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MLB Offseason - The Hotstove League

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Boston certainly going for the low risk/high reward types right now. Seeing Smoltz as a Red Sox will be weird.

If the Mets could just make up their minds and sign a starter, I'd be a happer camper. Right now it's Santana and Maine and hope for rain.
 
I am so happy that Smoltz has gone to the A.L. First Burrell leaves, then MLB schedules somebody new to play us in the last series of the season and now Smoltz is a Red Sox. All we need is for Chipper Jones to suddenly retire and then all the Met killers would be gone from the N.L. East.

If I were Omar, I`d sign Derek Lowe and Ben Sheets. A rotation of Santana, Lowe, Pelf, Maine and Sheets/Jon Niese is unstoppable and a beautiful way to get over another Sept. vagina monologue. I`d also love to sign Manny in addition to the two but we are not the Yanks and don`t have a printing press in our new ballpark or the need to keep asking taxpayers for more money.

I stumbled accross a new article explaining in layman`s terms why a salary cap will not work in MLB. For your enjoyment here it goes.

January 9, 2009
Let Freedom Ring
Busting the Myth of the Salary Cap

by Shawn Hoffman

Small-market teams love salary caps. Or rather, they think they do. At least on paper, caps stop teams in New York, Boston, and Chicago from oligopolizing the free-agent market, and should therefore help level the economic playing field. And, to a certain extent, they do; a small-market team in a capped league is more likely to acquire or retain top-tier talent. But there's a catch. That same small-market team will need to win, and keep winning, just to stay financially viable. And sometimes, winning might not even be enough.

Let's say, in some far-off universe, MLB owners and players actually did agree on a salary cap. With it would come the normal provisions: a salary floor at around 75-85 percent of the cap, and a guaranteed percentage of total industry revenues for the players. Since the players have been taking in about 45 percent of revenues the past few years, we'll keep it at that figure (the other three major sports leagues, which are all capped, each pay out over 50 percent).

Using 2008 as an example, the thirty teams took in about $6 billion (not including MLB Advanced Media revenue), for an average of $200 million per team. Forty-five percent of that (the players' share) is $90 million, which we'll use as the midpoint between our floor and cap. If we want to make the floor 75 percent of the cap (a low-end figure, relative to the other leagues), we can use $77 million and $103 million, respectively.

With a $103 million cap, nine teams would have been affected last year, and a total of about $286 million would have had to be skimmed off the top. Since total salaries have to remain at existing levels, the bottom twenty-one teams would have had to take on this burden, which had previously been placed on the Yankees, Red Sox, et al. On the other end, fourteen teams would have been under the payroll floor, by a total of $251 million. Even discounting the Marlins' $22 million payroll, the other thirteen teams would have had to spend an average of $15 million more just to meet the minimum. Some of those teams might be able to afford it; most wouldn't.

Imagine being Frank Coonelly in this situation. Coonelly, the Pirates' team president, has publicly supported a cap. Had our fictional cap/floor arrangement been instituted last year, the Pirates would have needed to increase their Opening Day payroll by $28 million. Not only would the team have taken a big loss, but Neal Huntington's long-term strategy would have been sabotaged, since the team would have had to sign a number of veterans just to meet the minimum payroll.

Now fast forward to 2009. Let's say the Pirates' sales staff runs into major headwinds, with the team struggling and the economy sinking. The team's top line takes a hit, falling $10 million from 2008. The Mets and Yankees, meanwhile, open their new ballparks, and each team increases its local revenue by $50 million. If the twenty-seven other teams are flat, total industry revenues rise by $90 million (not including any appreciation in national media revenue). Forty-five percent of that, of course, goes to the players. So even as the Pirates' purchasing power decreases, the payroll floor actually rises.

In other words, without a more egalitarian distribution of income, the system crumbles.

