Reserve System/ Player Salaries (non-Phillies discussion)

[Austinfan]

As they should be. If you're not competitive, you don't spend on 30+ year olf FAs unless you can get them on deals that make them tradeable in July for assets that can help you down the road.

The real problem is the system was set up to reward the big free agents, teams overpaid for a while, then the analytics guys came in and showed it was stupid.

1) make the revenue share "harder."
2) maximum length (like the NHL) so money isn't tied up in nonproducers
3) more revenue sharing combined with higher minimum payouts

Just needs tweaks, but odds are both sides will dig in their heels instead of negotiating a mutually beneficial deal.

[zambonir]

A warning about Major League Baseball’s Record Revenues

[allentown]

In all sports, a minimum of about a quarter of the teams aren't going to try very hard to win in any given year, because they actually have a very low chance of winning, regardless of how much they spend. The Phillies of ca. 2015 are a case in point of a large market team in such a position. They had gotten so bad that short-term veteran patches just couldn't possibly right the ship. Those who claim that they should try to 'win' need to give a definition of 'winning'. In most sports, the way the media and public perceive winning, is to win the championship or at least to win one playoff round. When the dismal Sixers, pre-program, made the playoffs and were promptly eliminated, that was not counted as 'winning'. A baseball team which goes all out with non-sustainable improvements in a given year, with the hope of winning 78 games rather than 68, will not be counted as having 'won' anything.

For a team in this position, the sensible approach is to go all out to 'win' as soon as possible and eschew expensive quick fixes. Since the team won't be good over the next two seasons, money spent on two-year contracts to vets, unless their is a good probability of flipping them for talent which will actually help in the future, is dumb. Spending on young FA or international players, who can be expected to still be making a serious contribution 5 years down the road can be a plus. Spending every cent possible in the draft and international amateur signings is a plus. Trading what is tradable for talent that can help you win in the future, even if it causes losses today, is a plus. Hiring the best possible scouts and development staff, as well as MLB coaches who can teach and nurture young talent, rather than just putting established MLB talent in the best position to win, is a plus.

Baseball is different than football. A football team that loses big has a great chance of signing a stud draftee who can make a big difference immediately or after one season of learning. Even a stud baseball draftee takes longer and the chances of drafting wrong are much higher. It is a lot longer process to turn around an awful baseball team. That may be a big part of the real problem.

A good baseball team that chose to 'cheat' on international signings, in a manner all but encouraged by MLB, gives itself an advantage over a decade into the future, making it even harder for the poor teams, like the Phillies were, to catch up in even the intermediate time frame, unless they took the same cheat approach, which the Phillies did not.

[Austinfan]

That's blithering nonsense.
There's a few owners content to make money, but in most cases, owners buy teams not as investments but consumption goods, for bragging rights and egos, they're already filthy rich.

As Allentown points out, what has happened is as fans get more sophisticated, they don't buy the "patches" approach to pretending that bad teams can be made competitive, the 1993 Phillies were a fluke, the Astros are the norm. That is, it takes 5-7 years to build winners in baseball and ice hockey because if you draft 18 year olds, they don't usually become productive until they're 23-24 (players who come up faster often struggle for a couple years). College players tend to arrive a year old than HS/LA players. A couple "surprises" that arrive at 21-22 can't carry a team, which needs 6 or so 2+ WAR starters, at least 3 SPs who are above average and a deep bullpen to be legitimately competitive. So you need multiple good drafts, then have to wait for the results.

You can buy one or two starters in FA, but most are over 30 and you maybe get 2-3 years, or they're cooked by the time the kids arrive in large numbers. So patching in free agency simply means you win 75 instead of 65 games and draft worse.

One way to deal with this from a player's point of view is to allow what the NFL does, to roll cap money forward so that a bad team can accumulate extra money for the good years - so if you're under by $100M for 3 years, you can go a little crazy in the FA market when the kids arrive.

[zambonir]

That's blithering nonsense.

The article? Aren't you the one who has repeatedly posted that MLB revenues are not going to keep growing?

[andyb]

I really doubt MLB will ever have declining revenues. While some of the cable money will go away, probably 75% of it will be replaced by streaming money. There are many other revenue sources that could easily expand, however. Two that come to mind are international licensing (Yankees-Red Sox in London!) and gaming (legalized gambling will bring MLB-sanctioned prop betting to your phone).

The sky has been falling so many times and it has not fallen yet. Baseball does need a more equitable system to divide revenues and they will need to be creative to maximize revenue streams, but the revenue will keep increasing. Fans will fill the seats too if they have more teams trying to compete. The Orioles had lousy ratings naturally. Once they put a better club on the field revenues will rebound.

