Is it really how much money you pour into scouting or is it WHO does the scouting?

Jack Zdurenciek from the Brewers has put together from top to bottom an elite scouting team, yet you also don't see any big market teams "stealing" these scouts either.

Yes, Moneyball is about exploiting market inefficiencies to gain a competitive edge. In that respect, it speaks to baseball as a whole. Teams now use sabermetrics to try and gain an advantage over each other to identify and sign players. The effect extends into minor league scouting as well. No matter the level, the desire to unearth talent and find the next star player drives the market.

I disagree that there isn't a competitive advantage when it comes to signing prospects. Every year during the draft, players drop due to signability questions. The simple truth is that some players don't want to play for the team that drafted them due to that organization's lack of stature in Major League Baseball.

After a team drafts a player or offers a free agent a contract, it's up to the player to decide what to do. Kansas City opted against drafting Matt Wieters last year because he is a Boras client and would demand big money. Instead, the Royals took a high school player who they knew they could sign. It doesn't matter if it's a domestic player or an amateur player in the draft. The more money you have and spend, the bigger the advantage for your team, hence the reason why small market teams can afford to take fewer risks. If Billy Beane wants to sign an amateur player for millions, let him. The A's are obviously aware of their financial situation and so are willing to take a calculated risk. The risk to larger clubs is greatly reduced because they can draft and sign players with little regard for signability questions.

To argue that there is no competitive advantage in signing prospects is a gross underestimation of the current financial model in Major League Baseball.

I think the move is going to be for Jason Bay or X Nady of Pittsburgh. I expect Balfour to be the closer of the future for the Rays.

I believe the only way they get Sabbathia is to only give up 1 prospect and E Jackson.

Longoria AL-ROY!!!!

I think you raise interesting questions. Every transaction contains inherent risk, you're right, but each small market team (and every club for that matter) is also different. Based on the results of the last few years, it would seem that the Athletics are a better managed organization than Kansas City.

I think the Royals are already changing their perception around baseball thanks to the tireless work of Dayton Moore and J.J. Piccolo. But I think they remain limited in what they can do. Could they have offered Wieters $6M at the draft last year? Sure. Would he have signed with them? No one can say for sure. I believe the Royals avoided him because they wanted to put those concerns to rest from the beginning.

So a trade of two pieces of junk has worked out splendidly for both sides so far.... Seth McClung for Grant Balfour.

This losing attitude is exactly how you end up being a losing team.

Thought this quote at Sportsline was pretty cool...don't really know why:

"It was everything I thought it would be, except for not throwing strike one (to my first hitter). I always imagined I'd paint it." -- Reliever Sergio Romo, who made his big-league debut in Cleveland and threw a perfect inning.

How is this a "losing attitude?" A team has to be reasonable in its expectations. There's a reason why the Royals have to overpay to sign free agents. Look at Gil Meche. Sure, he turned out to be not so bad last year but if you'll recall the baseball world was initially shocked at the huge contract the Royals gave him. That hardly constitutes a "losing attitude." You have to expect that teams are going to do their best to compete. That means different things to different clubs but certainly the ability to compete is made easier with more money and a good reputation. The Royals have neither right now.

Because you would rather save money and pass up the player you really want to get a player that isn't as good but will sign for less. What's the difference? $2 million? Tell me how important that money is when you factor in that you will be able to control the superior player for a fairly long length of time at a reasonable cost.

I'm not sure the Royals don't have a good reputation at this point. You're definitely right if we're talking about 2-3 years ago, but Moore's presence in the front office has greatly enhanced the perception of the franchise. Several free agents commented that the Royals were much more competitive in their offers the past two off-seasons and upper management of most of the baseball franchises believe that the Royals are finally building the franchise the way it should be done thanks to Moore's leadership.

Also, the Royals are spending a record amount of money on payroll this year and the payroll is up 30% from just a couple of years ago. Money is being spent, but it's hard to catch up when you're spending a record amount of payroll and still lag behind the top payroll by over $100M.

Insinuating that somehow proves there's parity in MLB is silly at best. The Royals had an 8 game lead in their division at the All Star break a few years back, but that didn't prove that parity existed in baseball. Here's a measure that provides a better picture of just how much "parity" there is in baseball. Just look at all those small market teams...........

Absolutely. I see media members on the East Coast every year who trot out an article at mid-season detailing the latest flash-in-the-pan team or two that seemingly disrupts the arguement that there is no parity in MLB. Your point where you trotted out Florida is a perfect example. Yes, they have done a good job of winning and then promptly selling the farm to retool, but is that truly the way that MLB wants their franchises to function? Leagues tend to thrive with consistency. Having a team that sells the fan favorites every time they succeed is a brutal way to retain fans. I'd argue that the form of success that Florida fans have been forced to endure is bad for baseball long-term. Teams shouldn't have to go to that extreme level to compete. It kills fan loyalty.

I agree. The problem with McClung when he was here was his work ethic he didn't prepare for games as hard as they thought he should have. I always thought he should have been a closer instead of starter because he only had 1 good pitch and struggeled with getting through the lineups a couple of times an outing.

I think the current financial model works really well for MLB for a lot of the reasons you mentioned.

They don't want all teams to be equal. They want the Yankees and Red Sox to be playing playoff baseball more than anyone else. A Yankee or Red Sox championship brings in way more revenue and interest to the game than a Royals championship would.

But it can't be JUST Red Sox/Yankees. You need fans of other teams to have a hope that they can compete. Expanded playoffs and revenue sharing has done that. Anybody can win a short series. And anybody can get to the playoffs in a period of 5 years or so. (I used to think an exception to that would be the Rays/Jays/Orioles, but any of those teams could concievably win 92 games and edge past the Sox/Yanks in a given year.)

Sure, the Royals and Pirates can't possibly win as often as the big markets over the long term, but so what? You adjust your expectations. The Marlins winning the world series is a tremendous achievement. The Rays are really fun right now and have a legit shot to make the playoffs. The Red Sox winning the world series is more of an expectation. That's the way it is. The die-hard Royals fans would probably get as much satisifaction out of a playoff run as the Red Sox fans would for another World Series. A Royals/Red Sox ALCS would have high drama because of this disparity, and such a thing IS possible under the current financial scheme.

