More on the Yankees payroll arguments
Khoi Vinh on the Yankees and Payroll
For almost a decade, the Yankees have consistently maintained the highest payroll in Major League Baseball while failing to bring home a World Series title, and during that time the grousing took the form of ridicule. What Yankees fans heard then was: “See? You Yankees can’t buy championships, even with all of your money.†What we hear today is: “See? You Yankees just buy championships with all of your money.â€
This is not a coherent line of argument, but then again it would be naïve to look for any motivation here other than envy, because the logic at work is so suspect. It’s pretty safe to say that a good number of those who hate the Yankees because of their payroll are unabashed capitalists, too; they’d be very unlikely to begrudge the fact that the highest valued, best performing organization in any given market also led that market. That’s not just capitalism, it’s the way capitalism is practiced in America.
I always find this kind of argument sweet. It’s like when people born in to rich families who attend private prep schools and are legacy-admitted into the finest universities in the country wonder why people in abject poverty don’t just, en masse, pull themselves up into prosperity.
Baseball-wise, that was me for a long time. The guy who owns the Twins is worth billions, why doesn’t he just spend a billion instead of bleating about how poor his stadium revenues are?
And that’s actually a valid case — many of the teams in baseball are never-full ticks sucking blood out of the sport, and baseball (and Selig-as-commissioner-with-bajillions-in-his-fund) should be ashamed about it.
But here’s where that whole argument goes wrong: let’s say that the Yankees devote more of their revenue to payroll than any other team. That’s admirable, and they should indeed be lauded for it.
Except… it costs every team, no matter how cheap, about forty million just to keep the lights on and the minor leagues running, and so on, and it’s more like sixty million. Then it’s another thirty million to pay a cheapo major league team.
So let’s say there are three teams:
Team Lamprey plays in a market of 1m people and have a cheap owner, and take in $60m in operating revenue.
Team Modest plays in a market of 1m and tries to compete, and they take in $90m in operating revenue.
Team Rich plays in a good but not New York market and tries to compete. They take in $175m in operating revenue.
Team Yankees… they take in $250m in operating revenue.
You see the problem already. The lights-on-and-field-a-team pays 50% of their revenue to keep the lights on. Team Modest, 30%. Team Rich, 17%. Team Yankees, 10%.
Now that’s an exaggeration to make a point (the Yankees end up paying more to keep the lights on), but that’s how it sorts out. I happened to have Pappas’ numbers from 2002 up (here) and the two teams with the lowest non-player expense:operating revenue ratio were the Yankees and Red Sox (check out the Mariners, by the way, and that massive non-player expenses line. I believe that’s us buying Ichiro).
Beyond which, when teams like the Yankees and Red Sox who are big enough to have their own cable networks they can move revenue off the books do so, they really shouldn’t get credit for that against teams that have to account for their Fox Sportsnets payments normally.
The problem is not that the Yankees spend, or that their fans live in a bubble of privileged and can’t seem to grasp that they’re the beneficiaries of a broken system. It’s that because of the way MLB is set up, the Yankees and the Mets operate like government-sanctioned monopolies. In any equitable world, the New York metro market supports three, maybe four teams. And we can talk about how you manage that, or how you might start one of those teams, but the result of having only two teams is exactly what Posnanski pointed out: both New York teams get to operate as if they’re two franchises. They can, year in and year out, spend vastly more on everything, compete consistently, and when they’re weak, they can add a team’s worth of payroll in one off-season to shore up a few positions and then go on happily.
That’s insane.
And crowing about how the Yankees once sucked doesn’t obviate any of that. They’re like some scion born to a super-wealthy family that gets into Yale, stumbles around life for a while making a jerk of themselves… yayyyy, education can’t overcome everything. And then they decide to go into, I don’t know, golf course ownership, and of course they’ve got a ton of backers from family friends, effectively unlimited capital to work with, even after they blow up the first few tries and they’re mysteriously let off the hook for some bookkeeping shenanigans during that time, and ta da! Fourth time’s a charm, they’re golf course moguls!
Is it envy to look at that and wonder if perhaps there were many more people who couldn’t have done better and more important things with the same advantages, as we are to think with the Yankees? Sure. Maybe.
That’s the point. I’m a fan of a relatively wealthy team that spends a lot of money on payroll, having long been a fan of a really poor team that spent nothing, and for all my carping about their constant inflation of how much they’re spending on payroll for PR purposes, this is way better. But my team would have to absorb the A’s (or better yet, our hated interleague rivals the Padres) for us to enjoy the kind of advantages the Yankees and Mets do.
And I don’t see that the presence of bloodsucker teams makes it okay for the Yankees and Mets to enjoy such crazy unbalance. In an ideal world, a good ownership group would sense opportunity and buy one of those teams, move them to New York, and we’d have some competition. That the system is broken and rewards both established geographical monopolies and cheapskates doesn’t mean that either is in the right, or that no action should be taken with regard to both.
And as long as baseball lets those two grow endlessly fat on their geographical advantage, everyone is going to take rightful glee when they fail to make anything of it, and they’re going to rightfully throw rotten fruit when they do.
