock Beauchamp]

The real, permanent fix for baseball needs to come from ownership, as the players have zero control over it: the revenue disparity between teams.

In a situation where the Dodgers are receiving $250m from television and the Brewers are receiving $40m, literally every other fix is a band-aid working around the elephant in the room that everyone refuses to acknowledge.

If the owners shared revenue for the good of the sport and its competitive balance, the fix involving the players becomes incredibly easy:

Give the players 50% of revenue, set a cap and floor, and let players sort it out amongst themselves. Let them dictate how much the base salary is, how much arbitration is worth, how quickly it happens, all of which would be decided with the knowledge that any significant increases to the salary of young players comes at the expense of veterans.

[Number3]

22 hours ago, DJL44 said:

Yes, it is exactly that simple. I think I'll buy a team tomorrow. 

You fell for it.

[Major League Ready]

32 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

I honestly don't know if you're agreeing with me or what your point is here. What would stop them from spending 3/4 of what they spend now? A floor. That's why I said a floor is the way to get low payroll teams to pay more. And because 2/3 of the league doesn't want to spend more they won't sign off on a floor and that's why I said it wasn't coming anytime soon.

Or the other option is to blow the whole system up. No more CBT. No more revenue sharing. Make the low payroll teams figure out a way to be competitive without their guaranteed money from the other owners. But this is the same conversation we had last night on a different thread.

I was agreeing with you.  

[Major League Ready]

37 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

The real, permanent fix for baseball needs to come from ownership, as the players have zero control over it: the revenue disparity between teams.

In a situation where the Dodgers are receiving $250m from television and the Brewers are receiving $40m, literally every other fix is a band-aid working around the elephant in the room that everyone refuses to acknowledge.

If the owners shared revenue for the good of the sport and its competitive balance, the fix involving the players becomes incredibly easy:

Give the players 50% of revenue, set a cap and floor, and let players sort it out amongst themselves. Let them dictate how much the base salary is, how much arbitration is worth, how quickly it happens, all of which would be decided with the knowledge that any significant increases to the salary of young players comes at the expense of veterans.

That would be great but what you are asking competitors to give their revenue to other competitors.  We could solve the income disparity among players by having all of the players making over $10M/year share with other players.

If you are a high revenue team you would forfeit your competitive advantage and significantly diminished the value of the team.  I could see this easily costing the Dodgers / Yankees 25-30% of team value.  Asking business to help their competitors to their own detriment is quite unrealistic.

While I agree that the disparity can't be resolved by players, it can and will be intensified if the owners accept the increase in the CBT threshold demanded by the players.  While they can't fix it, they can make it worse, and one could argue they could help fix it if they accepted the increased penalties proposed by the league.

[tony&rodney]

MLBTradeRumors.com, FanGraphs.com, and TheAthletic all lay out the specifics pretty clearly. Other sites also explain the entire debacle. For reasons beyond all discussion, the owners are just playing a power game.

There isn't much to discuss really, except many of us want to see baseball solve their problems and put forth our own ideas about what might be solutions. So suggestions are made but the speculation is really over. 

[Trov]

31 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

The real, permanent fix for baseball needs to come from ownership, as the players have zero control over it: the revenue disparity between teams.

In a situation where the Dodgers are receiving $250m from television and the Brewers are receiving $40m, literally every other fix is a band-aid working around the elephant in the room that everyone refuses to acknowledge.

If the owners shared revenue for the good of the sport and its competitive balance, the fix involving the players becomes incredibly easy:

Give the players 50% of revenue, set a cap and floor, and let players sort it out amongst themselves. Let them dictate how much the base salary is, how much arbitration is worth, how quickly it happens, all of which would be decided with the knowledge that any significant increases to the salary of young players comes at the expense of veterans.

You point out one of the biggest issues in baseball is that some teams own their own networks making much more money for games and some are in much smaller markets meaning they get less to have games shown because less viewers means less advertising money.  Since the owners of the teams that have more money coming in will not want to share with the smaller markets, that is one issue.  Even though if all the small market teams folded there would be no league for the large markets to earn money, that is why they are willing to share some, but not a full on pool.  

However, if the owners were willing to pool most of the money, if not all, and do a 50/50 split, that would be fair.  Then you have a cap and a floor, and let the players basically set up how they want the money doled out.  However, the players since FA started they have always said a cap is a non-starter, despite wanting a floor.  You need both really.  However, the players have wanted a full open market from the jump, not capping what players can earn.  It worked when teams like the Yankees were willing to buy the top FA every year for record deals.  However, once teams started to see how much money they were wasting on bad contracts to old players, they started to say, well why pay the vet top dollar, when they are not helping us win that much, and we can get someone for so much cheaper and get similar wins.  