If you start with the assumption that everyone should be equal, you'll ALWAYS be dissapointed because that's NEVER, EVER going to happen as long as there's a player's union. But there's hardly a team in baseball that doesn't have some hope of getting to the playoffs in next 2-3 years, and that's a huge step from where we were.

The Royals have 27% of the payroll of the Yankees, and in 2006, 39% of the revenue. If they spent the same % of revenue on players that the Yankees did, they'd have a payroll of $81 million.

I believe that the Royals opted against drafting Wieters because they were concerned that he would never play for them because he wouldn't want to join the KC organization. The Royals drafted someone else (anyone else) so that they would avoid the possibility of a player not signing and the team having wasted the pick altogether.

The Royals reputation is improving dramatically thanks to Moore and his team and the organization as a whole has made dramatic improvements in the Moore years. But the team's reputation the last few years has been poor although it is now steadily improving.

SWEEP!!!!!

Tampa takes 3 out of 3 from the Red Sox!! Great game too, down by 3 in the 7th and they put up 6. And then the Red Sox were knocking on the door, but Wheeler finally was able to get the outs he needed. 7-6 Rays!

:D

While I probably lean more your way in the major league world thinking, I agree with SI that there needs to be an international draft and slotted salaries. IMO, that's the last true area where the big teams have just a huge advantage. Just looking at my Angels, Santana, KRod, Aybar, Kendry Morales (at AAA, but he should be playing here), and Arredondo are just a few of the top talents we have signed. I appreciate having them, and I recognize how much it must suck to be a fan of a lower end revenue team that can't compete in the international prospect market nearly as well.

Teams to win the World Series in last 15 years without a payroll in the top half of the league. I think that's something that resonates a bit.

BTW, personally I am fine with the major league setup as it is right now. Big teams are still big teams, but the gap is close enough that smaller market teams can compete. It's only at the minor league level that I think we should start to get a little socialistic. That's where the disparities are huge now.

IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA
Madrigal (BS, 1)(L, 0-1) 0.1 5 6 6 1 0 0 162.00

Rough major league debut for the Ranger's pitcher.

Though it's not relevant tonight, I'd just like to thank whatever franchsie we stole Jared Burton from in the '07 Rule V Draft (our less glamorous pick than Hamilton).

I greatly enjoyed watching the Rays game last night after the Royals game was over. Very cool to see those fans so excited with their brooms :)

SI

As well they should be. That's the idea of the draft- the worse teams should be getting more young talent. It's why the worse teams pick first. Cheap shot but easy, then again, you've been making them this whole thread so it's hard to line them all up one at a time. The next post will be a lot more fun...

SI

We don't have anyone who can play 2B adequately- we have a couple of utility guys in German who cannot field and Callaspo who just picked up a DUI and has off the field issues. Hell, we don't have anyone who can play SS except for a 27yo quad A guy who everyone likes right now but is going to revert to what he is and Tony Pena Jr who is a "prospect" we have tried to develop but, last I checked, had the lowest VORP of anyone in the league by far (-20ish!).

And I don't use profanity on this board, but this type of stuff just boggles the mind. FOR FUCK'S SAKE, YOU'RE BITCHING ABOUT ANGEL BERROA BEING LOCKED UP BUT HE WAS A ROOKIE OF THE YEAR AND THE ROYALS LOCKED HIM UP EARLY TO TRY AND CONTROL COSTS AS YOU HAVE BEEN ADVOCATING ALL ALONG! Just wait if Evan Longoria or Ryan Braun starts to struggle and turns into just an average major leaguer or, even worse, regresses to minor league level. Watch how crippled Milwaukee or Tampa will be by that situation because Angel Berroa's $4M that you're talking about will seem like chump change next to that.

You just aren't hearing what we are saying or rather unable to comprehend our situation. You know what, he sucked- but you large market fans think the standard for teams should be batting 1.000 on every player just to compete with the higher market teams. And the next two paragraphs outline the two huge logic flaws you just don't understand or don't want to comprehend.

There is value to winning in the development process. If we didn't have Ron Mahay, we'd have lost a couple more games this year as he's been the 7th/8th inning guy out of the bullpen. Do you know how hard it is to change a culture of losing? No, of course not. Going 100 years without a World Series is not a complete culture of a losing- try having 1 winning season in the last 10. I dare you to find when that has happened to Boston in their history. That badly stunts prospect growth- you bring a bunch of young, impressionable rookies into that environment and they just can't grow when there is no one to grow and learn from. It's no surprise that Angel Berroa's best season was the Royals only winning one. For all we know, Alex Gordon is that once in a generation talent you mentioned but coming into this environment may have stunted his growth. I can guarantee that if Albert Pujols had been drafted by the Royals, he wouldn't have been the Albert Pujols that everyone knows.

Oh, and c'mon, saying an extra $4.5M gets a once in a generation talent is more than a little facetious. It takes a lot of $4.5M prospects to get a player that comes along once every 20 years. Dozens, if not hundreds.

As an aside, Jimmy Gobble is a LOOGY that they hoped would become something more as he was a starting prospect with us- he's one of our own, those ones everyone wants us to keep developing but sometimes they flop. John Bale was someone we picked up as a reliever/starter overseas after he pitched in Japan for a few years- again, someone that was underscouted and undervalued, but it turns out that he's just not that good. But they were trying to take advantage of that market inefficiency.

As for the second point, it doesn't always work! And it really doesn't always work with prospects. You cannot just build your team with prospects. They miss. A lot. And you can either replace them with quad A guys who also miss, a lot. There's no guarantee that a quat A guy is replacement level and, in fact, they frequently are below that. We know, we see them here up close and personal all the time so let's dispense with this myth of the replacement level player- it's not like you can just take a guy off the street and he'll hit "replacement level"- the players just striving for that level of performance are even more unreliable than actual prospects.

We pay Jose Guillen or Gil Meche and we actually have a pretty good idea what we are getting. Hell, both have even exceeded expectations and in a couple of years, we'll flip them at the deadline for prospects. But in the meantime they provide stability and hole filling for positions where we have players who aren't ready. We don't have any MLB ready OFs or SPs, particularly not who can provide the impact of what they provide.

I'll get further through this thread later on but I have to get to work this morning

SI

Until the last couple of years, the Royals along with other small market teams haven't been able to pick the best player available when they drafted. They were in a no-win situation. If they picked the best player available, that player would either opt-out and head to college or would refuse to sign because the Royals couldn't afford to give him what he was asking. After being burned a few times, the small market teams did the best with the situation presented and started drafting lesser talent with top picks because they at least knew they'd be able to get them into the system. Of course, this resulted in the larger market teams getting the best talent available in the middle to late first round. Another case of the rich getting richer.