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Very clearly stated, and makes perfect sense.
The folks in YES2 (errr… ESPN) won’t understand a word of it.
Also, I counted four clear GW Bush references in there.
I would declare that out of bounds for invoking politics, but I guess he did own a baseball team for a while there.
I guess if you want to see George W. Bush references, you can. That’s not the point I want to make, though.
Great post, Derek. In regard to said “bloodsucker” franchises, for example, it’s a damned shame that Jeff Loria was allowed to weasel his way into getting a new stadium so he could continue to run the Marlins into the ground. Given their track record of chronic ownership neglect and fan apathy, they’d be the perfect candidate to be relocated to, say, maybe the Meadowlands as the “third” New York franchise.
And, hey if they’re playing in New Jersey, they could even be renamed the Lampreys, too — since the water is so polluted around there that there are probably few native fish species left, anyway.
Revenue sharing does a pretty good job of correcting the ‘everyone has fixed costs’ problem and the luxury tax makes you pay for the Padres like they were the Athletics.
Maybe the numbers need to be tweaked, but those rules turn the Yankees from a special case to just the richest of the rich.
Clearly, they do not.
There’s not much more for me to say than “but they do.” There is a limit to what you can do with money. Teams only have so much roster space. Many of the best players are club controlled and cheap, although the poor teams have some trouble with arbitration. For the moment, the rich teams have more than enough money to compete with the Yankees when signing international talent and “over-slot” draft picks.
MLB is as broken as the medial system in the USA, but it won’t be changed for years because the minority profiting from it feels it actually deserves its unassailable position.
Bill James predicted years ago that the have-not franchises would begin what he called “the fifth war” (or fourth or sixth, maybe – I’m not going to look it up). I always felt that, given the ugliness that is baseball ownership, anything could become so open.
The Japanese-like “dango” payoffs to the lesser teams have made it more unlikely, since after all no one suffers but the fans. And the fans – unrepresented entirely in the power structure of pro baseball in North America, can take what’s offered or piss off.
Here in Japan, the attrition is popularity is definite. Something about the pro game here is dying. The Giants essentially did a Yankees/Red Sox and bought a title, and likely will dominate the leagues for years, perhaps forever. And NPB will shrink within five, perhaps to one league.
It won’t be much fun to watch.
The Yankees built a stadium to reduce their revenue sharing obligation, while at the same time fielding a team that costs vastly more than any other.
They built a stadium to reduce their revenue sharing obligation.
“Richest of the rich”? The richest of the rich is Boston. The New York teams operate with revenue streams that dwarf all others.
Essentially is all comes down to collusion between the players and the rich clubs to control the way the fans money is distributed. The next collective bargaining agreement, which I believe is due in 2011, will possibly change the draft pick compensation for signing A and/or B type free agents. It might talk about TV replays and pension fund payments. What it will not do is discuss a hard salary cap. The players and the big clubs control MLB and the Commish and the donkeys owning the smaller revenue teams will pass on changing the status quo, they know their place in the grand scheme of things. The fans, who pay them all, will not have a voice in the discussions. If there was a fans union as strong as the players then they would have a seat at the table, but we know that’s not happening, so we can’t cast the first stone.
Try this — The Yankees make baseball less interesting. Watching them win is like watching a thoroughbred outrace a plow horse. Who cares?
The playoffs were not very exciting this year. The Yankees were never really challenged. Their late-inning comebacks were hardly surprising and so not very dramatic. The other series were less interesting because we knew the other teams were probably playing for the opportunity to lose to the Yankees.
I don’t even hate them anymore. I just think they’re boring.
Not true, with essentially unlimited money you can always upgrade a roster spot. If not through free agency, then adding payroll in a trade with a team looking to reduce payroll.
Also, a team with a huge pile of money can keep their free agents by signing them to longer term contracts. Other teams have to lose those players.
As many people like to point out: life isn’t fair. By the same token MLB is not fair. However, all the teams do have to play by the same rules. I actually think part of what makes the game interesting is that–once in a while–a team with a small payroll can knock out a team like the Yankees.
In terms of overall competitiveness and disparity between teams, how does the current era compare to the past? I haven’t studied the numbers, but at least it seems like different teams are winning pennants and the WS lately.
What really drives me nuts about this is not the fact that the northeast teams have more money to spend, but that they inflate the free agent market to the point of pricing even second tier free agents out of smaller market teams. I don’t think the MLBPA would ever accept an overall team salary cap; they would strike for a long time before allowing that. I think that something similar to the individual player salary cap with deferred money in place in the NBA would do wonders for allowing smaller market teams to retain their free agents (IE Twins and Mauer, M’s Felix) and actually have a chance at landing a free agent player. It’s just frustrating for me as a baseball fan to see 27 teams as the virtual minor leagues for 3 major market teams.
which reminds me of Joel Sherman quoting ‘a rival GM’ “If you are Felix Hernandez and you know the Yankees are out there with the possibility of maybe giving you $200 million in two years, why would you sign now, especially for any kind of hometown discount?”
The only way a salary cap gets put into place is if the numbers are fixed to a percentage of revenue for all of MLB. That would require MLB owners to open their books and they aren’t about to do that.
