"Selig, committee considering radical realignment plan" in MLB

[zinfamous]

European market style system >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> American monopolistic cartel system

In Europe, if your team sucks & finishes last in the league, then your team gets kicked down to the lower level league. Conversely, the best teams in the lower leagues get a chance to move up to the higher league. This means that if you're a bad owner and your team consistently sucks, you're team will go out of business. It also makes it easier for new teams to be created, grow & enter the elite. In Europe, there is no such thing as a detroit lions, or a Milwaukee Brewers perpetual suckfest. Both would have been relegated to the minors long ago & better teams would have replaced them.

It's weird how socialist Europe has the more open, entrepreneurial style sports set-up, while free-market America has a shitty government-sanctioned monopoly sports clusterfuck 🙁

The minor leagues in baseball is a farm system--owned and operated by each MLB team. They are essentially the mail room, mid-management, facilities departments of the admin department (the franchise team).

That wouldn't work under the current system, as you aren't really bumping anyone down or up (but in pay grade, sure); you're simply restructuring office dynamics in a way that would guarantee serious failure on the MLB club's performance. Essentially, your suggestion would punish the players and the management, replacing them with less talented athletes and management, without punishing the GM, owners, whatever (the real problem).

 

[zinfamous]

This is what we learned in our sports economic class. Really wish either congress or the courts would finally do something about that loophole.

but Congress sure cares about Steroids!! yeah, that's the REAL problem!!

 

[oogabooga]

sounds like the boston bruins for the last 20 years.

HRmm I should modify my thing to say "Poor Teams" to say "Poor Teams (Ala small market, small revenue) and Teams owned by cheap ass motherfuckers who seriously, why own a sports franchise if you're going to treat it like a business only isn't there anything else you can do with that money comeon?!"

 

[ElFenix]

I was speaking in terms of franchise values. What is the NFL up to now -- 24 or 25 of the franchises valued at $1 billion+?

value is simply the net present value of the income streams. if income per team is higher in the premiership, value is higher as well.

 

[Perknose]

Floating realignment. Cap, no cap. Meh.

The one thing I know for sure is that Bud Selig is a huge, huge tool. He's just about THE most incompetent sports league executive ever.

 

[BoberFett]

I read the title of this thread as "Selig, committee considering racial realignment plan."

That might make more of a difference than anything else. Every team gets an even number of Cubans.

 

[Adrenaline]

Baseball has a salary cap, but it is a soft cap that came into play after the last strike and has increased over time to around 160 million. Every dollar over that you have to pay a tax of a dollar that is given to MLB and they redistribute it to other teams.

It is something like this, I am not totally sure what the numbers are.

 

[wheresmybacon]

I read the title of this thread as "Selig, committee considering racial realignment plan."

That might make more of a difference than anything else. Every team gets an even number of Cubans.

ROFL!! Agreed!

 

[SludgeFactory]

The 1994 salary cap didn't have much to do with how successful the NFL has become. Early adoption of TV and downright luck that their game plays nearly perfectly on TV *made* that league and made football the national sport. Their long-time revenue sharing plan allows the Green Bays and New Orleans of the world to exist.

This idea of MLB annual realignment or relegation or whatever is fairly ridiculous, especially if anybody thinks it's going to solve competitive balance issues. The Premier League and the other Euro soccer leagues will relegate your ass if you suck, but who cares, they just gets replaced by other suck-ass teams. All these leagues are perennially dominated by the same handful of clubs -- teams that are usually based in huge population centers. In the case of the Premier League, throughout it's history, nearly every season has been ruled by a few London-based clubs (with a little bit of Liverpool thrown in).

And MLB's competitive balance is worse than they'd have you believe. They doubled the size of the playoffs (and corrupted the legitimacy of a 162 game champion IMO), which lets in a fluke team or two every year, and which has made it *a lot* harder for any one team to win a World Series and has probably burned the Yankees more than anybody else.

 

[rockyct]

Baseball is worthless without a cap. The idea that teams paying $20 million can consistently compete against teams with a $200 million payroll is absurd. The only way that could work is if your payroll was used to handicap in terms of games. Start with a $200 million payroll? No problem, you start the season 0-25.

The NFL has the right model. Ironically, they're about to screw it up themselves as well, unless they can come up with a new CBA.

I think you could do some sort of a free agency protection for small market teams and still not have caps. Maybe if a top free agent signs with another team, the new team has to give up 2-3 minor leaguers of the old team's choice. Make it really hurt a team to sign a high caliber free agent.

 

[Whoozyerdaddy]

There will always be completely incompetent teams in the league (the Royals and Pirates come to mind) who will not be able to compete regardless if there was a cap or not. But restricting the spending power of the big market, big money teams will help the teams that already know how to do more with less... The A's, Rays, Marlins, Twins... teams that know how to scrounge out the bargain talent will become more than just a nice story every year (oh how cute... they made the playoffs...) but could become year in - year out power houses.

The current system works great for big market teams like the Yankees and Red Sox but overall it's bad for baseball. If the NFL went capless in today's market the Cowboys, Giants and Bears would own all the best talent. The whole point of a salary cap is to keep the best players from concentrating into a few teams. Spread them around the league... Give someone in KC a reason to go to the park other than to watch the Yanks... The players still get paid. The owners still make money. It doesn't sound like a bad idea...

 

[TallBill]

Moving the last place team down is fucking retarded. You cant just bring up a AAA team, since they are just extensions of other MLB teams.