And as I mentioned before in my previous point, let's not annoint a Rays dynasty just yet. They've sucked for a long time to get this one shining moment consisting of a good position halfway through a season. If they do this for 3 years in a row without having to slash payroll/talent, then we'll chat.

It generally is easier to entice draftees to play in Tampa or Miami than some other cities. Then again, for some like J.D. Drew, even that doesn't particularly matter.

And it isn't like Tampa has a lot of big name free agents flocking there. You got your players with a few years left who want to play in Florida and play fairly regularly (Percival, Floyd) and you have your players who were always role players (Hinske, Gross). Not exactly the cream of the FA market.

Closest I can come since WWII would be 8 in a row from 1959-1966, preceded by a pair of 3rd place finishes in '57 & '58.

Back a little further, the Sox were under .500 for 15 straight years from 1919-1933 before finishing 76-76 in 1934.

By fielding one of the lowest payrolls in MLB for the past few seasons and losing 100+ games. I'm not sure how many times this needs to be said for it to make sense to some people. Small market teams have the option of having record payrolls and still not competing or they can suck for several seasons and have one shinning moment that MAY last one season before they have to hold a garage sale of players and start all over.

And I know you're mocking SI's points in your post, but his argument in his point was very clearly stated and makes perfect sense to everyone except the most die-hard devil's advocate.

Why is it always Royals fans complaining about disparity in the MLB on here? :)

I guess Pirates fans don't exist. As a fan of a small market team watching the Royals from the outside, they are certainly moving in the right direction. The cupboard was left completely bare for Dayton Moore as far as I can tell, when he took over. These things won't happen overnight.

A lot of the talk is about the problems small market teams have in signing amateur talent that is high priced.

What about player development? You don't just draft guys and pray they turn out. You don't just build on first round picks. You need to identify talent in the mid to late rounds and cultivate that talent.

Just a few examples of young guys picked later in the draft helping teams:
Manny Parra: 26th round pick
Corey Hart: 11th round pick
James Shields: 16th round pick
Andy Sonnanstine: 13th round pick

That is just scratching the surface. Taking a look at the Royals roster, it looks as if they don't really have much for mid round talent on their roster. I'm pretty sure Dean Taylor works in the Royals front office, and while he didn't have a damn clue how to put together a major league roster in his time as GM of the Brewers, he laid the groundwork for the player development juggernaut they have now.

Without taking a look at the Royals system, I'm betting that a good chunk of the talent is in the lower level of the minors? It's almost like a good recruiter taking over a shitty college football program. When you are handed an empty cupboard there really isn't shit anybody can do about it for a few years until you get your own guys filtering through the system.

And guess what? If you do a good job of scouting and player development, when your first group of talented player graduate to the majors, there ought to be another group right behind them that can be used for trade or to push the others that didn't necessarily pan out.

As a Brewer fan, I know what it's like to go through a decade or more of mismanagement. The same mentality I see from a lot of Royals fans was very normal here in Wisconsin for a long time. There is no way we can compete! It's amazing how the attitude of a fan base can change when a few good people are brought in with a clue on how to build a major league organization.

Now the Brewers rank 11th in attendance in the major leagues, and stand a decent chance of drawing 3 million fans this year. Not too bad for a small market team that many said should've been eliminated with the Expos when contraction came up.

They also completely destroy any potential fan base by trading away fan favorites any time they get good. Which means, yes, they are set up for the future pretty good, but there is a good chance they'll have to move to a new city in the next decade because no one will watch them.

Now maybe the Beckett and Lowell for Ramirez would have been accepted by a fanbase better if everyone else wasn't dealt away.

Maybe make a better team in the long run, but it won't work in sustaining a fanbase.

I wasn't either. I was talking about how they acted after 2003. They said they were going to try to keep the team together. Couldn't. Let the stars go and the fanbase revolted against the team again.

What do the Royals fans want? Sympathy? For someone to give their team $100 million dollars to spend on players? For the players to leave hundreds of millions of dollars on the table and cap the Yankees spending at $90 million? How about a minimum payroll floor of $90 million, and any team who can't afford to pay that gets contracted.

It's not a facetious question - we hear a lot on this board about how hard it is for you, and 99% of people seem to agree. But what do you want to have happen?

I think most Royals fans would like greater revenue sharing and I'm sure they wouldn't mind a payroll floor as a condition of that (but then if you are rebuilding that means you have to sign people you may not want to meet that floor).

They look at the NFL small market squads with envy.

And they'd probably like an international player draft and draft pick salary slotting.

That is the case. A and AA have quite a bit of talent as we've only recently started truly drafting the best player available.


LOL. I don't know how many times this has to be said. KC DID pay for the best prospects in their organization. Everyone threw praise on KC when they signed Sweeney to a multi-year deal after his monster All-Star season. KC DID pay Rookie of the Year Angel Berroa a multi-year deal to keep him here for the long haul. All it got us was 40% of the payroll going to a player in AAA and a oft-injured DH. KC didn't do anything wrong other than be terribly unlucky. To imply that they didn't follow the exact measures that people maintain should make them successful flies in the face of the facts.

As far as Florida, I'm still not sure why they continue to be paraded out as a small market franchise. They are in one of the top 5 TV markets in the nation and have a large population area around them. That franchise really shouldn't be compared to the true small markets.

An even playing field. Salary cap is the best way to do that. The only reason the Yankees and Red Sox don't want a cap is because they know just how big of a competitive advantage they have right now. Levelling the playing field would result in the Yankees front office having to be much more efficient in procuring talent, which could leave their jobs in jeopardy, much moreso than the current system. The only reason Yankees management gets fired as often as they do is because management realizes that they really should be winning a championship every other season given their distinct advantages.

Better that the markets that say they can't compete without a cap be contracted instead.

Where would you set a salary cap? Do you believe at all the Royals could be spending more if they wanted to? What if the cap was $100 million and they only spent $30 million, and the big markets simply poured their economic advantages more into scouting and development?

Would you be for a salary floor?

It makes no sense to blame the Yankees and Red Sox for not having a cap, the MLB owners have tried to push one during every labor dispute of the last 15 years at least. The Player's Union won't do it.

