MLB is Broken

[bean5302]

15 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

I think you're missing the point. Everyone is calling for parity in markets. Tampa, Green Bay, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Kansas City are just as viable as the bigger markets.

I understand, though you must be talking about the comments because the topic from the OP has utterly nothing to do with market parity.

... but, there IS already parity in markets. San Diego was considered "small market" 10 years ago. The Royals have been to the World Series 2x in the past 8 years and when successful, they pushed their payroll to a level higher than the Twins have ever seen, even today.

Right now, baseball has multiple different methods to be competitive. 

[bean5302]

6 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Who resists revenue sharing, salary caps, payroll taxes? 

...and by "resist" I think he means forces a shut down of the entire sport without any regard to long term damage.

[LVTwinsfan]

8 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Who resists revenue sharing, salary caps, payroll taxes? 

There’s always more to it than just the headline talking points ….. I’ve negotiated contracts, voting for salary caps would be ridiculous 

[LVTwinsfan]

5 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

...and by "resist" I think he means forces a shut down of the entire sport without any regard to long term damage.

That’s a lot of hype, never just one side 

[USAFChief]

1 hour ago, bean5302 said:

The NFL has parity! I keep seeing this BS, I keep thrashing it with statistics and the BS keeps getting reposted.

6 teams in the NFL had a winning percentage of .706 or higher last year. (that's 114 wins or more in a baseball season)
6 teams in the NFL had a winning percentage of .235 or lower last year. (that's 38 or fewer wins in a baseball season) 38 wins is below what would be expected if the AAA St. Paul Saints had to play the Twins' schedule. If the St. Paul Saints played the Twins' schedule, they'd be expected to finish 45-117 (.277). What do you think the record of the Golden Gophers would be if they played the Vikings schedule? I'll help you out. 0-17, with 17 blowout losses by 30pts or more.

Every year the NFL features a half dozen teams with a winning percentage lower than any MLB team and higher than any MLB team. There is only parity in player salary. There is utterly no parity in on the field results.

None of the major sports have as much turnover in the playoffs as MLB. More teams make the playoffs in MLB in a span of 5 or 10 years than any of the other major sports.
None of the major sports have fewer and shorter playoff droughts than MLB.
None of the major sports have more competitive regular season reasons as MLB.

The NFL is far, far, FAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR away from a model which should be replicated for competitive balance.
 

This isn't about single season WL records. That's due to the nature of the two sports and seasons less than 20 games vs 162 games.

This is about a team in Green Bay being on equal financial feet as a team in Dallas as a team in Los Angeles. Those teams can go up and down in Wins and Losses based on personnel, coaching, and luck.

That's no longer the case in baseball, where the Yankees last had a sub .500 record during the Clinton administration. Year 1 of the Clinton Administration  BTW. The same top spending teams are at the top of the standings virtually every year.

The NFL is a MODEL of parity compared to MLB.

[USAFChief]

9 minutes ago, LVTwinsfan said:

There’s always more to it than just the headline talking points ….. I’ve negotiated contracts, voting for salary caps would be ridiculous 

So bust the union. What other major pro sport doesn't have a salary cap?

[nicksaviking]

43 minutes ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

That is true, but they do play once a week and all teams basically sell out every game, can the same be said about MLB teams?

Most NFL teams are not selling out the stadium every week any longer.  It's all in the TV deals. MLB screwed the pooch about two decades ago in competing with the NFL in TV viewership, but certainly there would be more viewers if they didn't make the average fan jump through hoops to watch their local team.

[nicksaviking]

23 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Who resists revenue sharing, salary caps, payroll taxes? 

If the owners offered the players a flat 200M salary floor and 220 ceiling, that adjusts seasonally based on a 50/50 revenue split I'd bet they wouldn't resist very hard.

[bean5302]

3 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

This isn't about single season WL records. That's due to the nature of the two sports and seasons less than 20 games vs 162 games.

This is about a team in Green Bay being on equal financial feet as a team in Dallas as a team in Los Angeles. Those teams can go up and down in Wins and Losses based on personnel, coaching, and luck.

That's no longer the case in baseball, there the Yankees last had a sub .500 record during the Nixon administration. The same top spending teams are at the top of the standings virtually every year.

The NFL is a MODEL of parity compared to MLB.

