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Baseball needs a salary cap (Page 2)
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Originally Posted by hayesk
Personally, I'd rather see fixed salary tiers with both personal and team performance bonuses. This way there's incentive for you to play well, and help your team play well.
Excess profits should be donated to little league and other charities.
Alas, I don't expect this to ever happen.
That would be nice if the MLB was a charity and not a business...
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Originally Posted by jokell82
That would be nice if the MLB was a charity and not a business...
There was a time when it was more of America's past time and not as monetized.
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Baseball needs more explosions.
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And cute cheerleaders. And perhaps a shrubbery.
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Originally Posted by besson3c
There was a time when it was more of America's past time and not as monetized.
It still is - just go to the minor league games. Those are guys playing for the love of the game, not just for the giant salaries.
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On a slightly different note, why is God Bless America still being sung in the 7th inning in some ballparks? Why do sporting events have to be patriotic events when the visiting team is from the same country, and why the God part?
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Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey
Baseball needs more explosions.
Steve Dahl, Chicago, 1979, "Disco Demolition Night."
Originally Posted by besson3c
On a slightly different note, why is God Bless America still being sung in the 7th inning in some ballparks? Why do sporting events have to be patriotic events when the visiting team is from the same country, and why the God part?
I don't see a problem with injecting a bit of patriotism in "America's National Pastime," but when did they change away from "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" for the 7th inning stretch? That's a very old tradition. Throw in Kate Smith as one team hits the dugouts and the other takes the field, but don't mess with the 7th inning stretch.
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Originally Posted by besson3c
On a slightly different note, why is God Bless America still being sung in the 7th inning in some ballparks? Why do sporting events have to be patriotic events when the visiting team is from the same country, and why the God part?
I think the 7th inning stretch should be eliminated outright. What's the big deal - you sit through 6 innings, then in the last 3 decide you need to frickin stand? Ugh.
Oh please keep politics out of baseball, it sucks enough as it is. No GBA in baseball. If "God" heard our prayers, we wouldn't need to stand up in the 7th inning.
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Originally Posted by osiris
I think the 7th inning stretch should be eliminated outright. What's the big deal - you sit through 6 innings, then in the last 3 decide you need to frickin stand? Ugh.
Oh please keep politics out of baseball, it sucks enough as it is. No GBA in baseball. If "God" heard our prayers, we wouldn't need to stand up in the 7th inning.
I'm kind of puzzled as to how it sort of slipped in there. I remember singing GBA after 9/11 in NY, but why still, why baseball, and has this crept into other ballparks too?
I prefer Take Me Out to the Ballpark.
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Originally Posted by besson3c
I'm kind of puzzled as to how it sort of slipped in there. I remember singing GBA after 9/11 in NY, but why still, why baseball, and has this crept into other ballparks too?
Or other sports. Like golf or poker.
Originally Posted by besson3c
I prefer Take Me Out to the Ballpark.
Me too. It's light, breezy, fun - like a Cover Girl.
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Originally Posted by jokell82
I went to see the Pacers/Lakers game a couple of weeks ago for $10.
Was that in Indiana, or pre-season?
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Originally Posted by osiris
Or other sports. Like golf or poker.
Me too. It's light, breezy, fun - like a Cover Girl.
Here's another good question: why is it that a breeze is supposed to make a chick look sexier? Is it sort of a "I can't help that my hair is getting messed up because it is windy, but I still look sexy" kind of thing? If so, why don't women walk around with battery powered hair dryers or fans or something so that they don't have to style their hair? Why do chicks on magazine covers look like their hair is in a windy environment? If the magazine is trying to sell the idea that the women is sexy, maybe they shouldn't get chicks that look best when they have an excuse for having messy hair?
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Originally Posted by besson3c
Here's another good question: why is it that a breeze is supposed to make a chick look sexier? Is it sort of a "I can't help that my hair is getting messed up because it is windy, but I still look sexy" kind of thing? If so, why don't women walk around with battery powered hair dryers or fans or something so that they don't have to style their hair? Why do chicks on magazine covers look like their hair is in a windy environment? If the magazine is trying to sell the idea that the women is sexy, maybe they shouldn't get chicks that look best when they have an excuse for having messy hair?