And I'd be all over a 100% equal playing field if you could somehow promise the same for my Syracuse Orange in facilities and recruiting. MLB disparity is viewed as a tragedy where we just kind of expect it in other contexts.

Just for reference:

2008 Forbes:

Rank Team VALUE* Revenue*
1 NYY $ 1,306 $ 327
2 NYM $ 824 $ 235
3 Red Sox $ 816 $ 263
4 LAD $ 694 $ 224
5 CHC $ 642 $ 214
6 LAA $ 500 $ 200
7 ATL $ 497 $ 199
8 SFG $ 494 $ 197
9 STL $ 484 $ 194
10 PHI $ 481 $ 192
11 SEA $ 466 $ 194
12 HOU $ 463 $ 193
13 WDC $ 460 $ 153
14 CHW $ 443 $ 193
15 CLE $ 417 $ 181
16 TEX $ 412 $ 172
17 DET $ 407 $ 173
18 BAL $ 398 $ 166
19 SDP $ 385 $ 167
20 ARZ $ 379 $ 165
21 COL $ 371 $ 169
22 TOR $ 352 $ 160
23 CIN $ 337 $ 161
24 MIL $ 331 $ 158
25 MIN $ 328 $ 149
26 OAK $ 323 $ 154
27 KCR $ 301 $ 131
28 PIT $ 292 $ 139
29 TBR $ 290 $ 138
30 FLA $ 256 $ 128

I'm sure the Steinbrenners would cry themselves to sleep every night over having an extra $100 million profit every year instead of giving their fans what they want.

1. The salary cap would obviously have to be negotiated depending on revenue. Obviously, the archaic rules concerning local TV revenue would also have to be renegotiated to make a salary cap work.

2. A salary floor would be a must. Honestly, the Royals aren't even close to the worst offender in regards to spending revenue. They have upped their salary extensively over the past couple of years. They plan to expand salary even further in the coming years. It's not that they aren't spending more. The problem is that the difference has grown to such a vast level, significant changes in payroll by the lower teams don't get noticed because they still can't even come close to matching what the top teams pay.

3. You're buying into the hype if you think that the players' union is the the reason we don't have a cap. That's nothing more than an excuse by the large markets to pass the blame elsewhere while they continue to ride the financial coat tails of the current economic system. Don't kid yourself. They're not stupid.

You blame the Yankees and Red Sox for spending money and wanting to win?

Is it my fault too for supporting the Red Sox?

Are you seriously claming that the reason there's no MLB salary cap is 2 ownership groups and not the Player's Union?

These discussions usually start with me being sympathetic, and end with hoping these loser teams move or close up shop. Without the antitrust exemption, maybe a 3rd team tries to break into NYC, who's population could seemingly support it.

No one is blaming the Red Sox and Yankees for anything. They can't be blamed for taking advantage of the situation and wanting it to remain in their favor, but that doesn't make it any more competitive.

The large markets like the current system. They're certainly not going to go out of their way to change it up and are more than happy to dump the blame on the union. I'm not just talking about 2 franchises, though they are obviously the ring leaders. I certainly haven't seen any large market execs come out and be upset about the current lack of a salary cap. Why? Because they're raking in the money. Once again, they're not stupid.

And that's certainly the feelings of most big market fans.

An interesting anomoly is that per capita, the New York franchises are actually down the list in regards to attendance. KC actually draws more people per year per capita than the Yankees or the Mets. They only do well because of the sheer number of people in the NYC area.

What you're saying is contrary to everything that's publicly known about the 1994 and 2001 MLB player's strikes, where the owners offered the players labor deals that involved salary caps. Both were rejected by the players, and both times the compromise was revenue sharing. The Yankees have spent well over $100 million in luxury tax payments since then.

There's only so many people you can fit into Yankee Stadium and Shea. OF COURSE that's going to be a low per capita number when the NYC metro area has 20 million people. That's why they're able to charge so much more for tickets than the Royals do.

I don't think you know the feelings of "most big market fans". They like it when their team wins, just like you.

Should the Royals be allowed to move if they can be more competitive somewhere else? Why are they entitled to an MLB team in the first place?

$100M is a drop in the bucket compared to what they're making off the current economic system. But you go ahead and try to make a martyr out of the big market management while they laugh all the way to the bank because of the competitive advantage that they hold. They didn't cry a single tear when the players' union put up a fight regarding a salary cap. The only reason they offered to toss in some revenue sharing was to avoid the league equivalent of a prison riot if they failed to do so. There's a reason why David Glass is beloved by the small markets and hated by the big market execs. He's the one that had the balls to call them out in the meetings in 2001 when everyone else failed to do so.

When you say "they" are you just referring to the Yankees? I agree that they do great under the economic system of MLB. Good for them. But they're just one owner. Obviously the owner consenus/majority is for a cap, so I don't see what difference it makes what the Yankees "feel" about it.

I like revenue sharing and the fact that there's way more teams in play than there used to be. I wouldn't even mind a salary cap if it could be implemented in a way that doesn't muddle up trades and free agency in a way where you need an MBA to figure out what's going on (like the NBA).

But it seems silly to me to artificially prop teams up so they can exist, and then insist that they be put on an equal financial playing field as the Yankees. I don't see who that benefits except for Royals fans. Like you said, there are very few truly "small market" teams out there. I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice some Red Sox success for a better league as a whole, but only to that extent. Once the league works, I'd rather my team have an advantage, of course. When the Red Sox play the Royals, I hope the Royals lose every single time.

I used to be a Boston Bruins fans until, out of cheapness and not market size, they decided not to spend any money, and traded away superstars. So I lost interest in both them and the NHL. Even though for the Royals the issue is revenue and for the Bruins the issue was cheapness - that makes no difference to the fan following the team. It wasn't "fair" to me as a fan, just as the Royals payroll isn't "fair" to you. I didn't blame the rest of the world for this "injustice", because they don't owe me anything and I can simply ignore them.

Well Steinbrenner always threatens to sue the league when the cap is even thought of, so that may be a consideration.

Mostly because MLB wants to grow the brand in all areas of the country.

It's only a problem when your team faces the competitive disadvantage. I totally agree that the big market fans like the current situation.

Sure, the Royals could move somewhere else where they could face the same competitive disadvantage and have the exact same problems. Your last question is obviously a non-starter.