I disagree. Like I said, 10 years ago San Diego was "small market." They invested into their team year after year and more fans started attending. The team started performing better and becoming more popular and revenues dramatically increased. It was the same for the Royals. https://www.statista.com/statistics/294183/kansas-city-royals-gate-receipts/ The Royals had $100MM of gate revenues in 2015, with an NPV greater than any season by the Twins.

Invest -> Win -> Market -> Increase Revenue

The NFL also has tank/rebuild, regardless of revenue. 

[bean5302]

5 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

If the owners offered the players a flat 200M salary floor and 220 ceiling, that adjusts seasonally based on a 50/50 revenue split I'd bet they wouldn't resist very hard.

...and MLB would officially go bankrupt and collapse in 2 years regardless of the revenue share due to annual losses exceeding 20% of league revenue. But yes, players would agree to it.

[nicksaviking]

6 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

...and MLB would officially go bankrupt and collapse in 2 years regardless of the revenue share due to annual losses exceeding 20% of league revenue. But yes, players would agree to it.

That's completely untrue. I'm not sure how you could both argue that they'd lose money AND that "small market" San Diego can do exactly that and the other small markets can do the same.

And if they're losing revenue on that deal, that's because the owners themselves messed up with their short sighted and impulsive handling of TV rights and marketing.

[Brock Beauchamp]

59 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Who resists revenue sharing, salary caps, payroll taxes? 

The players resist revenue sharing? When and where? Sure, when the owners affix some draconian measure to something, players resist it but the owners have never presented REAL revenue sharing, not once. Personally, I don’t include “we’ll share $5m but you have to agree to a $90m salary cap to get it” as legitimate negotiations.

The owners have never made an honest attempt at balancing market sizes with revenue sharing. That’s how the Dodgers ended up with a TV contract literally 6x larger than the Brewers. 

Edited August 10, 2022 by Brock Beauchamp

[Mike Sixel]

2 hours ago, TwinsDr2021 said:

I was just pointing out facts on parity.  I get the salary disparity and how certain teams can recover from bad contracts. bad draft picks, injuries and what not. And that helps the high payroll teams be more competitive just about every year but doesn't guarantee anything.

IMO the problem with baseball is more the way the game is being played (shifts, pitching limits, and the fact that teams generally don't spend on players until they good and if development isn't good that can seem to take forever) more then the salaries of teams and piss poor management from quite a few teams that always seem to be bad.

But you are 100% wrong about how bad NBA team or even NFL teams can go from bad to go fast, because of those leagues are basically won by stars or in the case of the NFL mostly star QB's. (Lebron James and Curry have won 8 of the last 11 NBA championships) and like two or maybe 3 of the last 20 super bowls have been won by HOF QB's.

Edit:

With that said it doesn't mean I would like to see some tweaks here or there, but as long as certain teams are going to continue to run their team the same way, giving them more money isn't going to change that much, and a floor would probably hurt the "poorest" teams the most, because they will have to spend to it and would just pay the likes of Bundy more on a one year contract (for example). The "smart" teams realize not paying older players a ton of money is a good thing and continue to run good pre-arb players out there and then trade them for more prospects is a better way to invest and also limiting their pitchers drive down their price heading into free agency.

Agreed, it is way too slow to catch up....hence my belief that bad teams need more advantages in the draft (and maybe, maybe, good teams only get to protect 30 players in the off season>?). Otherwise, bad teams are destined to be bad for years and years. 

[roger]

3 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Oh, the players are jackasses in their own right, no doubt about that. But they have little to no control over the huge systemic issues with the sport. Far and away the biggest issues are revenue-based and players don't control revenue, owners do.

Question Brock?  My memory is suspect and don’t remember if it was this CBA, the last one or proposals leading up to it.  But didn’t the union fight against some revenue sharing enhancements proposed by the owners?

[Brock Beauchamp]

13 minutes ago, roger said:

Question Brock?  My memory is suspect and don’t remember if it was this CBA, the last one or proposals leading up to it.  But didn’t the union fight against some revenue sharing enhancements proposed by the owners?

The owners have proposed some revenue sharing stuff but remember two things:

1. The revenue sharing has never been anywhere close to the numbers it needs to be

2. It’s always attached to something the players REALLY hate like a hard salary cap

The owners have done a fantastic job of making absolutely **** offers to the players so they can turn around and say “Sse? We’re not the problem!”