[Austinfan]

No, the idea that owners just want to pocket money from their investment.
There's always a few, but most want to win, that's where the fun is.
While in the past sports franchises were good investments, the past doesn't not predict the future, and given the current prices, I can think of investments with less risk.

The reason most franchises that aren't competitive don't chase free agents is that it's a waste of money, and doesn't help them become competitive - and as fans get more sophisticated, they'd rather root for a rebuild than continued mediocrity. So teams now focus on the draft, international free agents and using cap room to take bad contracts in return for good assets.

[andyb]

The idea that the owners mostly want to win because they are billionaires is just wrong. Making money is their priority and it is shown by the collective bargaining system they negotiated and how few of them are actually willing to overspend simply to win. We would have 10 teams over the luxury tax line if winning were a priority.

What the owners want is a system where they are guaranteed to make money. Then they will of course compete to win within the system, but that is a far cry compared to saying their first priority is winning. Luxury tax penalties are only money until you get $40 million over the cap (and then the top draft pick only gets pushed back 10 picks). There are some penalties for signing compensation free agents, but there were only 7 of them this year and not all will change teams. More important, the stars with compensation (like Harper) are worth that penalty if all a team wants to do is win.

[allentown]

This forum largely applauded The Process, when the Sixers finally came to the realization that finishing in the middle of the pack, season after season, while spending right around the ceiling with over-paid mediocre FAs provided no chance of becoming a winning franchise. The Sixers analyzed the situation and made the logical decision to do a multi-year tank. This provided some stars they otherwise couldn't get. Had they drafted more wisely and ignored red flags on some players, they'd be even better today, but at least they have Embiid and Simmons, both guys who would have been out of their reach. The Phillies also gave up on the patch-and-fill with elderly vets approach and finally rebuilt. There was no realistic alternative. The route they were on wouldn't get them a first-round playoff win, likely for close to forever. Full rebuild was the right approach, although they certainly could have drafted and developed talent better. Turns out their baseball people weren't as good as they thought they were. But the rebuild and not spending to maximize wins every season was the only logical approach.

[allentown]

The idea that the owners mostly want to win because they are billionaires is just wrong. Making money is their priority

I think most owners do want to win. Most owners know that the structure gives them zero chance to be other than occasional pop-up winners. Miami tanked way more than their share of seasons, but they also got to their share of recent WS. They displayed a very logical strategy, given the situation they were in. A rebuilding team truly is better off and will actually win faster if it tanks than if it tries to maximize winning in impossible seasons. The Nationals recent success was due to a very lucky timing of strategically taking a multi-year tank approach. In every season their will be owners/GMs, I'd say minimum 8 teams, who'd like to win now but are smart enough to know it isn't possible to achieve now. The 2013-2016 Phillies were the stupid exception where owners/management couldn't see the obvious.

[zambonir]

The owners who are billionaires with big egos are few and far between. There are more ownership groups like the old Phillies, who either insist on running at a profit (not that there is anything wrong with that) or actually aren't billionaires (but instead corporations or 50-person partnerships or small-market millionaires) and are not willing to lose money.

But there is obviously number-crunching/asset management going on at the GM level that isn't just about meeting budget numbers. Your valuation tells you what AJ Pollock is worth given the comp pick and you don't budge from that (unless you do, as with Klentak and Santana).

I don't think tanking teams is the thing that needs be fixed per se. But if you had to pay your minor leaguers and your 1-3 year pros better you wouldn't be able to do it on the cheap. It's also a copycat league, while the Astros did it most intentionally they the Cubs and the Royals all built a World Series winner by hitting bottom (as did the 2008 Phillies for the most part, and yes, the Nats).

[allentown]

The problems with some of the small-spending owners, such as the old Bill Giles Philies and Luria, can be laid at the feet of the commish. These are owners who either don't have the financial resources to spend competitively and who borrowed a ton of money to buy the team or who just are by nature extremely frugal. Bill Giles never should have received approval to put together a group to buy the Phillies. He was too poor and he would always need the team to make a profit. In this case, as in many others, I think a prime consideration in choosing Giles as an owner was that the commish and other owners were seeking a person who would be a stalwart fighter against larger player salaries and amateur bonuses -- a right-hand man for the commish and small market owners. This is a problem which derives from baseball's monopoly status. It's a closed rich men's club, where you can't just sell your team to the deepest pocketed buyer willing to pay you the most $. New owners must be approved. The commish and small market owners don't want a new ownership group who is likely to spend big and not fight the good fight against higher salaries and bonuses.