If you don't understand that the top few teams control the league, there's no reason to continue this discussion. The league is not even close to a democracy, though I'm sure you'd like to imply that it is.


I didn't say anything about handouts for small market teams. No one is asking for anything. If big market teams are forced to adhere to a $100M salary cap and have the unfortunate position of somehow pocketing extra money, is this a problem? The only people that will be upset are the big market teams because they have to face the possibility of not winning all the time.

I'd add that I wouldn't have an issue with the current system if it was set up much like a European soccer league in that teams could be promoted/demoted based on how well they played. There's a lot of disparity in revenue/payroll in those cases, but at least the teams have a chance to compete as they are generally placed with teams similar to their situation. In the U.S., we prefer leagues that have parity. The lone exception to that rule is MLB.

I'd love the European system for MLB, that makes a lot of sense. Or even revenue-based realignment which created an easier avenue to the playoffs for smaller market teams.

I'm just trying to wrap my mind around the assertion that any professional sports team owners don't want a salary cap. Maybe I'm naive, I've just never heard anyone contend that before.

So the whole cancelling the '94 World Series, the '01 labor issues, that was all a scam and the owners and players were on the same page all along? That seems like a lot of trouble for nothing.

Do you think the Phillies or Rangers are against a salary cap just because the Yankees don't want it? When they collectively submitted multiple proposals for a salary cap, they were essentially "rigged" to fail? I don't buy it.

And the league because of declining TV (and other) revenues.
And the networks because of declining viewership.


This is all starting to remind me of some of the March Madness discussions, and there is some similarity in the situations. An occasional KC or PIT playoff team is the equivalent of the College of Charleston, while the Yankees/Red Sox and the larger TV market teams are the upper tier conferences.

The involvement of those teams is an interesting novelty but I can't think of many things that MLB wants less than a couple of back-to-back PIT vs KC World Series, as that would create havoc for the next TV negotiations.

Once again, another 'this will happen' scenario that the big markets would love to have you believe, but has little basis in fact. Sure, you'll have a spike up or down in the playoffs depending on the team, but a even playing field is going to bring bigger contracts overall. The only reason the national contracts aren't bigger right now is because of the current local TV setup that has to be revised before a salary cap can ever be considered.


Once again, the NCAA is set up much more like the European Soccer Leagues and has little relevance to MLB. Teams in the NCAA are in leagues with teams of similar competitiveness and can move to a new conference up or down depending on their current situation. That's not comparable in any way to the MLB setup.

All I can do there is LOL. Simply absurd.

I hate to break it to you, but the networks wouldn't mind if a quarter to half the teams in the league were folded tomorrow, because they're guaranteed ratings killers & would prefer not to run the risk of being stuck with them.


It's entirely comparable when it comes down to what the largest percentage of the viewing public wants to see. Here's a hint: it's not the Royals vs the Pirates (KC & PIT fans note, I'm just sticking with the most common examples, there's quite a few teams that could be plugged in here).

I'm kind of amazed really, as it seems there's still some people who believe that a major professional sports league actually gives a damn about competitive balance/competition or anything else except insofar as they affect the bottom line. These are for-profit businesses, not amateur competitions striving for absolute blind equality for all.

As for the issue of "fairness", I've yet to see a rule that tells any small market team they aren't allowed to spend the same as the Yankees or whomever. Whether it makes fiscal sense for them to do so is entirely their problem, not something that another team should be handcuffed by. Ultimately it comes down to whether some of the smaller markets are legitimate major league locations at this point. Maybe the simple answer is that they aren't.

Though in the 70s and 80s that didn't matter. As World Series that involved the Pirates or a Royals got very high ratings. Perhaps one of the reasons that things have fallen so much (in addition to baseball's relative popularity falling) is because of the boom in team inequality.

You have a right to your opinion, but it's archaic at best. Ratings are good because of the wide exposure. Cut down the teams to less markets and you'll be left with less revenue. That's the truth. Less markets = smaller contracts and less exposure.


No, ultimately, it comes down to whether MLB wants to remain a national sport with wide exposure that makes a lot of money or a regionalized league that has a strong fan base in certain cities but isn't maximizing its income potential due to smaller regional contracts. There's a reason that NCAA football and basketball is the huge revenue draw that it is. Your suggestion would be to contract the NCAA and just keep the top 25 teams in each sport in order to get rid of the teams that 'are guaranteed ratings killers'. You could do that, but it certainly would not increase the broad appeal that creates the ratings bonanza that we currently have in the NCAA.

You're correct. Some of the biggest ratings in baseball occurred in the late 70s and early 80s when the Royals and Pirates were regularly in the playoffs. There wasn't any disparity in payroll back then.

TV ratings yes, but that's a silly argument, TV ratings for everything were higher back then.

Look at attendence (adjusted for expansion), and inflation-adjusted revenue. Baseball's doing better than it ever has.

The only time baseball ever really had parity was the 70s-80s, which was about the time football surpassed it as the most popular sport in the United States.

Fixed.


You make my point. KC was able to compete just fine when there was parity. And football surpassed baseball in popularity when they reached a parity point in their league.

MLB TOTAL ATTENDANCE

2007: 79 million
2006: 76 million
2005: 74 million
2004: 73 million
2003: 68 million
2002: 68 million
2001: 73 million
2000: 73 million

1984: 44 million
1985: 47 million
1986: 48 million
1987: 52 million

1973: 30 million
1974: 30 million
1975: 30 million
1976: 31 million
1977: 39 million

But the goal isn't for KC to compete. A very, very, small amount of people want that.

And you saying there was parity in the NFL in the 70s??

That's fine. Baseball can contract to the 10-12 teams that compete and watch their ratings reach pro lacrosse levels. I'm obviously being oversarcastic, but anyone that believes that setup will increase the revenue and size of the TV contracts and revenue is an absolute fool.

The NFL parity began in the 80s.

They only have a 10 year history. Their philosophy has always been build the young players until they were ready for the majors, and overvalue your young prospects.

They tried the Marlins route of the "Hit Show" with Canseco, McGriff, and Castillo(Cashtealer).

Now they are locking up young players at a fair price but below market values at the end of their contracts. They should be a viable team for the next 5-10 years because they have their youngsters all signed to long deals and still have a solid farm system.

Not 10-12, but maybe 4. (or let them move to NYC and Boston, which may also bring the Yankees and Sox down a notch). Or let them continue to exist as virtual farm teams.