Salary caps don’t work unless all revenue is split evenly across all the teams and total player payroll floats with league wide revenue numbers. That’s never going to happen because it now makes the Royals worth just as much as the Yankees.
The best solution is the one proposed by DMZ, open up territories to expansion clubs and let the free market win out over time. You can even go with a promotion/relegation model used by the EPL, that provides a lot of incentive to invest in a team. The Pirates don’t get to be an MLB by fiefdom, they have to earn it.
The problem here is we are trying to decide if free market principles should apply to a tightly controlled and regulated economic model. The baseball system doesn’t operate in a pure free market environment (neither does the country’s economy for that matter, but the baseball model is even more controlled), or anything close to it. Once you game the system, you really are talking about a matter of degree in terms of the regulation.
I honestly don’t know if baseball could survive in a pure competition, “eat what the market in which your team exists brings you” sort of environment. We’d clearly have fewer teams. I don’t think you are in favor of that as a solution, since the problems you outline would only become more significant.
But if we are going to continue to have a regulated system for baseball, I don’t begrudge the Yankees. In the end, teams like them help make smarter GMs like ours in a middle market area, who must get better at putting together the limited number of roster spots.
I am not sure I am seeing your alternative proposal without further rigging the system to punish markets that have more people and thus can better support a franchise. Are you in favor of a hard cap? I am just not sure I am troubled by the fact that not all markets can support a team the same way as New York can. Would lifting “restrictions” on territory help? I am not sure there is an appetite for more New York teams in the league either, honestly.
Also, it shouldn’t be lost that the rich kids’ families do subsidize the poorer kids, and some of them get into Yale based only on merit and not means because of the endowments and scholarships set up by the silver spoon set. So it is in baseball that many teams benefit from the extra penalties levied against the teams that spend over a certain amount. The Yankees make a cost/benefit analysis there and keep right on going, penalties or not. Are further market punitives a good solution? I don’t know. Certainly not because some of the beneficiaries of the penalty spend the money poorly. Colorado and Tampa Bay are good examples of teams that have used the money well recently, right? And, like life in general, the bulk of the population lives in the middle somewhere, where they have enough opportunities to succeed if they work hard, but aren’t going to get hand-outs to get there because they don’t qualify. I am ok with that.
I don’t know if revenue sharing is the right thing, but in a regulated economic model, I don’t really know what solves the inequity problems, short of a hard cap. Since I am not in favor of that, I am ok with some of the David/Goliath aspects of super markets v. the rest of us.
Now why can’t the revenue advantages of having the entire northwest help the mariners edge out the NY metro area?
The Vancouver BC to Portland corridor is 9 million people. wikipedia
The New York metro area is around 19 mil – divide that between two teams and they’re roughly equal. wikipedia
West Coast also has a three hour advantage to the Japanese market (easier to watch a game at noon than 9am).
I totally agree that the NYC payroll advantage is unfair and makes for an unlevel playing field – which helps tap into the class warfare allusions in this post. (I’d say Bush is merely a more prominent example among many of privelege predicating success.)
But, why can’t the Mariner’s compete in this arena? In addition to having a decent sized market, it’s a nice place to live (also with no income tax), i.e. additional incentive for free agents. The M’s are just some sustained success from becoming the Yankees of the West.
The LA market doesn’t respond to their baseball success as well as the NW does. seattle times
Awesome post. This is an area that MLB needs to look at more closely. Yet, I doubt they will.
How many people are added to the NY market by extending outside the metro area? Lots–the East Coast is dense.
How many people are added to the M’s market by extending outside the I-5 corridor? Not very many–the West Coast is populated sparsely outside the cities.
How many people west of the East Coast are Yankees fans, aided by the fact that Yankees home games finish before the kids’ bedtime?
How many people east of the West Coast are Mariners fans, blocked by the fact that Mariners home games don’t start until after the kids’ bedtime?
Looking at the raw size of the markets is useful, but I think adding in the parts of the markets you left out make the comparison much less equal.
Though some of that is due to the fact that a good percentage of sports fans there are so “laid-back” that they only get around to showing up for half the game sometimes.
werd georgmi,
I left out those complexities for brevity, but would like to make the point that while the M’s market can’t equal the Yanks, it can approach it.
I also didn’t mention that the more casual fans in NY-metro will cheer both teams – so you wouldn’t simply divide by two, and it’s also a “baseball town” – 1.5 million turnout at the parade.
Those dense markets around NY are also taken by Yankee haters (Phillie and BoSox fans), whereas Seattle has no close geographic rivals to box them in. So NYY are still somewhat restricted to the Metro area (upstate NY and a lot of CT probably do add another mil to the metro market base).
I’m willing to bet the only real solution that will come to the unbalanced payroll situation (if any at all) will be a higher luxury tax.
The other problem with including everyone within the geographic area for Seattle is that, for the distant fans, going to a game is a much more time consuming proposition than people within the NY metro area.
A long two or three hour drive each way limits people from just popping out to see a baseball game one night, even if the NY trip might theoretically be more expensive (long cab ride, more expensive tickets vs. 300 highway miles of gas).