Until recently, the NFL has been uniquely fit for this type of model, since most of its revenues have come from national television contracts. But now, with local revenues rising, small-market teams are feeling the pinch. This past May, the owners unanimously voted to opt out of their CBA, which was supposed to run through 2012. Some blamed the players' share of revenues. Others, including Dan Rooney of the Steelers, cited the need for more local revenue sharing.

But sharing local revenue has a major drawback: it is a tax, which inevitably lowers incentives and decreases output. If the NFL shared all (or even most) local intake, why would an individual team ever look to maximize revenues at its own cost (i.e. by hiring a sales staff, or cleaning its own stadium)?

The NHL, which also has a hard cap, does very little revenue sharing, partly thanks to an overly convoluted system. On a league-wide level, the results have been very positive; the NHL has had record revenues every year since its lockout, and Gary Bettman has been very positive about this season as well. But the NHL is a great example of why caps and capitalism don't mix: as the league grows, it ends up leaving teams behind. Small-market clubs like the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Nashville Predators are forced to spend almost two-thirds of their revenue on player payroll. And the Phoenix Coyotes, after years of hemorrhaging money, are on the verge of going bankrupt.

So what's the best solution? Certainly not the NBA's soft-cap system, which has too many problems to even count—imagine having to take on Luis Castillo or Carl Pavano every time you wanted to unload a high-priced veteran.

So instead of these models, what if there was an uncapped league, with limited local revenue sharing to support small-market teams, and a post-season system that naturally created tremendous parity? Does this sound familiar? It should. It's what MLB has had in place for over a decade, leading to record growth in both attendance and revenue.

The expanded postseason is key. More than any other sport, MLB's playoff system acts as an equalizer. Fair or not, in broad strokes, a team that wins 83 games in a bad division has as much chance of winning the World Series as the Yankees or the Red Sox. Seemingly, no matter how much those teams spend over the winter, that competitive advantage is neutralized come October.

So while the capped leagues all struggle to find the right balance between capitalism and socialism, baseball continues to prosper operating within a much more free-market system. Teams in big markets and small markets alike are making money, and everyone has a chance to win it all.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And right now, baseball is anything but broke.

(Note: All salary data taken from the Lahman Database.

Shawn Hoffman writes about business and baseball at Squawking Baseball.
Click to expand...

And if anybody is curious http://www.replacementlevel.com/index.php/RLYW/direct/extremely_early_projected_standings shows that the Mets win the NL East and Tampa ends up in 3rd behind Bos and NY. They say the projections come from the Hardball times. Cle wins the AL central and the Angels win the West (What a surprise.) The Cubbies win the NL Central and Col wins the lowly NL West. They don`t have any wild card winners. I like how Los Mets have the second best record in the senior circuit.
 
I had a brainfart and realized that according to those projections STL has the 4th best record in the league, and should win the wild card thus setting up the nightmare scenario of 9th inning bases loaded Los Mets down by two with Carlos Beltran facing down Adam "King Kong ain`t got shit on me" Wainwright.
 
The Sox signed Takashi Saito today, another low risk, high reward signing. If it works out however, the Sox bullpen will include:

Papelbon CL
Saito
Okajima
Ramirez
Masterson
Delcarmen

WOW. That shortens games quite a bit.
 
The Braves have signed Japanese pitcher Kawakami... I'm ready to see him pitch. Spring Training needs to start.
 
Even though this isn't hot stove talk, this is the only active thread here on the MLB, so...

What do you think of the Hall of Fame inductees today? Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice.

Henderson was a given (will he go into the Hall as a Yankee or an A?). Jim Rice should've been there a long time ago (as should Dale Murphy and Andre Dawson), but this is what happens when you have voters who wear their agendas on their sleeves.
 
Aragorn said:
Even though this isn't hot stove talk, this is the only active thread here on the MLB, so...

What do you think of the Hall of Fame inductees today? Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice.