My only thought is that wind-mussed hair is sexy because it looks like post-coitus-mussed hair.
On battery powered hair dryers - I ran into the mod crowd in Japan and they carry battery powered hair dryers, styling wands, straighteners - you name it. It didn't know this stuff existed.
This is all somehow related to a Baseball Salary Cap.
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Us talking about messy wind blown hair is what I call sanctioned thread derailing... Sanctioned by yours truly, the thread creator, and also besson3c. I have issued you a sanction osiris.
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Originally Posted by besson3c
Us talking about messy wind blown hair is what I call sanctioned thread derailing... Sanctioned by yours truly, the thread creator, and also besson3c. I have issued you a sanction osiris.
I like sanctions. If only Kate Smith were with us to sing praises.
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Originally Posted by Dakar V
Was that in Indiana, or pre-season?
Indiana. Great game, too.
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Originally Posted by jokell82
Indiana. Great game, too.
To be fair, they're desperate for fans, given the past few years. But hey, $10 is still a huge win, either way.
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Originally Posted by Dakar V
To be fair, they're desperate for fans, given the past few years. But hey, $10 is still a huge win, either way.
I was actually in town on business at the time. Went with a coworker who was local and he told me that they didn't even sell out their home opener. So yeah that could have something to do with it.
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On topic with the salary cap, being an NBA fan, I can't say it really solves the problem of teams overspending or overplaying players. The biggest thing it did in the NBA was allow some smaller market teams to generate revenue through the profit-sharing, but teams like Dallas and New York still blew off the cap and took heavy financial hits, with mixed results (And they can afford to take these hits because they're in that large market).
The two or three major trends that I've noticed have cropped up the past few years:
• An overpaid middle-class: Those guys who aren't quite all-stars but important roleplayers will have teams tripping over themselves to bid on them during free agency.
• Excessive buy-outs: A lot of it resulting from the above, though not exclusively. Players are being given millions of dollars not to play for a team, because if you can get a guy to take $6 million of a $10 million contract, you save $4 (or even $8, if you're over the cap) in the long run.
• Trades have become harder and more complex to execute.
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Originally Posted by Dakar V
The two or three major trends that I've noticed have cropped up the past few years:
Don't forget "designer teams." That's the very high dollar teams that get put together, do one season (quite well, usually) and then everybody gets traded or sold. Think "Tampa Bay" here, and what happened in their World Series season and afterward. This has been done on a less extreme scale by other teams, and it sucks. Those aren't really "teams" any more than fantasy baseball teams are. Except of course for the billions spent on "getting the pennant and the Series."
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Originally Posted by ghporter
Don't forget "designer teams." That's the very high dollar teams that get put together, do one season (quite well, usually) and then everybody gets traded or sold. Think "Tampa Bay" here, and what happened in their World Series season and afterward. This has been done on a less extreme scale by other teams, and it sucks. Those aren't really "teams" any more than fantasy baseball teams are. Except of course for the billions spent on "getting the pennant and the Series."
Yeah, I'm not really familiar with that as it doesn't really occur in the NBA. Sucks for the fans. Didn't someone tried to sue them, because they bought season tickets with the expectation that the team would try to be competitive, which the dismantling thwarted? (Don't think he won, though).
All that said, I think most fans would like to see a Championship come to their team, no matter what happens afterwards.
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Yankees sign Teixeria; hold the four largest contracts in baseball.
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Yeah, $180 million for 8 years. How can the Orioles and Nationals, who were also interested, compete with that?
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Originally Posted by Kerrigan
The textbook answer to this suggestion:
Salary caps are one of the least effective means of promoting competitive balance in a sport, and are only kept in place by franchise owners who benefit from paying less for players than they are actually worth.