The only teams that have shown a complete inability to compete in the last decade are the Royals and Pirates (and arguably the Rays, not withstanding this year). Every league has a handful of teams that are always bad. In the MLB, those bad teams will tend to be those with the lowest revenue and fan base. That's a good setup.

Hey, what do I know, I just make my living in part based on this sort of stuff.

If you've got a strong showing in the largest media markets, your national numbers work out just fine. Nobody outside of Peoria really gives a damn about whether a program posts a big number in Peoria.


Riiiiiight. A league without KC is suddenly going to be reduced to regional coverage on FSN since the rest of the country pales in comparison to the awesome impact of the Royals.

Let's see here. The top 8 TV markets account for 1/4th of all TV households in the U.S. Once we get to #26 in market rank we've accounted for over half.

Let's look again. Kansas City ... Market #31, accounts for 0.893% of all TV households in the U.S. How many people outside that market do you really believe would have their viewing habits affected by whether the Royals are in that market, or even exist?

Their assigned MLB territorial exclusives also include #69 Wichita (0.396%) and #104 Lincoln (0.246%). That's about 1.5% of the TV universe focused on them, or slightly more than the Orlando market by itself without any nearby markets included. Even if you assume that the interest drops to zero for half or even 2/3rds of those in Royals territory (and I'm focusing on that because surely you aren't suggesting any significant portion of the rest of the country gives enough of a damn about them to change their viewing habits because of their absence) then you're talking about a number small enough to be easily accounted for by other markets through replacement (if moved) or simply by avoiding the risk of them killing the ratings by getting deep into the post-season.

Orlando, Pittsburgh, Portland, Charlotte, Indy, Raleigh-Durham, Hartford, and Nashville are all larger. Only Cincinnati & Milwaukee are smaller in the current MLB. And in the case of Cincy, their tangent market appeal is more significant while Milwaukee appears to be in a situation more similar to KC.


I've long advocated cutting the number of D1 teams for football and wouldn't mind seeing the same for basketball (albeit for reasons beyond TV). But the vast difference in the size of their post-season participation leaves more room for the less appealing markets to be more easily tolerated.

Like most major league sports today, baseball is a made-for-TV event first and foremost.


And as I said before, that was then and this is now. We didn't have multiple games per week coast to coast, with baseball there for the watching virtually 24/7. Those games had more value, via more interest, then than they have now as they were a more limited commodity.

Baseball is currently under local/regional contracts that are not shared between teams. I assumed you knew this but perhaps you did not.

Fair enough. I can see that we're not going to agree in any manner, so I'll move on to other things at this point.

Of course local/regional contracts certainly exist (and are substantial in some cases), but you seemed to be suggesting that their national contracts (Fox, ESPN) would vanish if a couple of the smaller markets were to be contracted.
I can assure you the the impact on those would be negligible at most, and quite likely nonexistent.

I couldn't disagree more with your last comment, but much as with Molson, we'll agree to disagree. Enjoyed the chat.

www.mlbplayers.com

The argument wasn't that more people were interested in the 70s and 80s or whatnot, but that ratings didn't fall off the cliff when teams like the Royals or Pirates made the World Series.

Now maybe that's because Jon says there is more baseball now so it isn't the big deal that you get to watch these teams in the WS, but I do think that there is something to the fact that payroll disparities exploding have had an impact. Whereas you may have all sorts of big stars in a city like KC then, you won't really find that now, which would tend to have an impact on interest.

It definitely has an impact on baseball interest in KC. But that's nothing new, bad teams rarely have superstars. The 1990 Yankees lost 95 games and had zero superstars (except perhaps a washed up Mattingly and Righetti)

The only difference today is that the worst teams and seasons are generally limited to low-revenue teams. So the teams with the fewest superstars are the teams with the smallest fanbases. I don't think that's a bad thing for MLB as a whole. Lower interest in KC + increased interest in NYC = a net gain for MLB (to a point).

Sure, you need the novelty of the occasional big-market disaster or small-market success story, and I think revenue sharing does allow that.

On the other hand, I believe it isn't a net gain in the long run to the sport. As smaller and middle market teams fall farther and farther behind the pack, you'll have franchises whose lower interest can't be made up by the higher interest by the big market franchises.

I think baseball has to be careful. Too much concentration of talent and most fans will tune out. So, I think revenue sharing has done wonders to keep interest in baseball high, but I think it needs to increase (I like Bob Costas's plan to take half of every teams' revenue, put it in a pool and then distribute that pool equally).

Fans as a whole would burn out on the same playoff teams every year, but I don't think we see that. There's only a handful of teams who haven't been in the playoffs the last 10 years or so. And exactly half of MLB teams have been in the playoffs in the last two years, and 20 have been in the playoffs in the last 5 years.

I wonder if there was sentiment about competitive balance being an issue back in the 50s and 60s, when the Yankees won 15 AL Championships in 18 years (it was about $$ then too, and the Yankees' massive scouting network). I certainly wouldn't want to see that today, but people remember that era fondly, don't they?

Old people do ;). Nostalgia and all, when they grew up on baseball. But, of course, today there is more competition for those eyeballs (as already somewhat mentioned). I can imagine plenty of Royals fans giving up on baseball and turning to the Chiefs and the NFL and raising their kids as Chiefs and football fans instead of baseball fans... as an example.

The problem with counting just playoff appearances is the issue with sustained winning. Fans won't follow a team that is good one year and sucks the next. If they've had one winning season and get to the playoffs, but are bad the rest of the years, they won't gain that fanbase that'll follow the team religiously... well, unless they are the Cubs ;).

And, of course, if you happen to be in the same division as the teams with the Top 2 payrolls in baseball by a longshot... well, let's just say it isn't exactly going to be easy to break that barrier and get that fanbase excited. Tampa is doing it so far (barring a late season collapse, I think they'll have a playoff spot), but that's been fairly rare in the AL East for the past decade or so.

Now granted, this seems to comes down to an anti-Yankee anti-Red Sox rant, but they are, by far, the main reason for the payroll disparity in baseball. It appears the NL fans have more to hope for, as only the Mets and Dodgers have over a $100 million payroll (edit: The Cubs may be there too now, but I'm not sure), and are unlikely to add significantly more at the trade deadline if they are floundering.

Wow, never seen this before...