In a full free market, you are worth what teams are willing to pay you.  You may say I am worth x dollars a year because the numbers I put up, but if no team is willing to pay it, you are not worth that much.  I remember when J.D. Martinez was a FA.  Only the red sox had much interest in a long term deal.  Everyone said he was going to Sox all along.  He tried to say other teams had interest, but they did not.  Finally, he had to settle for what Sox offered, or take less money for a team that would have offered say a 1 year deal.  If few teams have interest in a particular player it makes it hard for the team to pay huge sums, because you know few other teams even have interest. 

However, if you have a floor, then teams will spend money because they have to.  Contract talks would go much smoother because teams would not try to low ball players, but would say well I need to spend x money and this guy is worth so many wins to my team so why not spend so much on him.  This would take away the thought of, can I save more on a rookie or young guy that will give similar output.  Saving money will no longer be a driving force.  

[Brock Beauchamp]

12 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

That would be great but what you are asking competitors to give their revenue to other competitors.

Yeah, just like they do in other, more successful and growing, professional sports leagues around the world.

[Brock Beauchamp]

14 minutes ago, Major League Ready said:

While I agree that the disparity can't be resolved by players, it can and will be intensified if the owners accept the increase in the CBT threshold demanded by the players.  While they can't fix it, they can make it worse, and one could argue they could help fix it if they accepted the increased penalties proposed by the league.

Owners, for the good of the sport, could voluntarily offer to increase revenue sharing in trade for keeping a lower CBT and a salary floor.

The owners are the only ones who can fix the biggest issue in the sport. Even if their fix isn't perfect or complete, they only need 23 votes to implement a policy. If there was a will to increase sharing in trade for concessions they want, it could be done. They don't need the votes of the Yankees or Dodgers to get it done, they only need to make it a positive factor for the Cardinals, Twins, Braves, et al.

Yet we haven't even heard a peep about making this kind of drastic change to the game, a change the majority of fans would eagerly support.

[Brock Beauchamp]

18 minutes ago, Trov said:

However, if the owners were willing to pool most of the money, if not all, and do a 50/50 split, that would be fair.  Then you have a cap and a floor, and let the players basically set up how they want the money doled out.  However, the players since FA started they have always said a cap is a non-starter, despite wanting a floor.  You need both really. 

The problem with a cap and floor is that they don't work without increased sharing. Unless the Pirates are receiving a boatload of money from the Dodgers and Yankees, the floor has to be set so low that its impact is diminished to the point of it not helping the players much.

If more MLB teams were on equal footing financially, I suspect the players would drop their anti-cap stance. If the Pirates were forced to spend $140m and the Yankees could spend up to $220m and both were profitable doing so, a bunch of these corollary problems over minimum salaries, free agency control, arbitration, etc. go away with minimal fanfare because they simply don't matter as much anymore.

The situation cascades at that point; fix the big, perpetual problem and the smaller negotiating points are easily resolved and with a hell of a lot less animosity.

[Major League Ready]

9 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Owners, for the good of the sport, could voluntarily offer to increase revenue sharing in trade for keeping a lower CBT and a salary floor.

The owners are the only ones who can fix the biggest issue in the sport. Even if their fix isn't perfect or complete, they only need 23 votes to implement a policy. If there was a will to increase sharing in trade for concessions they want, it could be done. They don't need the votes of the Yankees or Dodgers to get it done, they only need to make it a positive factor for the Cardinals, Twins, Braves, et al.

Yet we haven't even heard a peep about making this kind of drastic change to the game, a change the majority of fans would eagerly support.

A lower CBT does not benefit the teams that would be providing the shared revenue.  Also, keep in mind the MLBPA is demanding less revenue sharing.  They want an increased CBT threshold.  You are no doubt right it would improve the sport but neither side is ever going to go for it. 

[bean5302]

On 3/1/2022 at 11:32 AM, Mike Sixel said:

Given that the majority of players don't sniff free agency, no, this is not the right CBA .....

Every player could sniff free agency if they wanted. All they have to do is decline taking the hundreds of thousands or millions in draft bonuses with absolutely no risk for the player. Then go play in Japan and post back for MLB (free agent) after the player proves dominant in Japan.