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The most effective method of promoting competitive balance is a league-wide system of promotion and delegation, such that you see in Premier League soccer. This is frequently mooted as a possible way to shake up baseball, but I don't know if it will ever happen.
...what?! As in, the English Premier League?? The league which has been won by the richest team (Man U) for what, 10 or more of the last 15 years? The league in which the top 4 to 5 teams dominate every year, and the bottom 15 teams feel that it's a victory if they come out of those teams' stadium with a draw? The team which has a nickname of the "Big Four" for its four richest teams who buy all the best talent in the league?!
You're kidding, right? I've been advocating a salary cap for the EPL for years. It's completely out of hand at a national (English) level; only Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool or Man U have any sort of chance at winning the title in any given year. It's a **** league, worse than MLB; it's like baseball, except the Yankees or Red Sox ALWAYS win the pennant.
If you're considering UEFA Cup/Champions League, then it's another story; but that's just because none of those leagues have salary caps, so if you take the best couple teams from each of those leagues and leave out the ones who don't have a hope in hell, then you actually have a semi-level playing field.
In my eyes, I love the NFL system, and I don't know where you think it's gone wrong. It doesn't eliminate bad teams; Detroit is proving that this year. It doesn't eliminate great teams; the Patriots and Colts have proven that consistently. It places an emphasis on great management: spending the exact same as someone else, but getting far more out of the money spent.
I do agree that it makes dynasties that much harder to build, but the NBA, NHL, and NFL have had very, very consistently dominant teams throughout their salary cap years (see: Detroit Pistons, Spurs, Celtics, Colts, Pats, Red Wings, etc.). And those teams are all defined by great management decisions in building them: pairing high-priced stars with role players to produce the perfect combination.
greg
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Last edited by ShortcutToMoncton; Dec 24, 2008 at 09:48 PM.
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I should add that what salary caps do seem to do is reward teams which have great development systems. These are the players that are the best under a salary cap system, because they are relatively cheap.
The "great management" idea comes in when it comes time to reward such players with new, more expensive contracts. Teams either have to choose to trade/give them away (e.g. and rely on new players coming through their system), which also spreads talent throughout the league; or, they can keep them at a higher price, and hope to fit cheaper role players around them (which places an emphasis on great talent/personality/skills scouting).
The NHL's salary cap is fairly new, but already there are some interesting examples of this in practice. The Pittsburgh Penguins are having an interesting time with Crosby, Malkin and Fleury, who are all under 25 and will/do have top-level contracts; it's difficult to put quality players around them, given the salary constraints. The Detroit Red Wings have managed to milk an unbelievable farm/drafting system and perhaps the greatest management/coaching combination in pro sports to consistently field shockingly talented teams out of what people thought were uncertain talents. And the Ottawa Senators have followed terrific team-building before the salary cap era with absolute management suckage since the cap came into place, consistently trading away their going-to-be-expensive promising talent for what turn out to be mediocre bit players.
I dunno; I love salary caps. I might actually watch MLB if the Blue Jays weren't in a division with the two highest-priced teams in the league, who each spend double (or more!) on player salaries. It's terrible, absolutely terrible.
greg
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Originally Posted by ghporter
Don't forget "designer teams." That's the very high dollar teams that get put together, do one season (quite well, usually) and then everybody gets traded or sold. Think "Tampa Bay" here, and what happened in their World Series season and afterward. This has been done on a less extreme scale by other teams, and it sucks. Those aren't really "teams" any more than fantasy baseball teams are. Except of course for the billions spent on "getting the pennant and the Series."
How is Tampa Bay a "designer team?" I don't see it at all. In my eyes they were a team constrained by an artificial salary cap – i.e. zero money/fanbase – and used great young developing players, along with some strategic additions, to field a great team.
Now that their talent has been exposed, they're having/going to have the exact same problem I outlined above; these players will now demand more money, so Tampa Bay will either trade them away or pay them more. The fact that they can't afford to pay them more is the artificial salary cap; they'll trade them and hope for more developing players and bit players to act as complements for the players who get their raise.