[zambonir]

Hard to say if that's really true anymore, that MLB doesn't actually want big spenders. The newish Dodgers and Cubs ownerships could not possibly have more money (and yet both teams are holding to a budget, albeit a very high one). The Royals are now owned by a Snapchat billionaire (but their previous tightwad owner made over a billion dollars selling the team). I think the Giles group was as much about sentimentality and him being a Phillies lifer as MLB politics (though it's hard to separate 'em). And at the time, putting together money around Taft (by far the largest shareholder originally) was probably no different than doing that today with Comcast.

But the league (and its powerful small-market owners, especially in the Selig years) has obviously long been protective of anything that isn't good for Milwaukee or Cincinnati or Pittsburgh or St. Louis (and Philly, of course, behaved more like them than New York). And afraid of big personality owners except for the ones they were already stuck with (i.e. George). Ricketts, yes, Mark Cuban no.

In some ways it really is just greed. It doesn't matter what they can afford or what they are making. If they can pay the players less they will. If they can get tax breaks they will. If they can get a stadium paid for they will. That's America really. Baseball is an actual monopoly but we have a lot of virtual ones now anyway.

[Austinfan]

It was more than greed, many of the small market owners got in before the money got really big, if it was about greed, they could have just cashed out and tripled their money.

Rather, they were concerned about a downward spiral where the rich owners/cities dominated the sport, they couldn't field a competitive product and would not only not have a chance to compete, but could end up losing money and have to sell out. But the rich franchises fought tooth and nail against NFL type revenue sharing, because national TV is much less important than local TV and gate revenues.

[David_Criss]

Seems like this is worse than last year (baseball speaking). Keuchel, Kimbrel, Gonzalez, Moustakas, Miley, Pollock, Jones are all still out there. Are Machado and Harper holding all this up? Rumor is the Padres want Franco who would be available if Machado is signed.....meaning Moustakas has to wait.

[bigegypt0417]

Seems like this is worse than last year (baseball speaking). Keuchel, Kimbrel, Gonzalez, Moustakas, Miley, Pollock, Jones are all still out there. Are Machado and Harper holding all this up? Rumor is the Padres want Franco who would be available if Machado is signed.....meaning Moustakas has to wait.

The system seems broken...it's both the owners and the agents who have caused this by negotiating in a way that looks more like playing chicken. They have brought free agency to a complete standstill and it will need to change.

[zambonir]

I think if you went over MLBTR's Top 50 FAs from last year vs. this year it's about the same. I wouldn't include Jones or Gonzalez or Miley as big names (Miley and Jones were in the 40s, both ahead of Asdrubal Cabrera, Gonzalez was Top 30).

The system is broken but I don't blame any teams for not wanting to give up comp picks and money/years for two over-30 injury-prone players like Kimbrel or Pollock. And Moustakas is still going to do better than he did last year.

Last year Arrieta, Lance Lynn and Alex Cobb were all unsigned in March, and Cain and Martinez didn't sign until the end of February.

It's not good for the players but again, I ask, is it really impacting roster construction or anything that will matter once rosters are finally set and they start playing games? If the Phillies really thought they were in grave danger of losing one of these guys or are falling behind Atlanta, DC or NY they'd do something about it (and last i checked, they actually had, what with the two big free agents and multiple trade acquisitions).

[andyb]

One thing that clearly needs to go are comp picks. They can still go to certain teams that lose stars, but really they should have nothing to do with whichever team signs that player. The money alone that goes to the player (coupled with salary caps or luxury line) is enough for the signing team to bear. The loss of comp picks really does not do anything other than depress the salary that goes to mid-level free agents. We might see Pollack gets less guaranteed than McCutchen now and that is just unfair to Pollack.

[Lucky_Beagle]

Maybe we will see players who haven't yet reached FA to agree to sign a contract for x number of years instead of going to arbitration each year and insist in a non comp pick requirement as part of the agreement.. For example if Kingery thought he was going to be a star...or even if not, why wouldn't he ask for that to be part of his contract. Maybe he has to give up a little $ to get it, but it could make a big difference later.

[zambonir]

You mean asking for no QO. Which Pollock probably should have just taken. I wouldn't say it is unfair that he gets less than Cutch; slightly better but also less productive player, due to injuries.

Imagine if the QOs were still like the last CBA. Teams are still willing to pay the price (Klentak sure did last year) but not as readily.