For fans in north Idaho it’s more like a four to five hour drive, it takes an entire days worth of traveling to just see one game.
The proximity to Japan doesn’t help, as all revenue earned outside North America is shared evenly between all the teams.
And while we might think changing that would be a good thing, don’t think the Yankees wouldn’t immedately start their own TV station in Europe, too.
I don’t hate the Yankees for taking advantage of the system (I do still hate that Yankees, but that’s not why). I hate the system for being there for them to take advantage.
If you give a monkey a gun and he shoots a bunch of people, is that really the monkey’s fault? I’m more likely to blame the idiot who gave it a gun.
Sidi’s right. My home is a 2.5 hour drive (or a 4 hour train ride) from Safeco, but getting across the border is a pretty big hassle.
I’m thinking of the M’s potential more in terms of revenue generated by TV ratings for the Pacific NW region than by attendance, however….
The attendance potential is certainly there as they were #1 in the Majors in 2001 and 2002.
And as the BoSox proved, if you combine financial might with good baseball decisions – you can compete on a relatively even playing field with NYY.
The M’s have that potential.
I remember years ago wondering why there were no teams in the English First Division (this predates the Premier League) from London until I actually went there and realized that all those teams were named for London neighborhoods or landmarks, the equivalent I suppose of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Breaking up the New York monopoly would be good not for the fans of Kansas City or Pittsburgh, but for the teams like the Mariners and even more the Cardinals, where ownership and the fan base really do all they can, but in the end can get stomped like flies underneath the behemoth.
“I don’t even hate them anymore. I just think they’re boring.”
That’s where I am. I didn’t watch much of the playoffs as it just seemed like an exercise in futility, even with the possibilities of small sample sizes. Once isn’t a problem, but if this is the start of dynasty two, fueled solely by payroll imbalances, what will this do the majors? The Yankees need competition to play or there’s no baseball.
I love the idea of the other 29 teams leaving MLB and just have the Yankees be awarded a meaningless trophy every spring while the other teams play.
but if this is the start of dynasty two, fueled solely by payroll imbalances, what will this do the majors?
The Yankees won five in a row between 1949 and 1953 and in all but one of those years their opponent in the Series was another New York team. The game seemed to get through that period just fine. Total attendance in the majors did drop, though.
In any event, it seems a little premature to worry about a Yankees dynasty. Since 2000 eight different teams have won World Series and an additional four have won pennants, by my count. Yes, there are some perpetual cellar dwellers, but hasn’t this been the case in every era?
The AFL in Australia is a bit like that, too. Having its roots in Melbourne, something like nine or ten of the teams in the league still play in metro Melbourne — under the names of neighborhoods or suburbs such as Richmond or Essendon. Ironically, only one of them is named for Melbourne proper.
MLB does think about his issue. It thinks about it a lot. It’s no coincidence that MLB rammed through the luxury tax right after the Yankees run of dominance in the late 90’s early 2000’s.
I would expect a similar effort to attempt to harness the Yankees revenue if they go on another set of World Series runs.
You have to understand that the other owners aren’t upset that the Yankees have such a large revenue stream, they are upset because King George uses that money to put a better product on the field. If Steinbrenner just pocketed most of his earnings and fielded a team with a payroll on par with the Red Sox. You wouldn’t hear a complaint from the other owners.
Love him or hate him, at least he’s trying to win every year.
These statements are inconsistent with one another. This was baseball in the 1950’s, essentially all the revenue is based on gate receipts and local broadcasting. If total attendance is dropping, baseball is not getting through it just fine. In fact, the attendance drop would have been far more significant if the Braves hadn’t moved from Boston to Milwaukee and the Browns to Baltimore (or the Dodgers and Giants to the west coast). Baseball was in deep doodoo in the fifties and the Yankee dynasty wasn’t helping anyone.
How many years do you think it will be until the Yankees miss the playoffs again?
Think it will be 13 more years, like last time?
Comparing MLB to capitalism is such an absurd trope. The success of Apple products isn’t dependant on a decent Microsoft product to compete against. But sports are either about honest competition, or else are just live theater wearing a beard.
Watching the Harleem Globetrotters once every couple of years is fine, but who’s going to buy season tickets? Besides, that “league” has two teams and barnstorms the country. Maybe MLB can take that tack, the Yankees are one team, and the entire rest of the league is reorganized as the Washington Baseball Generals. They barnstorm the country playing a three-game series in each town then moving on before playing a seven game World Series (and it always goes seven games, with the Yankees winning dramatically in the bottom of the 9th).
Or they could take the WWF route, but then the Yankees would have to be the Heavy, and I don’t know that Steinbrenner would go for that. Still, think of all the problems it would solve. Steriods? Hand ‘em out at the gate on Kids Night. Corked bats and spitballs? A comedy routine where they show the player cheating on the Jumbotron but the Keystone Umps are looking the other way and throw out the manager who complains…
Yankee fan argument in response to payroll criticism: Count teh Ringz, Haters!!!
Life isn’t fair so why should baseball be fair is such a lazy argument it would be laughed out of a middle school debate competition.