That's not a designer team. New York is a designer team. So is Boston. Those teams have fantastic payrolls every year, and then are blown up if they don't perform. That's a designer team, in my mind.
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...wow, after re-reading those posts I've impressed myself with the strength of these arguments. Damn I'm good!
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I believe Glenn meant the Marlins.
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The point about the young players such as those on the Rays demanding more money putting them out of the reach of the team that developed them is a great point, but it is also worth pointing out that if that team were a little out of balance, say lost their ace starting pitcher or a couple of hitters or something to injury, they would not have the resources to go shopping for a Manny Ramirez to make up for these deficiencies, and it takes a while to groom incoming rookies. Therefore, a lot really has to work in their favor to win - a perfect balance of several factors, and little they can do to account for any of this.
As it turns out the whole draft pick compensation thing is a little messed up too. The Yankees signed 3 type-A free agents: Sabathia, Burnett, and Teixiera. Who knows, at this rate they might sign Manny Ramirez too... The team that gave up the highest rated type-A player gets the best compensation. A team will hedge their decisions around this fact, but in this case the Angels will get the best compensation for Teixiera. How can you create a strategy around getting good draft picks when the team you are working with can just go out and sign more players and complicate all of this? It's complicated when players have opt-out clauses in their contracts, but what about teams that want to dump expensive players on their roster to free up payroll and rebuild? This seems like a complete crap shoot, when it should be something that works in the favor of the team rebuilding at least enough to give them a fighting chance.
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Originally Posted by scottiB
I believe Glenn meant the Marlins.
Yeah. Since they don't seem to be worth paying attention to, I sort of get a few things mixed up. The Marlins' '02 Series win was due to paying WAY too much for cherry-picked talent that was sold or traded off really soon afterward. Sure, they won (not their division, but they got to the series by being the wild card-again), but was it a "team," or just a collection of players that played together for a single season?
I grew up with baseball teams that were TEAMS. They had a consistent roster with only a little turnover every year, and they had time to develop teamwork that went beyond spring training practice. That's how "legendary" teams like the original Yankees and Dodgers, and even the Tigers in the 60s, became legends. Working together for a long time. This other stuff is really just very expensive fantasy baseball.
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Until baseball learns how much damage teams like the Yankees do to their sport, their fan base will continue to decline.
In the NFL, any team has a chance within a couple of years. In baseball, the odds of something like this happening are slim. The Yanks, Red Sox, Mets and Dodgers will have Tampa's good players within 3 years, and they'll be back in the basement.
Sad.
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Originally Posted by ghporter
Yeah. Since they don't seem to be worth paying attention to, I sort of get a few things mixed up. The Marlins' '02 Series win was due to paying WAY too much for cherry-picked talent that was sold or traded off really soon afterward. Sure, they won (not their division, but they got to the series by being the wild card-again), but was it a "team," or just a collection of players that played together for a single season?
I grew up with baseball teams that were TEAMS. They had a consistent roster with only a little turnover every year, and they had time to develop teamwork that went beyond spring training practice. That's how "legendary" teams like the original Yankees and Dodgers, and even the Tigers in the 60s, became legends. Working together for a long time. This other stuff is really just very expensive fantasy baseball.
Ahhh yes, the Marlins makes more sense.
I think it's good to note that a salary cap probably won't change this, though. It's probably a sign of the times, and given the money these players are making perhaps rightly so; immediate performance is demanded, and if the player can't deliver then there's not much leeway before they get shipped off. I think people realize that most of the time, it's just a matter of time before the player comes around; but maybe back in the 60s and 70s when players didn't make an order of magnitude above the national salary, people were a little more content to wait it out....
greg
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...where's Kerrigan on up in here? I want to hear more arguments from the economic side of it. Is there something wrong with my logic from that point of view?
greg
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Last edited by ShortcutToMoncton; Jan 10, 2009 at 01:13 PM.
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...no? No? No more interest? No one wants to say why salary caps are bad and the NFL got it wrong?
Booo.
greg
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