The owners could get a salary cap out of the players if they were actually willing to make the requisite number of concessions in trade. For example, I bet the players would agree to a salary cap in a heartbeat if it came with a $150m salary floor. But the owners won’t do that because they like scraping the barrel for a few seasons with a $60m payroll and making money hand over fist.

The owners want to get everything they want while never conceding anything from their wildly profitable enterprises. They’re the biggest problem, full stop.

Not fun fact: despite MLB players being such greedy bastards intent on destroying the sport, MLB baseball players make a smaller portion of revenue than their NFL and NBA counterparts.

Players are not the problem. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

2 hours ago, bean5302 said:

...and by "resist" I think he means forces a shut down of the entire sport without any regard to long term damage.

You mean like how the owners locked out the players eight months ago?

[Vanimal46]

Getting every team on the same financial ground is one thing. A step in the right direction. Step 2 is even more crucial… Incentivizing teams to actually try. That will hold another set of challenges.

One of the reasons I stopped watching the Timberwolves many years ago was knowing they have virtually no shot at signing a star free agent. That still holds true today. They’ve had to overpay for mediocre talent to come to undesirable destinations. Will the Reds be any more competitive spending to a salary cap floor when all they can attract is Dylan Bundy types? Or trade for bloated contracts? 

[LVTwinsfan]

3 hours ago, USAFChief said:

So bust the union. What other major pro sport doesn't have a salary cap?

Bust the players union? ????

[Steve71]

Well, Green Bay is hardly a garden spot, yet they have been a highly successful NFL franchise.

With all due respect Mr. Beans, I sincerely don't think it is factual that MLB has more parity than the NFL.  Teams routinely go from last to first in divisions, and sometimes right back again. The Vikes alternated playoff appearances 6 years in a row under Zimmer.  The Jets have sucked for years, and they are a huge market.  Kansas City and freakin' Buffalo are super strong right now.  That would be like Pittsburgh and Oakland being juggernauts in baseball.  The Yankees and the Dodgers are going to be extremely competitive year in, year out.

That is not parity.  Sorry.

[Brock Beauchamp]

2 hours ago, Steve71 said:

Well, Green Bay is hardly a garden spot, yet they have been a highly successful NFL franchise.

With all due respect Mr. Beans, I sincerely don't think it is factual that MLB has more parity than the NFL.  Teams routinely go from last to first in divisions, and sometimes right back again. The Vikes alternated playoff appearances 6 years in a row under Zimmer.  The Jets have sucked for years, and they are a huge market.  Kansas City and freakin' Buffalo are super strong right now.  That would be like Pittsburgh and Oakland being juggernauts in baseball.  The Yankees and the Dodgers are going to be extremely competitive year in, year out.

That is not parity.  Sorry.

Yeah, exactly. Teams in MLB can be good for short periods of time but sustained success in anything but the largest markets is really rare. The Dodgers have won the NL West about 114 times in a row now. The Yankees have made the postseason about 230 times in a row.

The Rays manage to remain competitive but have to do it in the most god-awful way. The Cards are in it often but aren't consistently good, they just hang around mediocre often enough to make a run from time to time.

There isn't anything in other sports to rival how several of the coastal teams can just buy themselves to relevancy on a yearly basis in baseball.

And it's not good for the sport. If ownership was willing to make REAL concessions about revenue sharing and a payroll floor, I think the MLBPA would fall in line in a hurry. After all, their goal is to get as much as possible for their constituents and should MLB teams start sharing money and forcing spending in a REAL way, a salary cap suddenly becomes a real possibility.

But players aren't going to just let owners enact a salary cap without spending guarantees to go with it. And ownership's "offerings" of a salary floor were laughable. They offered a $100m floor, which would only impact about a half-dozen teams. The entire point of a floor is to force a large percentage of teams upward in salary, not to stop a handful from holding laughable payrolls. Why would players agree to a salary cap if overall spending decreases as a result, which it would with a $100m floor? MLBPA execs should be run out on rails should they make such a horrible concession.

But to have a reasonable salary floor, more revenue sharing needs to happen and it needs to be LEGIT revenue sharing. If you set a floor at $130m, under the current rules teams like the A's and Pirates would really struggle to stay afloat.

And players can't force owners to share their money, that needs to come from the owners themselves.

[ashbury]

6 hours ago, LVTwinsfan said:

Bust the players union? ????

A cogent, well-reasoned rebuttal.