DMZ said, “They built a stadium to reduce their revenue sharing obligation”
I was under the understanding revenue sharing only takes into account revenue being brought in and those monies are divided up. Do expenses (ie stadium) really bring that number down?
The amount spent on debt to finance a stadium is deducted from the amount of revenue sharing owed. Not sure if it’s dollar for dollar, but the entire financial model behind the stadium was based on those funds essentially coming out of the revenue sharing amount.
How many years do you think it will be until the Yankees miss the playoffs again?
It could be many years, but is this a serious issue? More than 25% of the teams make the playoffs each year, so it doesn’t seem our of whack for a good team to make them year after year. I agree that a single team going on a long World Series run isn’t great for the sport, but that hasn’t happened yet.
In a “fair” world, the Yankees would make the playoffs 8 years out of every 30. The chance that a “fair” system would result in the Yankees reaching the playoffs 13 years in a row is .0000000345.
Yeah, I’d call that a serious issue.
That’s 34.5 chances in a billion that baseball as it is currently constructed, for those who don’t want to count the zeroes.
“How many years do you think it will be until the Yankees miss the playoffs again?”
Most likely, centuries or even millenia unfortunately.
“If you give a monkey a gun and he shoots a bunch of people, is that really the monkey’s fault? I’m more likely to blame the idiot who gave it a gun.”
But if it’s a monkey wearing a Yankee hat, I blame the monkey … and Steinbrenner.
Argh. “…chances…that baseball as it is currently constructed is fair…”
Sorry. Edit button, please?
If MLB was truly interested in leveling the playing field they would not have to look far. Simply look to the NBA, NFL or NHL where the NYC franchises do not have a payroll advantage, simply because of the various salary caps and revenue sharing agreements under which those leagues operate. If the goal is payroll equality, the solutions are relatively simple.
As long as MLB teams have only limited revenue sharing and individual owners get to set their own payroll parameters, there will be disparities.
Opening up the NYC market to another franchise or two might help the situation, but I doubt it will ever happen. It would be interesting to see the Yankees squirm, though, if someone with the resources made a serious proposal.
Derek,
The link you provided is outdated, because the Mariners had a new stadium that contributed to the high attendance figures in 2001 and 2002 (when they were first and second in attendance in MLB). Of course, the record winning season had much to do with it in 2001 as well.
The Mariners are now below the midpoint in terms of attendance per year, and even if the team can win the World Series and draw more fans because it is winning, it is unlikely that the team will draw more than 3 million fans per year. We need to face the reality that Seattle is toward the middle to bottom end in terms of capacity for revenue generation.
All the more reason to support reform proposals, such as allowing teams to move into established territories. We cannot expect to always have an ownership group that is willing to take operating losses, year after year.
I live in North NJ, right outside of NY. This has made me realize something surprisingly. Its not totally Steinbrenner that makes me hate the Yankees. I respect the old Yankee teams, the days of Mantle and Maris and those guys. It’s most of the Yankee fans that make me hate the Yankees. I’m sick of the sheer stupidity, its like a plague comes flying out when they open their mouths.
I don’t think what they do is that horrible. I think its unfair, but put in their shoes we would be enjoying being able to buy every single player we want. I think, if their fans were a little easier to deal with I wouldn’t care as much. I think if they all weren’t yelling 27 rings as they cover their ears and close their eyes, it wouldn’t be that unbearable.
MLB seriously needs to get something under control. I was speaking to one of my friends and he was talking about how he hopes his team (Yankees) signs both Lackey and Holliday. And all I could think of is if they do that, I’m seriously going to have a hard time watching this sport anymore. His reasons for wanting Lackey, they needed a decent number 4 starter depending. Lackey is reportedly asking for 60-100 mil, for a number 3/4 starter?!?! This is seriously getting out of hand.
The only way to really even the playing field on revenue:
Ban all sports from television/radio/internet (as in live streaming) – therefore no media income.
Cap stadium seats at 50,000, ticket prices capped to create a maximum total for a sellout that is the same for every stadium (Teams can configure with more lower price seats or more luxury boxes as they think necessary but, for example, they have to average $40 per seat to hit a cap of $2 million for a sellout). Profit on consessions sales capped (garlic fries may cost more than regular fries because the ingredients/labor cost more, but the profit the team makes is the same). I think that memorabilia can go at whatever the market will bear. If the Yankees decide that they’re going to sell $1000 caps to make extra money I doubt many will sell. I’d guess that almost immediately teams would start selling uniform space to advertisers, so some kind of cap would need to go on that as well, say no more than 5 brand names with a total income of $12.5 million (25 players on the roster, $500,000 per player for the season)
The only way you can see a sporting event is to be there. The only revenue teams get is through ticket/consessions/advertising space sales – if you’re good/have a dedicated fan base you can make more than a team that doesn’t sell out every game, but that’s the only way to make more money that the other guys. Then, if the Steinbrenners want to spend a gazillion out of their own pockets to have the best team money can buy, they’re welcome to do so.
Yeah, I know this will never happen, and I’m no economist, I just pulled numbers out of my butt for examples. I don’t even want it to happen. Just thought I’d put it out there for ridicule.