The mean average slot bonus allotment in MLB was $825,000 per player for the first 10 rounds. The median was $375,000. For 0 games played and 0 minutes worked.

You know why most players don't reach free agency? They're not good enough to play at the MLB level. Not sure why they should get paid for doing a poor job.

[bean5302]

There is no dis

53 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Owners, for the good of the sport, could voluntarily offer to increase revenue sharing in trade for keeping a lower CBT and a salary floor.

The owners are the only ones who can fix the biggest issue in the sport. Even if their fix isn't perfect or complete, they only need 23 votes to implement a policy. If there was a will to increase sharing in trade for concessions they want, it could be done. They don't need the votes of the Yankees or Dodgers to get it done, they only need to make it a positive factor for the Cardinals, Twins, Braves, et al.

Yet we haven't even heard a peep about making this kind of drastic change to the game, a change the majority of fans would eagerly support.

Owners already pool 50% of their revenue for revenue sharing. So the Steinbrenners pay for the Pohlads already. The expectation well run franchises act as charity foundations for poor running franchises is hardly fair.

Aside from that, the biggest issue in the sport is 3 outcomes right now. MLB is the most competitive major sport in the United States and every time MLB proposes a rule change to try and improve the sport, the MLBPA tries to block it and use it for leverage.

[Cap'n Piranha]

12 hours ago, DJL44 said:

A typical analytics department is more like a dozen guys. The teams pool their money to get the data. You don't need hundreds of guys analyzing the same data.

The Braves are publicly traded so they have to open their books. 

The Braves Made Some Money in 2021 | FanGraphs Baseball

I mean, leaving aside that your chart there is almost 4 years old, and comes from an anonymous poster on reddit of all places (forgive me if I take that with a grain of salt), I've heard from other sources that dozens/hundreds is now the norm.  Mike Sixel on this site had a post awhile back about the Cardinals (not reputed as cutting edge in analytics) about them adding 100 people to their R&D department (I'd have to deep dive to find that post).  Gleeman on GatG has talked about how full the Twins FO is when he goes down there.

That said, even if I'm wrong, the larger point I was making is that FO's today are very large organizations--the Cardinals actually list their entire FO (including coaching staff and scouts) on their website--it's 345 people.  If the average cost to the Cardinals to employ those people is $100k (including salary, 401k match, payroll taxes, health benefits, etc.), which seems low if anything, that's $34.5M just to pay the people who operate the team.

The 2021 Braves are not a particularly good example if we're attempting to find a median team--as commenters on that article pointed out, the Braves get revenue from land surrounding the stadium that many (most?) other teams don't get.  They also were 2nd in attendance, and got to play in every round of the playoffs (a playoff game, assuming 40k tickets sold at an average of $50 is an extra $2M in revenue), netting them potentially $16M in extra revenue; that's almost as much as the Marlins make on their total TV deal (source).  In that same article, it shows the Braves TV deal is 8th highest in the league.

[Cap'n Piranha]

2 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

The real, permanent fix for baseball needs to come from ownership, as the players have zero control over it: the revenue disparity between teams.

In a situation where the Dodgers are receiving $250m from television and the Brewers are receiving $40m, literally every other fix is a band-aid working around the elephant in the room that everyone refuses to acknowledge.

If the owners shared revenue for the good of the sport and its competitive balance, the fix involving the players becomes incredibly easy:

Give the players 50% of revenue, set a cap and floor, and let players sort it out amongst themselves. Let them dictate how much the base salary is, how much arbitration is worth, how quickly it happens, all of which would be decided with the knowledge that any significant increases to the salary of young players comes at the expense of veterans.

I like that more people are jumping on my "MLBPA directs allocated revenue as it sees fit idea!"

[DJL44]

8 minutes ago, Cap'n Piranha said:

I mean, leaving aside that your chart there is almost 4 years old, and comes from an anonymous poster on reddit of all places (forgive me if I take that with a grain of salt), I've heard from other sources that dozens/hundreds is now the norm. 

Hundreds seems wasteful. What is the 201st analytics guy going to tell you that the 200th guy couldn't? All the Statcast data is available to everyone. There are only so many ways to run a python script on that data. The Pirates won't even spend an extra $20M on player payroll but I'm supposed to believe they're spending that much on an analytics department? How much analyzing does it take to say "we're not spending any money"?

[Cap'n Piranha]

1 hour ago, Major League Ready said:

That would be great but what you are asking competitors to give their revenue to other competitors.  We could solve the income disparity among players by having all of the players making over $10M/year share with other players.

