Reserve System/ Player Salaries (non-Phillies discussion)

julio 2019-03-30 18:27:45 UTC #141

If the Phillies have dormitories in Clearwater, I sure hope they have the sense to use them! Empty buildings cost money to keep up. Granted, there's a variable cost that goes up if they're occupied - but there are direct benefits to the organization from picking up those costs.

baseballoldie 2019-03-30 18:28:35 UTC #142

Salaries shown typically are full season MLB salaries but a player only gets paid a portion of those salaries if they aren’t in the majors for the full season. So De Fratus may not actually have made $2.3 million in salary.

phillychuck 2019-03-30 18:37:18 UTC #143

No, the site I used has actual $ salaries--you can tell b/c the pro-rated salaries are obvious in the listing.

baseballoldie 2019-03-30 20:22:47 UTC #144

If it’s Spotrac, it’s likely wrong. De Fratus only played in 5 MLB games in 2011 for a total of 10 days (see Baseball Reference) and the rest of the season played in AA and AAA yet it shows him with a $414,000 salary. He likely only made about $25,000 that year for his time in the majors. In 2012, he was with the Phillies for about 30 days so he didn’t make a full season of a MLB salary in 2012 either.

andyb 2019-03-30 22:31:05 UTC #145

A major league player that makes $2.3 million over 6-8 years is probably not going to end up that wealthy. Taxes will take some. They also have to get second apartments in whatever city they end up, while paying for travel and training often in the offseason. They might need to make $5+ million to save close to a million (and often they have no college degree)

All this is besides the point though. Much more of the middle class should be making $5-$15 million a year and they are not because they have those modest 1-2 WAR years when they cannot get paid based on their worth. We may not have sympathy for that player making $500K instead of $5 million, but that extra $4.5 million is going to some other billionaire owner or rich superstar player.

allentown 2019-03-30 23:50:44 UTC #146

I think this would be a mistake, which would reduce teams' incentive to maintain a strong flow of talent into and through the minor leagues. Baseball has the longest period of team control of the major sports, but this is matched by a longer time from when signing bonuses are paid until the player can make a positive MLB contribution. This is tough on the kids who don't get the big bonus, although they have a substantially lower probability of being +WAR MLB contributors. I do favor ending team control at any time after 5 years and a day of MLB service time, which would end the ability of teams to juggle MLB service time to provide close to 7 seasons of team control.

I think the answer is to provide arb after a half year of MLB service time and to peg the arb guidelines to a higher fraction of actual value produced than is used today, for each arb year. Some averaging and early year maxes might be required to prevent a player like Nola from being paid 50% of actual value for 10 WAR.

Higher minor league salaries and higher MLB minimum salaries are also warranted. Both could be doubled -- more than doubled for the low minors.

It is also worth doing away with QOs and teams losing draft picks for signing any FA. A system like football's, where a certain number of comp picks are available based on the net FA player value lost during the prior off-season. Except for losing a star, such as Harper, the top pick might be start of 3rd round, while a star would grant the team an end of first round added draft pick. (Again, just player examples, if you lose a Harper and sign a Machado, you get nothing.)

julio 2019-03-31 02:02:24 UTC #147

This is true... but this is a system that MLB created - and not back in the halcyon days of the dead ball era. MLB chose to "capture" the minor leagues through the National Agreement, and took on the task of player development by choice, not because the prior system of independent minor leagues wasn't working. Now, this was done in the era of the perpetual reserve clause, and it allowed MLB franchises to lock up talent from an early age, for a player's entire career if they so chose.

I don't think we want to go back to the reserve clause system. (We shouldn't; it's antithetical to the values we profess as a society.) Perhaps MLB needs to evolve back to a place where more of its talent is developed in independent leagues. I might add that, if the minors were independent, they would compete for talent - which would mean that minor leaguers wouldn't be working for sub-minimum wages.

allentown 2019-03-31 02:59:13 UTC #148

I'm not at all sure that would be the case. If minor league clubs had to pay their players' salaries, how many minor league teams would bring in enough revenue to survive? A lot aren't doing very well now, with MLB paying the salaries for players and coaches.

It would help if baseball were a bigger college sport, but even a guy like Bohm, taken 3rd in the draft as a collegian, is only starting at Lakewood. Most college draftees spend at least 2 years in the minors.

Let's say MLB clubs ran only one minor league team at the AA or AAA level, both to finish the development of players groomed in college or independent minor leagues and to provide injury reserves -- how many independent minor league teams would exist. Certainly there would be a lot fewer players in minors than today. How would Latin American players get from raw 16-year olds to MLB? Perhaps they wouldn't, except for a handful. They'd have to hone their skills in DR leagues until they were AA/AAA quality. Who would pay them during this time? The clubs could sell top players, as the Japanese do, but how many teams could the local spectators support?

Certainly what we have now is a big improvement over the reserve clause. I'm old enough to remember at least one year in which teams were required to carry players on the MLB roster if they were signed to a bonus above a certain amount. I think the Phillies had Hisle and another young player in this situation pre-draft, in the early 1960s. CD will know the answer to this one.

andyb 2019-04-01 15:13:12 UTC #149

Even with all these extensions, it looks like total salaries will decrease for the 2nd consecutive season.

zambonir 2019-04-02 17:09:58 UTC #150

It will be interesting to see if teams are actually setting a template for the new system, or if they will still refuse to pay the middle-class.

But essentially, this is how it should have been for Ryan Howard (though he got a late start). He made $125 million of his $190 million from 2012-2017. That financial trajectory will be reversed for Acuna (it's worth $124 million if options are exercised, at which point he'll be 30).

andyb 2019-04-03 18:40:15 UTC #151

The Acuna contract seems to be among the most team-friendly of these extensions. All these extensions, as lucrative as some might be, will likely continue the stagnation of player revenue share (if not further drops).