Gee, thanks.
I have thought about this very thing for a long time now. I agree wholeheartedly with this post, but I also don’t hate the Yankees for what they do. As long as they can get away with it, I say go for it. I wish the M’s were in their situation.
here and here
It’s the combination of a Yankees win fueled largely by free agent expenses at the same time that the USS Mariner chat is, “Should we trade Felix two years before he becomes a free agent?” that is making my interest pretty darn low. It doesn’t have to be a level playing field but the strategies are so different right now…
What you say, zzyzx, is very much the difference between the MLB model and the NFL model. The Green Bay Packers can have a national fan base from the smallest major league town in America, while MLB ratings drop nearly every year because the richer teams are sucking all the air out of the market.
But they didn’t do it for that reason. They used the Yankee dominance as an excuse to impse the luxury tax, whose real objective was to drive down salaries, thus transferring wealth from the players to management.
I hope the union fights tooth and nail against a salary cap. The imposition of a salary cap is what got me to stop watching hockey.
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Well, I think your hope would come true. I don’t oppose the idea of a cap, but it will never work. Even if the players sat down to talk about it, the first thing they would bring up is the percentage of revenues going to payroll…and use other professional sports as the starting point. But it’s entirely apples and oranges because neither the NBA nor the NFL has to run their own farm systems–America’s colleges do that for them.
I happen to be in New York right now, and was talking to two otherwise apparently intelligent Yankee fans today about their season. These were the first two things they volunteered (i.e., before I could even bring up the payroll thing)–”You still gotta play the games, it doesn’t matter how much money you make”. And then, “look at all the injuries we had to overcome”. I mean, these people live in New York City and somehow must have kept track of what happened to the Mets. How could they even bring that up?
I have now hopped on the “no comments at USSM” bandwagon, Dave.
And you would be a knowledgable fan then? Or would you be an obnoxious “how often does your team win” kind of fan?
I’m not being accusatory when I ask this question. I honestly am curious to know your answer.
If the goal is payroll equality. . .
I don’t think that needs to be the goal, honestly. I also don’t think the game would benefit from a hard salary cap, and it won’t necessarily create parity or get rid of bottom-dwellers. To me, it makes the business of baseball a little less interesting as well.
I just don’t find the Yankees winning the whole thing from time to time any more troubling than New England winning the Superbowl 3 out of 4 years, or the six superbowl victories out of 43 for the Steelers, or the 17 championships by the Celtics, or the 23 Championships by the Canadiens, or the fact that the Red Wings are in the playoffs every year and have won the whole thing 11 times. None of these are destroying /have destroyed their respective sports (and I understand the caps weren’t in place for all of these wins). Frankly, I would be kind of bored with a league without an historically great team against which to measure how good our team is. 1995 was awesome (and still grates on the nerves of Yankees fans) because we we beat the Yankees.
Even if it could be achieved, parity is boring.
I’m really trying to stop the sports blog commenting, since I rarely have anythign positive to contribute, but…
the links are very interesting, thanks for those. the first quote (and article) makes the interesting point (and correct, in my opinion), that strangely, capitalists in real life suddenly become commies on the ball-field, as people more to the left (or “socialists”), suddenly become major capitalists when it comes to the issue of baseball competition.
the reason of course is because of the general american confusion that we americans have between SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM and MONOPOLY CAPITALISM. MLB is a LEGAL MONOPOLY. That’s still CAPITALIST. So, less competition on teh business side=more equality (presumably) between teams=more capitalism. more competition on the business side (getting rid of antitrust exemption)=disparity on the playing field=still capitalist, but better for the consumer.
the entire market needs to be opened up. teams need to be able to succeed and fail. sure, nyc needs more teams, as does RS nation (4 states) and phillie nation (5 states). but the KC market needs to be liberated too… just like the seattle market. baseball geography is fluid… look at the braves, who because they were on national tv have fans all over the country. seattle has a huge fan base in japan. in panama YES network is on every tv and every day there is extensive coverage of “el cerrador panameno” (tan fanatico como tu). if the kc owners are providing a sub-par product, then consumers deserve an alternative. glass shouldn’t just be granted unconditionally the entire kc market.
the point is, for any team to compete with the yankees on a business side someone is going to have to invest and risk capital. for the kc royals to compete with the yankees on the baseball and business side someone would have to have a lot of capital, a lot of time to wait, and a solid business plan. that’s the way it is in all industries between established companies and startups (and fallen angels).
and those people who want to create a monopoly in baseball are always the ones who argue that, for example, what goldman sachs just did during the economic crisis was fair, just, and good for the economy and the consumer.
Ok. All you have to do to change it is to get the federal goverment to get rid of that nasty little anti-trust exemption that gives MLB the monopoly you seem to be so irked by.
And while you’re fixing things, your shift keys seem to be malfunctioning. You may want to start with them.