Johnny Damon goes back to the wall and leaps to grab a Youkilis shot. He gets it, crashes into the wall, and falls down. When he hits the wall, the ball pops out of his glove and rests on top of the wall...and sits...before falling back into the field of play. Triple for Youkilis.

Let's see. Dodgers beating the Giants, Derek Lowe not pitching great, and Andruw Jones sucking. Seems like things are back to normal

Wow, and now we get to the core of it. In the end, this is pretty much what is at the heart of the big market teams. We are in a big city so we have a right to be better and have many more built in advantages than smaller cities because it's what's best for the league. In the end, I have nothing to say to that, except just "wow". And you wonder why we just have such a passion about this and why it borders on hate, you arrogant snots.

(Whereas in basketball where that whole LeBron thing in Cleveland just doesn't work for the league. Or that Peyton Manning guy in Indy. Let's just throw those sad saps in Green Bay a good QB once every couple of generations so that they can be a feel good small market success story- I mean, hell, no one can even spell his name, poor soul. But really, we just want to toss them a bone between the New York, Chicago, and LA series winners)

SI

You asked for it, so here it is ;)


Draft Reform

The easiest and the one that is being held up by the owners much more than the players is the creation of a fair draft. The players union would sell out future players in a heartbeat- it has happened in every sport (tho the NFL is getting out of whack again). You think major league vets like having money taken out of their pockets to pay Rick Porcello? Hell, no. But larger teams realize this is where they can build in a competitive advantage. Again, how did Detroit raid Florida this last offseason? On a deal built around two prospects they overpaid for in the draft vs their slot. Smart move for Detroit but the loophole needs to be closed.

It's simple- draft picks are slotted, no major league contracts, and draft picks can be traded. Make it a legit and fair draft like any other sport.

But that's not all. You want to play in the majors or minors, you have to register for the draft. No Venezuelan academy 16yo signees. No $51M posting fees from Japan. You want in, you register for the draft. You don't like it, stay in Japan or the Dominican or Cuba. No short cuts, no loopholes.

Salary Stabilization

A $125M salary cap and $85M floor. There's very little chance of this happening as the player's union would throw a fit as would the large markets. You would still see some disparity but it wouldn't be nearly as pronounced. That's only a 50% difference between teams. Not the over 500% difference between top and bottom that we see today.

Saving that, give me a real luxury tax similar to what the NBA has. It's not ideal, but it's a start. MLB actually went backwards in the last collective bargaining agreement. You don't have a lot of teams going over it and it got worse. Not this super high limit that has only been broken a couple of times by teams not named the Yankees. You go over $120M, you pay dollar for dollar into the revenue sharing pot. You go over $150M, you pay $2 for every dollar you are over.

Again, as part of this, give me a salary floor to balance things out. If you're taking revenue sharing bucks, you have to be over $75M for MLB salary or something to that effect.

There is more but these two "simple" steps are one hell of a start.

SI

All I've been talking is population, not the "deserving" bs that always get dragged into it. Why do you need to be insulting? I said nothing in my post that remotely justifies you "bordering on hate".

NYC is no better than KC. It just has more people....that's it. If you don't see why NYC is more important to the league than KC, all I have to say is "wow". Funny that I'm an "arrogoant snot" about the superiority of big cities as I've chosen to live in IDAHO.

What I see from you is a sense of entitlement that KC needs to get handouts just because they have a team that exists, and that they had George Brett like a million years ago.

The Royals exist and get free money only by the grace of the league. They can't compete on their own. And their fans still whine and namecall, and have pointless anger towards big market teams and their fans, who have done nothing to you. You actually hate the big market teams because they spend money they have, and you hate the fans because they continue to root for the teams they rooted for their whole lives, and they don't show you the proper sympathy, I guess (even though I've said again and again that I'm all for revenue sharing and wouldn't be against a salary cap, so I don't know why I'm getting your shit).

What you don't get is that competive balance only matters to the extent that it works for the league as a whole. Nobody cares about whether the Royals are good enough, nobody cares whether it's "fair". You need a league where you don't have too much predictability, sure. Eliminating the Royals or improving the plight of middle-market teams gets us there in a way that, unlike your suggestions, are actually possible.

Then I get into these discussions against my better judgment, see the (lack of) character of the typical small-market fan, and my sympathy goes away.

I don't get this at all. The Yankees are an obvious outlier, so remove them from the equation for a second. The Mets have a payroll of $138MM. Take Carlos Delgado off the team, replace him with a rookie making the league min, and they have a compliant payroll of $122MM and, in this fan's opinion, a better team. If Detroit got rid of Sheffield are they any worse off? Probably not, but now they are under your cap by about a million. A Sox fan would kill to have Julio Lugo off the team and now their payroll is about $123MM. Every other team is under your cap.

So what exactly is this accomplishing?

And re: the Yankees, they have something like $80-90 million coming off the books this year, mostly consisting of guys that won't be missed.

Well, the payroll floor means teams receiving revenue sharing funds would no longer be able to simply pocket that money.

And teams at the top of the payroll list would have to find a way to dump salary in order to retain their own free agents and raid other teams' talent.

Tweak the numbers for the salary cap and floor. There is a number for each that would promote parity and creative GM thinking and blunt the ridiculous advantage the biggest spenders currently enjoy, while also encouraging the little guys to spend.

It's easy to pick and choose Delgado, Sheffield, and Lugo- they're the dead weight. I'm sure the Royals would love to have that salary back from some of the bad moves they've made.

But what if the Mets were bumping up against the cap this offseason and couldn't have traded for Santana (and he would have, oh, stayed in Minnesota)? Or similarly, Detroit couldn't have traded for Cabrera because they couldn't afford an extention to him? Or some other team would have won the bidding for Daisuke because the Red Sox couldn't have even looked at him without shedding some payroll?

SI

Well, I'm done with this part of the thread for now, too, as it seems that you are saying as well.

Kansas City is in the league and it's not by the grace of other teams that we deign to compete against the large market teams of the world.

You want to go ahead and keep watching a rigged league, I think WWF still has room on that bandwagon.

You think small markets should all just go away, we'll wipe out the 10 smallest market teams and the big boys can play in something that overnight falls in relevancy on the national stage somewhere between Major League Soccer and the Major League Lacrosse, the difference being that those sports are on their way up and not down.

The most tragic part to those of us on the other side of the argument is that you don't even get it.

