Baseball Salary Cap in 2005

[CTLawGuy]

I know it would hurt even the Red Sox. However, it is worth it to have a better game with better competition.

If Anaheim had not surged back in September, it would have been the exact same playoff teams and seedings as a year ago.

The Yankees and the Red Sox have the funds to outspend all the other teams and hoard all the talent out there. It makes for an inferior game.

Go to this website to see the salaries of all 30 teams
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/teams/salaries?team=nyy

Look at the Yankees/Twins ALDS...

The Twins win a weak Central Division and then go up against the 183 mil. dollar Yankees with a payroll of a mere 53.5 mil. The Yankees' payroll is 242% HIGHER than the Twins'.

Who do the Twins have that's any good? Johan Santana, their star pitcher, who will play for Minnesota until he's a free agent. Then he'll probably be playing for the Yankees, as will Scott Kasmir of the Devil Rays. They have a couple of good hitters in Torii Hunter and Shannon Stewart. Teams like Minn. and Tampa Bay do not have the funds to retain talent past free agency. This guarantees they will remain uncompetitive.

Yankees fans will tell you that the Yankees do not buy up all the talent. In fact, they will say, the core of the Yankees team is "homegrown", meaning people who were drafted by the Yankees and went through their farm system. Therefore, a salary cap would not solve the problem.

But this is misleading. Lets look at the yankees homegrown talent and how much it costs for the team to keep.

Derek Jeter: 18.6 mil
Bernie Williams: 12.4 mil
Mariano Rivera: 10.9 mil
Jorge Posada: 9.0 mil
Hideki Matsui: 7.0 mil
Orlando Hernandez: 0.5 mil

Total: 58.4 mil The salary for these 6 awesome players is higher than the 25-man salary of 12 teams in baseball, including the Twins. If the Yankees did not have that money, these people would have been playing for other teams a long time ago.

Yankees fans will also suddenly become Milton Friedman worshippers and say "hey, normally I'm a liberal Democrat and I'm all for fairness, but it's George Steinbrenner's money, I don't see why we should interfere with his ability to spend it." As Democrats, we should believe in a good greater than the pure selfishness of one. I am willing to have the 125 million dollar team I follow be inconvenienced in the name of a better game.

A third argument against the salary cap that Yankees fans will give you is that we should not punish George Steinbrenner because he wants to win. They then claim that other owners don't invest in their teams to make them better. This is meant to make you think that every team is sitting on 200 million dollars but just doesnt spend it. Baseball seems to be the only sport where this is a problem - very interesting.

It's at best a half truth. Most teams cannot fill their stadiums consistently, (except when the good teams come to town) and most owners don't own their own television network to draw revenue from. This is because nobody comes because the team is no good, and you can't make the team better because nobody comes to the game. It doesnt help that baseball has the lowest percentage of playoff entrants in the four major sports, (8 out of 30 teams make the playoffs.) It also doesn't help that halfway through a 162 game season, half the teams are already realistically out of the race.

What owner would risk losing money they don't have to get a couple of extra players if they know they have a slim chance of making the playoffs and knowing if they don't manage to stay in the race, spending that extra 20 million dollars will net them next to no revenue? Only those teams that are already good teams. (ie Red Sox, and Yankees)

The fourth and final major argument you get from Yankees fans is that "the Yankees havent won the World Series since 2000, so salary doesn't guarantee success." They are right, salary does not guarantee success, since there are other factors that make teams good. But it does help. Consider this. The Yankees have won the AL East division EVERY YEAR since 1998. The Red Sox have finished second each one of those years. Even a powerhouse team can have bad stretches or can choke, but in the long run (ie the regular season) their talent prevails. A salary cap will not guarantee 30 exactly evenly matched teams, but it does guarantee that any inequality does not depend on money spent. The NFL has really good teams, and consistently bad teams, but it's not due to one team's salary being 200% higher than another team's. It's due to conditioning, teamwork, good coaching, effort and luck - things that SHOULD determine the outcome of a game.

Baseball will be better with a salary cap, one that will hurt even the Red Sox. Set a salary cap per team at 90 million dollars. It will help to spread talent around the league and draw more interest in low-revenue teams and make them competitive.

[mac56]

1. No salary cap.

Baseball needs true revenue sharing and a salary FLOOR: a minimum dollar amount that each team must spend on players.

[Edwardsgroupie]

2. No salary cap is a microcosm of Republicanism

The rich get richer and the poor have no chance.
I always point to the Pittsburgh Pirates of the early 1990s. Those teams did well with home-grown talent..Bonds, Bonilla, Drabek. But as soon as the time got good, the players left for bigger markets. Gone are the days when teams like Pittsburgh has the Stargells and Clementes..players who spent their entire 18-careers in one place. This just destroys the fan loyalty base.
Meanwhile teams like the Yankees can spend ten times as much on players and siphon off the best from other teams...Giambi, A-Rod, Mussina, etc. It's sickening.
At least St. Louis, though they spent a lot, will probably dominate it's AL opponent which has spent far more. So there is some justice, I guess. Not much, though.

[AngryAmish]

3. Players staying in one place = no free agency

No free agency = players getting pimped on salary = even more profits for the owners. The union is good. Good for the players (who would want to be stuck in Philly for their entire career) and good for baseball (it allows guys who have problems to move).