Does the existence of superpowers like the Yankees/Mets encourage the existence of lamprey franchises? Let’s face it, $50 million payroll or $75 million payroll, you are still way beneath the Yankees or Mets. Why not at least turn a profit, since you likely will not win either way?
diderot, I agree not every Yankee fan is stupid. There is just such an insane amount of them that the probability of running in to one that has no clue is much higher. Just like we have some idiot M’s fan. Every team has there village idiot.
although if you read the comments after Neyer’s Gold Glove post, you might begin to wonder…
Expansion to Newark, N.J. and Albany N.Y.
Many, many problems solved.
[not cool]
Heyoka, while true that the Mariners area of influence probably comes close in population to the NYC metro area, I can live in Scarsdale and decide on a whim to attend a game that evening. The same can’t be said if I live in Butte or Boise or Roseburg. A LOT can be said for population DENSITY.
Yeah, anyone who lives ~50 miles away can do that. But using distance of 300+ miles as comparatives doesn’t really make sense.
If by “a good team” you mean “the one that has far and away the largest payroll”, yes then it does make sense for them to make the playoffs year after year. Unfortunately.
What sort of playoff streaks would we expect if the playing field was level? How unlikely would the Yankee 14 year streak be?
In the AL, there are 14 teams and 4 make the post season, or 28.6% per year. For each consecutive streak here are the probabilities for a team:
1 28.6%
2 8.2%
3 2.3%
4 0.7%
5 0.2%
…
14 0.0000024%
So a team would have about a 1 in 413,000 chance of running off a 14 year playoff streak.
But in our world, it recently happened. And not because the team was incredibly lucky.
Yeah, I’d forgotten about the Braves.
Well, they aren’t the Yankees, but the Braves did have a national TV network advantage in those years…. Not sure that’s the strongest example in rebuttal you could come up with.
Newark – maybe (as a “New Jersey” team)…
Albany – NOT! We see how well that whole “Hey, just ’cause it’s the Northeast, let’s stick a major-league franchise in every medium-sized city” thing worked out for the Hartford Whalers years ago.
Newark has an independent league baseball team currently. Been there a couple times as I go to college 30 min from Newark. Newark, also isn’t the nicest of places honestly. I don’t think a MLB franchise would do well there at all. Too much Yankeeism up here.
Also, on a side note. Our beloved Carl Everett plays outfield for the Newark Bears currently.
And I remember those bad old days of the Braves, too. It seemed like most of the time they were chasing everybody else by at least 25 games in their division, and the only thing that could wake up those hearty 1,500 or so souls who were showing up at Fulton County Stadium back then was when Dale Murphy or Bob Horner blasted a home run. Still, if you lived in an AL city before the dawn of interleague play, it was a chance to watch the NL teams that you didn’t normally get to see otherwise.
Ahh, that old TBS Saturday lineup: Bass fishing…Georgia Championship Wrestling…Atlanta Braves baseball. Good times!
Interesting how the Braves seem to have fallen back to the pack a bit since TBS started to reduce and then end their presence on the network.
Plenty of places in the Northern N.J., Southern N.Y. areas that are prettier than Newark or closer than Albany/Troy. Hell, put one in Springfield, Ma. to cut into three markets. Any expansion teams would no doubt be the poor step-child of the YankeeMets for a generation, but they will cut into their market share and help provide a bit of equity.
I don’t have the numbers to prove it, but they are out there. Find ‘em yourself.
Their streak was 11 years.
re the Yankees, I really feel sorry for fans of the Jays (16 years no postseason), Rays (at least they’ll always have 2008), and Orioles (12 years). They might make it a year or two when they put together a good team, but then it will be a couple of decades before they can get back to the playoffs.
No, it was 14. There were no playoffs in ‘94.
This is why (and I know I’ll probably get flamed for it from somebody here) I’m all for expanding the playoff format to those of the other major sports. While I understand the argument that “the season should be worth something,” at the same time, in MLB, each league plays the most amount of regular-season games (162) for the least amount of available playoff spots (4) — compared to the NFL at 16 and NBA/NHL at 82 each. Granted, so-called “dynasty teams” are a given in professional sports…and, as such, their presence will never be entirely eliminated. However, I believe increasing the number of wild card spots might go a lot further toward promoting parity amongst teams than a salary cap would…since certain teams in tough divisions –like the Jays, for example — might have more of an incentive to stay in the race during a decent season knowing they still might have a shot at a WC spot rather than to just throw up the white flag in the middle of July.
BTW, today’s food for thought: Not that it would’ve ultimately helped much against the Yanks this year, but the M’s would’ve gotten into the playoffs as a #7 seed in a “Best-8″ format.
Would you shorten the regular season to accommodate the extra round of playoffs? Playing some WS games in November is bad enough without playing them all after Halloween.
Actually, yeah…why not go back to the original 154-game schedule? (Or, maybe even a bit shorter, say, 148.) By shaving at least a week or so off of the current schedule, you’d be able to start the playoffs in late-September…then maybe bunch the post-season rounds closer together like they were when the championship rounds started in the late-60’s/early-70’s. All those unnecessary non-travel “off” days that the networks seemed to have inserted in the post-season schedules these days have gotten completely ridiculous…I mean, if you’re going to take a month or more to play the post-season anyway, you might as well run it out to four rounds and let more teams in to generate some additional revenue.
