Players With Award-Based Bonus Clauses To Be Banned From Awards

[Migrant Redbird]

Aww man, I was secretly hoping for an epic battle!

He ran out of rationale. Once he got beyond "whacky", "crazier", and "complicated", there was nothing left.

Yes, the algorithm would be complicated, just as Win Shares and some of the other sabermetric metrics are. But if you want to compensate players fairly who play different positions and make different contributions to the team, plus provide motivations to players to put the team ahead of padding their individual stats and keep the big market teams from monopolizing the best players, a little complexity is unavoidable. Simply paying hitters so much per home run and RBI and pitchers so much per win would obviously be both simplistic and unworkable. However, thanks to the sabermetricians, we have a much better handle on how to compare players objectively and we have computers which make performing the calculations trivial. It's not difficult to understand what goes into the algorithm, anymore than it's difficult to understand what goes into a Win Share calculation, for anyone who wants to make the effort.

[RShack]

He ran out of rationale. Once he got beyond "whacky", "crazier", and "complicated", there was nothing left.

Yes, the algorithm would be complicated, just as Win Shares and some of the other sabermetric metrics are. But if you want to compensate players fairly who play different positions and make different contributions to the team, plus provide motivations to players to put the team ahead of padding their individual stats and keep the big market teams from monopolizing the best players, a little complexity is unavoidable. Simply paying hitters so much per home run and RBI and pitchers so much per win would obviously be both simplistic and unworkable. However, thanks to the sabermetricians, we have a much better handle on how to compare players objectively and we have computers which make performing the calculations trivial. It's not difficult to understand what goes into the algorithm, anymore than it's difficult to understand what goes into a Win Share calculation, for anyone who wants to make the effort.

The idea of paying players based on a calculation of what sabermetric calculations say is the epitome of a centrally-planned economy based on arbitrary artifacts replacing what people decide in real life decision-making. Back when people used to defend centrally-planned economies, they used *exactly* the same rationale that you use: "more fair", "more rational basis", "a better plan". You're simply retreading the exact same argument. The only diff is that you just want to apply it to baseball, whereas the Socialists wanted to apply it to everything. There are zero known cases of wacko schemes like this ever working. However, they always sound great to whoever is making them up. The basic idea is, "The real world is just wrong, wrong, wrong. My idea is better. So, if everybody would just get over their silly disagreements, and agree with me instead, then the world would be a better place."

This is true of every utopian vision: left-wing, right-wing, everybody. What happens is that, the more influence these people get, the worse things get, not better. And, as things get worse instead of better, they always say the same thing: You just need to give us *more* control, then it really will get better, honest. You're just not being patient enough. It really is working. Because we say so." Translation: "Well, it's a little harder than we thought. So therefore we need to apply even *more* of our bad idea." 'Happens every time.

As for making everybody want to win ballgames, all you need to do is split the revenues for each game so that the winner gets slightly more revenue than the loser. Just that one thing is all. If you did that, then you don't need all this other complicated junk. If you did that, you'd just be putting natural incentives in place, and then let everybody else work it out for themselves. Now, I don't think that will happen either. But, since we're talking about hare-brained schemes that will never happen, why not? It's better in several ways: it's simpler, it's less controlling, it doesn't require constant tweaking of a zillion little details, it certainly rewards winning, and it lets everybody work it out, not just some dang Central Committee of the union and the owners making a zillion Master Decisions that govern every little detail for everybody else. How is that idea not way better than yours?

[square634]

What I'm confused about is that there already is a huge economic incentive to win. Winning teams have higher attendance and make more money. If they make the playoffs they get even more money. What am I missing here?

[DrungoHazewood]

He ran out of rationale. Once he got beyond "whacky", "crazier", and "complicated", there was nothing left.

Yes, the algorithm would be complicated, just as Win Shares and some of the other sabermetric metrics are. But if you want to compensate players fairly who play different positions and make different contributions to the team, plus provide motivations to players to put the team ahead of padding their individual stats and keep the big market teams from monopolizing the best players, a little complexity is unavoidable. Simply paying hitters so much per home run and RBI and pitchers so much per win would obviously be both simplistic and unworkable. However, thanks to the sabermetricians, we have a much better handle on how to compare players objectively and we have computers which make performing the calculations trivial. It's not difficult to understand what goes into the algorithm, anymore than it's difficult to understand what goes into a Win Share calculation, for anyone who wants to make the effort.

Who's we? 'cause I'm pretty sure it doesn't include 98% of the players, 95% of managers, 50% or more of GMs, and 75% of writers. It's still commonplace to give the MVP to the RBI leader and the Cy Young to whoever led the league in wins. And 90% of the world thinks the best fielding metrics are gobbledygook, and prefer to rely on whoever dives the most.

It's unthinkable that they'd utilize a really good set of metrics for your scheme. Almost as unthinkable as a league actually agreeing to implement such a thing in the first place.

[RShack]

What I'm confused about is that there already is a huge economic incentive to win. Winning teams have higher attendance and make more money. If they make the playoffs they get even more money. What am I missing here?

The way things are now, the incentives to win are small potatoes compared to other factors, like media-market size. For the incentives to win to carry much weight, you'd have to split *all* the revenue in a way that favors the winners. That doesn't happen now. That does not require some draconian situation that deprives the MFY's of being richer. They can still be richer, but they should split their revenue with whoever they're playing. Same thing for everybody. Then, just give whoever wins the game a bit more than whoever loses the game.

[Icterus galbula]

Just out of curiosity I copied and pasted Migrant Redbird's post #42 from this thread into Word. The post translated to a full 5 pages in 12 pt font.

Just passing through, I have nothing else to say.

[Migrant Redbird]

Just out of curiosity I copied and pasted Migrant Redbird's post #42 from this thread into Word. The post translated to a full 5 pages in 12 pt font.

I usually stick to 10 point Times Roman.

And I'd need to expand it considerably to be a chapter in my book, What's Wrong With Baseball, subtitled And How It Could Be Fixed. You've seen excerpts of other chapters: Why Johnny Doesn't Play In Sandlots Any More, The Myth of the Stupid and Greedy Owners, Why Can't Umpires See Straight? Instant Replay Could Work If...., Providing Umpires Electronic Assistance (and taking all the fun out of watching Earl Weaver), Getting Rid of Beanballs, etc.