SI

I would love to see the six to ten smallest teams eliminated in MLB (it'd be nice for the NBA as well), think of how the quality of play would improve if you got rid of the five worst guys on each team. Get the league down to 24 teams, with an equal number in each league (the current disparity is a pet peeve of mine, why should NL teams have a 6.25% chance of making the World Series while AL teams have a 7.14% chance? it's just dumb) and division.

Draft reforms, salary floors, increased revenue sharing, and a luxury tax set at a lower benchmark with a more punitive rate would also be nice.

I think I'll pick up one of those Stars and Stripes Cardinals caps... I'm not sure if all teams wore those last year, but they really looked cool yesterday.

Boy, Royals fans sure are bitter!

Easy answer to your hypothetical...the Mets wouldn't have been bumping up against the cap because if they had a choice between acquiring the best pitcher in baseball, or re-signing Moises Alou and Luis Castillo (combined $14 million), which do you think they would have chosen? And let's not forget that Santana didn't stay in Minnesota because they have a BILLIONAIRE owner who refuses to spend money on the team after he used public funds to get his stadium.

You can be sure that if Detroit was worried about the cap, they still would have pulled the trigger on a Cabrera deal. But maybe their cost-cutting extends to not bringing in Jacque Jones at over $6 million.

So congratulations, your salary cap has added Moises Alou, Luis Castillo, and Jacque Jones to the FA pool. Have fun bidding, small market clubs! Do you really think teams will stop acquiring star players with a cap? If anything, your cap is teaching teams how to manage their club better -- spend money on premium players while filling the rest of the team with lower-cost vets or cheap young kids.

BTW, Mets owner Fred Wilpon would sign today for a $125MM cap, guaranfuckingteed. Your (or, sorry, was it MBBF's?) assertion that big-market clubs are what's holding up a cap because it makes it harder to win is comical.

Sorry, can't pick and choose what bloated contracts you want to get under the cap to make your argument. You know that doesn't work, and trying to argue it is playing abit false, IMO. Bad decisions will still be made with a sal cap (see: NBA), and the consequences will be that some deals that happened in real MLB life wouldn't happen in SI's hypothetical. I highly suspect Santana is at the least one of those that wouldn't happen. In fact Santana wouldn't even have wanted to leave MIN, since the Twins would have thrown money at Hunter to stay to meet the salary floor, or at the very least offered Santana gobs of money for the same.

Reality is, we can't really properly hypothesize what effect SI's system in whole would do unless we picked a start point for it's implementation and started forward from there. But, definitely, big market teams aren't allowed to just say "wouldn't sign Lugo" or "wouldn't sign Delgado" as if there weren't ever reasons for the deals they have or why they are on those teams making that money. Those reasons would likely still exist.

How so? Back when a Santana trade was first a possibility, both Alou and Castillo were not yet signed. Do you really think the Mets would have gotten themselves up against the cap by signing those two guys if they felt that would eliminate any chance of adding Santana?

You guys are making great points about the benefits of a salary floor though.

You keep saying 10 - who's saying 10?? I said 4 (or 2), and most fans would agree with that. LOL that MLB becomes Lacrosse without the Royals, give me a break. A league with only big markets would suck, but a league without the bottom 2-4 teams would only be better. I agree with BigFo above, knocking out a handful of teams would be beneficial in any American professional sports league. The only place where it was actually considered was MLB, and it would have happened if not for stadium lease issue. THAT tells you the value of the small market means to the league.

I don't know where to start with the WWF rigged theory....is this back to the whole thing where the teams and players were ALL against the salary cap, and the two players strikes were actually some sort of scam to take the blame of economic disparity away from the top MLB owners?

Syracuse used to have an NBA team, but in today's landscape, that doesn't make any sense, and they're gone. The Royals are in the same boat. Or they could continue to exist. But this vilification of every entity and system that you perceive as "holding back" your Royals is getting really old. That's why I kind of hope they just go away, get put out of their misery.

If the Royals ever have another winning season, it will have been heavily subsidized by the Yankees and their fans, and it would be tainted in that way. Is that really what you want?

Royals players would be dead-against any kind of salary cap by the way, it's annoying how you keep blaming the lack of one on the Red Sox and Yankees, ignoring history, but whatever helps you get through this I guess.

Red Sox fans pay an average of $48 a ticket, and they could charge way more and still sell out every game (and if you actually want to go to a game, you'll be paying a scalper $300+ for regular seats.) The Royals average ticket price is $17. I realize that TV is the main revenue stream but the Sox bring in a ton of money in ticket sales. If they're forced to hand over more of their money to keep the Royals afloat, guess where they'll make up the difference.

I get it perfectly. The Royals have been bad forever, hampered by their small payroll, and you want to alter the structure of MLB so they can be better. If you just said that, instead of resorting to name-calling, ridiculous blame, and bitterness, more people would be on your side.

It just seemed so recently when Red Sox fans were all for a salary cap

Many still are. A lot of Yankees fans are too. It ain't gonna happen though.

I'll admit, I haven't read through this how small/big market debate, but who's really complaining here? I'm pretty sure baseball is more popular than ever and making the most money in its history. Why would anyone want to change anything? This is a business, and the point of a business is to make as much money as you possibly can, which they are. I'll admit, I'm a Mets fan (unfortunatley), so I'm part of this big market monster fan, but if the Marlins can win more WS than the Mets, and the same amount as the Red Sox, in the past 11 yrs, and the A's and Twins can be regular playoff teams, and the Rays can have the best record in baseball, than maybe these other teams need to hire people who actually know what they are doing to run their franchise.

Allow me to talk about actual baseball games for a minute...

That was another great one between the Mets and Phils (at least until the Mets really got to the Phils' pen late). The first eight innings were a joy to watch...just great baseball, some clutch hitting, a lot of strategic moves between the Manuels, etc. It amazes me how Jamie Moyer continues to be a productive pitcher.

The thing about the TV contracts that doesn't add up is that the team gets to keep their local TV money. That is where the biggest change needs to be made. The yankees have to have another team playing to broadcast the game so they should all split TV revenue just like attendance 60/40 for the home teams.

ALso FA signings allow the big spenders to add draft picks when they leave. The Rays and the Yankees have both had 15 top 50 picks since 2000, so the drafting system isn't as big a benefit as it seems.

Out of the hundreds of millions that the YES network cost to start up, how much did the other teams chip in?