And as far as the “cold factor” is concerned in the post-season, I think devoted fans that want to see their team win a championship will show up regardless. They certainly did for the Rox in Denver a few weeks ago — and they just about had to plow snow off the field to get those games in.
Um, I think it might be normal around these parts to bring your own proof. We can’t be expected to do your homework for you, can we?
I’m not going to “flame” you, but I do have a question: You have stated that there are 8 teams (4 from the AL and 4 from the NL) in the MLB playoffs. How exactly would you expand this system that would make sense?
Sorry, I got caught up earlier in the thread and forgot to read forward.
While I, personally, love that idea, the owners might not see it quite that way. What with the whole “money out of their pockets” thing and all.
Though the extra playoff round would certainly appeal to the teams that get there, the teams that don’t are still paying their players for 8 games or more than they are getting out of them. (Until all current contracts expire that is)
Fair enough. But what about the cold factor effect on the game itself? Remember, the cold has an effect on how the ball and bat work together too. As does moisture in the air, heavier fall winds, slickness of the field (yes, I know the grounds crew can limit this, but they can’t do so much that they totally negate it) and, of course, snow outs.
I don’t even hate them anymore. I just think they’re boring.
Yup.
I really feel sorry for fans of the Jays (16 years no postseason), Rays (at least they’ll always have 2008), and Orioles (12 years)
The Orioles have sucked for a decade because their owner hired one terrible GM after another and their farm system was essentially barren for an insanely long time. The Blue Jays seem to shift philosophy from year to year. Before Friedman, it was almost like the Rays’ GM was trying to field the worst team possible.
I have no doubt that the Yankees have a significant advantage, but I think it’s also true that the arbitration clock acts as a something of an equalizer, or at least it allows good teams who can manage their talent well to compete in certain windows. Sure the Yankees will compete year and year out, and that makes the game less interesting, but I have a hard time believing they are killing baseball.
Tranquil -
Just a shout back on this…I know there are some fans that get turned off at the prospect of 16 out of 30 teams in the league being eligible for the post-season (i.e. the whole perception that “everybody makes the playoffs”)…but that being said, you still have to win the games or you won’t get in. (Being a hockey fan as well, i’m thinking of the Canucks a couple of years back in ‘07-’08 when they went 39-33-10 on the season yet failed to make the playoffs because they still finished 10th in the Western Conference.) While there’d definitely be both pros and cons in moving to such a playoff format, it seems to be working out fairly well in all the other sports — and you do see at least see more of the “cusp” teams from tough divisions as well as “small market” teams getting to the post-season (case in point, the Indy Colts).
Funny you should mention that, too (and a fair argument against), since just the opposite effect has come into play in a few instances during the Stanley Cup Finals. When the LA Kings (‘93), Florida Panthers (‘96) and Dallas Stars (‘99-’00) made the Finals in their respective years, they found themselves playing home games in late-May/early-June in cities where the outside temperature was 80 degrees or hotter. Thus, in each of these series, there were complaints among some players of the ice being too soft or “slushy” as compared to conditions earlier in the season — and this despite a “climate-controlled” environment of air-conditioned arenas and a refrigerated surface!
And, of course, we haven’t even discussed some of the Packers’ epic “Frozen Tundra” post-season games at Lambeau Field now, have we?
Scott19,
I understand what you are talking about from the fan perspective. And, not being a hockey fan, I’m not sure that I can disagree. However my point was more looking at the ownership side.
Again, Baseball and Hockey are very different games. The idea that one facility may not have managed their facility well enough to maintain the proper temp, while probably affecting the hockey game/series, has nothing to do with how Mother Nature happens to affect outdoor arenas of whatever sort.
The difference between outdoor parks and indoor stadia cannot be simplified with air conditioning and/or refrigeration.
Tranquil -
Granted, I’ll admit my bias in this case favors the fans over the owners…probably since I am (as well as probably the rest of us here) in the majority of those who are paying between $20-60 a pop to attend games…so, I know they have reasons not to change the current status quo as well. In all honesty, while I might deep down believe that a change toward more parity in the game is inevitable, I’m not sure when it might eventually happen — or what form it will take.
As far as post-season sports are concerned, I guess I was just trying to point out the issues which all these different games have in regard to weather conditions and such (whether hot or cold). I think it’s then fair to assume that, whether it’s either heat, cold, precipitation, or even relative humidity…baseball, football, hockey, or soccer all have their own sets of variables to deal with in regard to playing late in the season. The only major sport that seems to have avoided most of this is basketball — since it’s both played out of the elements and on a solid surface. (And yet, not to be at all snarky, but the rumor which used to go around about Ray Allen wearing a extra thermal layer while with the Sonics was that he felt the floor at the Key was always “cold” — which is probably because the wooden surface for the Sonics’ home games back then was laid over the ice for the T-Birds home games!)
In any event, I’m glad we’ve at least been able to enjoy an intelligent discourse about this. As a bunch of us mentioned in Derek’s thread re some of the new users, it’s the level of the discussion here that I think we all appreciate — and which keeps USSM a cut above the rest.