[ashbury]

2 hours ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

Yeah, exactly. Teams in MLB can be good for short periods of time but sustained success in anything but the largest markets is really rare. The Dodgers have won the NL West about 114 times in a row now.

Yeah, to find the last time they finished second in the NL West you'd have to go all the way back to (checking...) 2021.

[LVTwinsfan]

6 hours ago, ashbury said:

A cogent, well-reasoned rebuttal.

Well,since  the idea was was just thrown out there as just a matter of fact, I figured my response was appropriate, but thanks for your help

[dxpavelka]

21 hours ago, Unwinder said:

In the CBA negotiations this offseason it became clear to me that players' idea of "fair competition" is that teams can compete for their services without artificial caps or luxury taxes. Some genius needs to figure out a way to somehow increase parity without players being the ones that pay for it.

It's gonna be the players or the fans that pay for it.  You decide.

[ChermesZ]

Here are a couple of fixes:

 

Yankkes, Dodgers, Cubs, White Sox, Angels, Astros etc. do not get to use the QO - it’s a luxury, not a necessity for them.  For smaller market teams, it is a necessity to replace the players signed away by those large market teams.

Big markets cannot tank and get high draft picks.  It is ludicrous that big markets can lose to get good draft picks…looking at you astros and cubs.

The idea there is parity in the league is hilarious.  When was the last time one of the top 4 markets didn’t make the playoffs?  If we can pinpoint that year, that’ll tell you enough about parity.  Top 4 markets: NY, LA, Chi, and Hou.

 

Owners are very much to blame, however, I don’t like it when players are told by agents to get the most they can and not take a discount - to keep breaking record salaries.  That can artificially inflate salaries at a rate some teams cannot keep up with.  Greed runs both ways.

[Trov]

One thing I would point out is not every year is the same teams in the top 8 of payroll, or same in bottom 8.  There are a few mainstays of course, but you point out San Diago who just a few years ago was a bottom 8 payroll, and Houston like a decade ago was as well.  Which in part leads to your point, that what happens is teams decide they cannot compete at some point and cut payroll and "tank" for a few years and keep their top prospects in the minors saving service time, until they are ready to make a big push.  Teams like Cubs and Houston have proved it worked to get a ship so others have copied.  Even when they are bigger market teams they still may go this path. 

It is not always the top paying teams that win the ship, but yes they do generally make the playoffs over the lower paying teams.  However, sometimes the top paying teams, Angels, get it wrong, and lower paying teams, Rays get it right.  I am not saying the system is not broken, because it basically is, but unlike NBA one player does not swing a team from loser to winner.  It takes a full squad, and that is where smarter higher spend of some teams gives them huge advantage, because if they guess wrong on 1 guy they can try again, but if lower market teams guess wrong, they get set back for years.  

[Unwinder]

2 hours ago, dxpavelka said:

It's gonna be the players or the fans that pay for it.  You decide.

This is why I'm leaving the solution to "some genius." 

[Brock Beauchamp]

11 hours ago, ashbury said:

Yeah, to find the last time they finished second in the NL West you'd have to go all the way back to (checking...) 2021.

Hah, I forgot the Giants broke their streak last season because the Dodgers turned around and beat the Giants in the postseason. It was actually the only good series last postseason. 

[Whitey333]

Great article.  Lots of great viewpoints from everyone.  I as a baseball fan am just frustrated with the disparity between the haves and have nots.  I'm not necessarily talking about the world series.  I'm talking about individual teams being competitive.  It isn't much fun to watch your team get thumped on by the usual suspects because your team can't or won't try to be competitive.  I surely don't know the answers but other than a few exceptions it's generally conceded year to year that the dodgers, Yankees, Astros et al are the cream of the crop.  Maybe it's not all bad.  To me ownership needs to either field a competitive team or if they keep claiming poverty then sell the team.  There's no salary cap the owners including the Pohlads can spend whatever they want.

[Frank]

Revenue and salaries are not baseball’s biggest problem, in my opinion.  There have always been doormat franchises (Kansa City A’s, Washington Senators for example). 
Baseball’s current problem is what they have done to the game:  no breaking up double plays, no blocking the plate, pitching changes ad nauseam, ridículous check swing calls taking swings away from a batter, replay after replay after replay, strike out/home run offense, worse than ever umpiring, and I could go on.  The game has simply become tame and boring!