The change I would like to see in baseball would be like English Premier League metric football. If you are one of the two worst major league teams in a given year, you must play AAA ball next year. Top 2 AAA teams move up to major league status. I know, not workable, but the threat...

[Edwardsgroupie]

5. Baseball union is a far cry from labor unions.

Baseball unions are protecting gazillionaires from buhzillionaires. These players certainly aren't in need of protection as industry workers are.
Free agency is bad for baseball. Baseball isn't the same as the economy at large. You have to have more control to gain more parity.

[AngryAmish]

6. No union = no gazillionaires

Ask Curt Flood about how baseball was without a union.

I think it is fair to say that I am more conservative than 75% of the folks on this board. Which is good. However, I will defend trade unions until the day I die. They are one of the institutions that allowed a middle class in our republic. A trade union made it possible for me not to drop out of high school when I was 15 (my dad got sick - his pension kept my family in the house and food on the table).

All workers need protection. I think it sucks that most workers in our nation don't unionize, but what can I do.

[Edwardsgroupie]

9. You misunderstand

Unions in society are needed. I am all for it. Free agency in baseball is bad. Society and baseball are two entirely different entities.

[Ready4Change]

4. Handicap teams by salary.

When two teams meet, cap the salaries of the players who are allowed to play that day by the lowest team salary.

For example, if Milwalkee a New York meet, all of Milwalkee can play, but New York has to pick 25 million dollars worht of players from their roster.

[Tweed]

7. The Cubs, Giants and Marlins all made the playoffs last year

and aren't in the playoffs this year. 50% of the teams that made the playoffs last year didn't make it this year. Compare that to any percentage of another league. I would say that's damn good. I can make a much longer argument about how baseball is more competitive than the other major sports, but I have to run. I'll be back.

[bookman]

8. Against Salary Cap

Why punish teams for success? This is the MAJOR Leagues. Rich owners in other towns often don't like to spend money. Success breeds success. Yankees were a run down team when CBS owned them. George decided to put the team's money back into the team. They are most successful in the business sense. It's shameful that a team like Atlanta can't sell out a playoff game.

I'd hate baseball to become like football where we wind up rooting for the uniforms.

[HuckleB]

14. Well, it's not a whole lot different than the NFL, in that sense, already.

Somewhat different, but, you're point is well taken.

[Deja Q]

10. An entry ticket cap would be nice too. Return the game to the people.

Sheesh. A $250 million for A-Rod so he can run around a diamond-shaped circle is asinine.

Especially when the President only makes $400k and has infinitely more responsibilities.

And I sure as hell am not advocating we increase the presidential salary (gotta keep costs low or else the economy crashes). Presidents and other elected officials, over time, have given themselves gigantic benefits - many of which remain after they leave office. (yet they don't remember where they came from in the process.)

[George W. Dunce]

11. How do you compensate for injuries when you have

players called up from the minors? How would this all be factored into a cap? Seems like the same problem hockey faces. How do you cap the farm systems?

[Yavin4]

12. A Rebuttal

First, baseball players make the money that they make because the players' union have fought to win free agency. The players want this system. After almost decades of working like slaves for the owners, the players fought to win their freedom to bargain for their compensation.

Second, what about competitive imbalance? Well, the NBA has had a salary cap for decades, and since 1984, there's only been six different NBA champions. In the no salary cap league of baseball, there has been 13 different teams that have won the championship over that same time period. Thus, having a salary cap does not guarantee competitive balance.


Third, yes the NFL has a hard salary cap, but it's the players that are getting hurt. There are no guaranteed contracts, and players have can be cut or have their salary reduced at the team's whim. The only reason why there's parity in the NFL is because teams are forced to cut their veteran players because of the salary cap, and the only ones benefitting from this system is the owners. This makes for mediocre play, not parity. Look at the number of teams with no wins coming so far this NFL season. The 2003 Superbowl champs are 0-4.


A salary cap is nothing more than a giveaway to the multi-million dollar owners of baseball teams.

[Donkeyboy75]

13. The salary cap is a bad idea.

It won't change the fact that good homegrown players will leave. These players will still get more expensive, and you're hardly going to hold down salaries this way. The only effect this will have is even more player movement as GMs do gymnastics trying to keep their team salary just below the cap. This is the effect being felt in the NFL.

Like it or not, big market teams have more money because they have more fans. It sucks, but it's just a fact of modern sports. You see a migration of top talent towards the same top 15-20 teams in European soccer as well.

[HuckleB]

15. In the end, I say, let baseball run itself as it will.

However, it's time for everyone outside of baseball to stand up and force it to run itself as a real business, without taxpayer subsidies for ballparks, parking, traffic control, etc... Any business that can pay the salaries that it pays, can afford to take care of its own infrastructure. (And, yes, that goes for all pro sports leagues. There's simply no excuse for any town to squander its hard-earned money on pro-sports infrastructure.)

In time, baseball will have to do something to help teams like the Brewers, Tigers, Pirates, Royals and such be competitive enough to actually make a run at the World Series once in a while. If it doesn't, it's business is likely to diminish overall.

Still, when one looks at winning percentages, baseball's top teams have the worst winning percentages of any pro league and its worst teams have the best winning percentages of any pro league. So it's awfully difficult to argue that baseball isn't incredibly competitive, as is.