Henderson was a given (will he go into the Hall as a Yankee or an A?). Jim Rice should've been there a long time ago (as should Dale Murphy and Andre Dawson), but this is what happens when you have voters who wear their agendas on their sleeves.
Click to expand...

If he goes in as a Yankee I will be pissed. I doubt he would be that dumb though.

Good selections. I've never really given that much credibility to the Baseball Hall of Fame (It sounds very screwed up) but good to see Henderson get the nod. He is very deserving.
 
Supposedly, it's not the player's choice and the HOF has the final say (that whole nonsense in the clauses of Canseco, Boggs and McGriff saying they'd go into the Hall as Devil Rays; Gary Carter wanting to go in as a Met and being denied; Clemens saying he wants to go in as a Yankee). Of course, Dave Winfield went in as a Padre, and you have to wonder how much of that was his choice.

Henderson is most likely going in as an A since he played the most years there and won the most prestigious awards there. Jokingly, it'd be easier to say who he won't be going into the Hall as since he's played on seemingly half the teams.
 
Good for Jim Rice, long overdue. Shows how stupid the system is, too. Was clearly one of the dominant guys for quite a while, and he's got the numbers and hardware to back that up. How messed up the voting gets is beyond me. And if he wasn't good enough last year, but IS this year, without playing any extra...?

Was brought up on the radio today, and makes a very interesting thing to think about. Think about Left Field, and the Green Monster for the Red Sox, and the people that have played there. Over the past 70 or so years (with some overlap as some players moved to 1B or DH at the end):

Ted Williams 1939-1960 Hall of Fame
Carl Yastrezemski 1961-1983 Hall of Fame
Jim Rice 1974-1989 Hall of Fame
MIke Greenwell 1985-1996 Not HOF, but had a good run
-dry spell-
Manny Ramierez 2001-2008 Lock for the Hall

Over the past 69 years, that represents an almost 58 year run of being patrolled by HOF'ers. Pretty amazing, when you think about it.
 
Last edited:
tomalak301 said:
Aragorn said:
Even though this isn't hot stove talk, this is the only active thread here on the MLB, so...

What do you think of the Hall of Fame inductees today? Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice.

Henderson was a given (will he go into the Hall as a Yankee or an A?). Jim Rice should've been there a long time ago (as should Dale Murphy and Andre Dawson), but this is what happens when you have voters who wear their agendas on their sleeves.
Click to expand...

If he goes in as a Yankee I will be pissed. I doubt he would be that dumb though.

Good selections. I've never really given that much credibility to the Baseball Hall of Fame (It sounds very screwed up) but good to see Henderson get the nod. He is very deserving.
Click to expand...

more than likely he will go in as a oakland a. just reported ... the braves sign derek lowe to a 4 yr 60 million dollar deal.mets have offered oliver perez 3 yrs 30 million.
 
Both Jim Rice and Ricky Henderson were good choices for the Hall of Fame. I'm a little surprised it took Rice as long as it did to get inducted.

I was hoping former Twin Bert Blyleven would make it into the Hall of Fame this year, but he fell short once again (62.7%). This was his 11th year of eligibility, and it's starting to look like it won't happen.
 
Aragorn said:
Supposedly, it's not the player's choice and the HOF has the final say (that whole nonsense in the clauses of Canseco, Boggs and McGriff saying they'd go into the Hall as Devil Rays; Gary Carter wanting to go in as a Met and being denied; Clemens saying he wants to go in as a Yankee). Of course, Dave Winfield went in as a Padre, and you have to wonder how much of that was his choice
Click to expand...

i think that was totally his choice.he was thumbing his nose at the yankee organization. i don't think he ever got over the mr may comment from george steinbrenner.
as a side note , just prior to the announcment that he was going into the hall as a padre the yankees had planned to have a dave winfield day and retire his number. after it was announced that he was going in as a padre thay didn't retire his number.payback's a bitch.:rolleyes:
http://www.gaslampball.com/2008/7/15/572359/winfield-insults-padres-by
 
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