If you are a high revenue team you would forfeit your competitive advantage and significantly diminished the value of the team.  I could see this easily costing the Dodgers / Yankees 25-30% of team value.  Asking business to help their competitors to their own detriment is quite unrealistic.

While I agree that the disparity can't be resolved by players, it can and will be intensified if the owners accept the increase in the CBT threshold demanded by the players.  While they can't fix it, they can make it worse, and one could argue they could help fix it if they accepted the increased penalties proposed by the league.

MLB teams are not competitors, in the truest sense of the word.  Amazon doesn't need Walmart and Target to operate.  The Yankees do need the Red Sox and Blue Jays to operate.  Enhanced national revenues are good for all.

[Cap'n Piranha]

28 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

Hundreds seems wasteful. What is the 201st analytics guy going to tell you that the 200th guy couldn't? All the Statcast data is available to everyone. There are only so many ways to run a python script on that data. The Pirates won't even spend an extra $20M on player payroll but I'm supposed to believe they're spending that much on an analytics department? How much analyzing does it take to say "we're not spending any money"?

You really think MLB teams are using open source data?  I guarantee you MLB teams have access to way more data than the casual fan, and are also generating and cleaning their own proprietary data.  The Twins don't have a fangraphs analyst, a bref analyst, a statcast anaylst, etc.

The Pirates don't spend an extra $20M on payroll because they don't need to, because their analysts make it so they don't need to.  The only reason to throw cash at a problem (for example, how to build a winning roster) is because you lack the capability to find alternative solutions.  As the professor in the article I linked opined, payroll is not the biggest mover in terms of success in MLB--analytics, scouting, and good management are.  That's why the Rays are one of the 5 best organizations in baseball, and the Mets can't even make the playoffs.

Further, even if the Pirates DID spend another $20M on payroll, it's irrelevant and pointless.  $20M on the FA agent market will get you, on average, 2-3 WAR.  So the Pirates can do that, and instead of finish 61-101, they can finish 64-98?  Or if they kill it on their signings, and get triple the expected WAR for their $20M, they still finish 70-92.  Or they can spend half that $20M on analytics (by employing 50-100 guys whose purpose is to sustain and operate the analytics department), and find the next wave of players that will form the core of the team that can win 80 or 90 or 100 games.

The Pirates will never be able to build a competitive team by spending on payroll.  Never.  So why even try?

[DJL44]

4 minutes ago, Cap'n Piranha said:

You really think MLB teams are using open source data?  I guarantee you MLB teams have access to way more data than the casual fan, and are also generating and cleaning their own proprietary data.  The Twins don't have a fangraphs analyst, a bref analyst, a statcast anaylst, etc.

The Pirates don't spend an extra $20M on payroll because they don't need to, because their analysts make it so they don't need to.  The only reason to throw cash at a problem (for example, how to build a winning roster) is because you lack the capability to find alternative solutions.  As the professor in the article I linked opined, payroll is not the biggest mover in terms of success in MLB--analytics, scouting, and good management are.  That's why the Rays are one of the 5 best organizations in baseball, and the Mets can't even make the playoffs.

Further, even if the Pirates DID spend another $20M on payroll, it's irrelevant and pointless.  $20M on the FA agent market will get you, on average, 2-3 WAR.  So the Pirates can do that, and instead of finish 61-101, they can finish 64-98?  Or if they kill it on their signings, and get triple the expected WAR for their $20M, they still finish 70-92.  Or they can spend half that $20M on analytics (by employing 50-100 guys whose purpose is to sustain and operate the analytics department), and find the next wave of players that will form the core of the team that can win 80 or 90 or 100 games.

The Pirates will never be able to build a competitive team by spending on payroll.  Never.  So why even try?

Any data from baseball games themselves is open source. If there is additional data it must be from practices - Rapsodo and Blast Motion, etc. How much practice time is being spent on data generation so the analytics team can have something to do at work?

I'm saying for the Pirates the whole analytics department is irrelevant. They can finish 57-105 with no analytics team at all. Why spend $20M on analytics and finish 61-101? It's still last place by a country mile. That's like a business hiring a bunch of people to analyze the market for new products and deciding not to pursue any of the opportunities. Why do the analysis if you aren't going to act on any of the information? Just cut the department.

[DJL44]

I'm going to call BS on the Pirates "never" being able to compete through payroll. There are plenty of teams who are able to compete with a $100M payroll. That number is affordable for any team in baseball. There are a lot of things a team can do with a marginal $75M.