MLB needs a salary cap

[weams]

[SeaBird]

One last point before going to bed, the mlb was doing nothing about steroids until congress had had enough. If some junior Senator or Representative took this up, even if it was just to make a name for him or herself, I believe it would take hold. Americans usually care about fundamental fairness when confronted with it.

Please. With all the problems America is experiencing both within it's own borders and worldwide, the last thing American citizens, including me, want is Congress and the Senate taking on the issue of a MLB salary cap.

I'm for revenue sharing, to a degree, providing that the owners that receive financial aid be required reinvest those dollars back into their own team payrolls and not pocket it. I also think there should be a salary floor whereby each team has to have a payroll of at least "X" amount of dollars.

[DrungoHazewood]

Add to that absurd costs in concessions and parking and a family of 4 could easily have to pay $400-$500 for a single game night.Its just not sustainable and unfair. The fans make the game.

Roy, I'm sure that you could spend $500 for a family of four to attend a game. But you could just as well spend under $100. You can get tickets for about $20 each, bring your own food, park in town somewhere. Or even wait for promotional nights where you can get tickets even cheaper. Baseball is far less expensive than the other sports per-game.

DC United draws 15k a game in a league far less popular than MLB but my trips to RFK cost more than my trips to OPACY.

[weams]

Please. With all the problems America is experiencing both within it's own borders and worldwide, the last thing American citizens, including me, want is Congress and the Senate taking on the issue of a MLB salary cap.

I'm for revenue sharing, to a degree, providing that the owners that receive financial aid be required reinvest those dollars back into their own team payrolls and not pocket it. I also think there should be a salary floor whereby each team has to have a payroll of at least "X" amount of dollars.

I agree with almost every word of this post.

[DrungoHazewood]

The NFL has both revenue sharing and a salary cap. And, it's the most successful of all major sports.

Yes, the NFL is booming, MLB dying. Yet MLB's revenues are something like 90% of the NFL's.

[Can_of_corn]

Roy, I'm sure that you could spend $500 for a family of four to attend a game. But you could just as well spend under $100. You can get tickets for about $20 each, bring your own food, park in town somewhere. Or even wait for promotional nights where you can get tickets even cheaper. Baseball is far less expensive than the other sports per-game.

DC United draws 15k a game in a league far less popular than MLB but my trips to RFK cost more than my trips to OPACY.

The games I have managed to make I used the light rail.

[DrungoHazewood]

Right. Wrong model.

A salary cap reduces the total salary structure.

Revenue sharing, is the answer. It comes close to leveling the playing field but doesn't hinder the total amount of salaries paid.

I'm talking about an NFL-style revenue sharing plan, where all media revenues are pooled - that includes local TV broadcast revenues - and split evenly. After all, NY and LA would have no local broadcast revenues without opponents, right?

Major market teams that draw well would still have a sizeable disparity in revenue from higher ticket prices, presumably higher attendance numbers, higher ballpark sales and concession leases, and higher advertising dollars.

Revenue sharing is much more of a solution, if one is needed, than a salary cap. A salary cap just tells a team with $400M revenues that they can only spend $125M on payroll. But any amount they want on scouting, infrastructure, development, the minors, diamond-encrusting the 50,000 square foot clubhouse, having the players carried around on gilded chairs by supermodels in Egyptian garb, etc. And just putting money in the owners' pockets. It would only have a modest impact on the competitiveness of high-revenue teams. Players will still clamor to go to LA and NYC, just as they do to Duke and Notre Dame. It's certainly not going to lower the costs of going to the game.

[weams]

The NFL does not have the burden of guaranteed contracts. The NFL does not need to develop their own players. The NFL does not mind that players are in the league for five seasons or less generally. The NFL employs almost twice as many players. Gambling drives the NFL.

[waroriole]

Please. With all the problems America is experiencing both within it's own borders and worldwide, the last thing American citizens, including me, want is Congress and the Senate taking on the issue of a MLB salary cap.

I'm for revenue sharing, to a degree, providing that the owners that receive financial aid be required reinvest those dollars back into their own team payrolls and not pocket it. I also think there should be a salary floor whereby each team has to have a payroll of at least "X" amount of dollars.

Why stop there? Maybe we could get the President and Supreme Court involved too. Any chance of a constitutional amendment?

[weams]

Why stop there? Maybe we could get the President and Supreme Court involved too. Any chance of a constitutional amendment?

We could start Super Pacs to influence each side of the referendum as well.

[Can_of_corn]

Why stop there? Maybe we could get the President and Supreme Court involved too. Any chance of a constitutional amendment?

MLB does have a team in Canada. Maybe Nato or the UN should chime in.

[weams]

MLB does have a team in Canada. Maybe Nato or the UN should chime in.

Or we could just remove that team. Probably smarter. Then close the border to the north completely. With like a trade embargo.

Or better yet. Just annex Toronto. We have the military strength to enforce that like the Russians did Crimea.

Why stop at Toronto. All of Ontario. And make Mike Holmes Territorial Governor.

[OFFNY]

o

Baseball is the only major sport without one. It also has a wide disparity of income. I'm fine with setting it above what most teams can afford. But, allowing the Dodgers to have a 240 million payroll is absolutely absurd. The Yanks and Redsox also have been advantaged throughout the last 20 years. So, let's be fair. Set the cap at 175 million and let the lower market teams come up to speed based on inflation and increased revenue. Maybe some of that increased revenue would be the fact that mid and small market fan bases would feel that eventually, they would have an even shot at this.

Before anyone points out that small market teams have been successful, let me preempt you with the fact that even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. You give a competent organization more money to spend, that organization will win more. Basic economics. It's time the playing field is leveled and if we have to put up with ten more years of unfairness, so be it.

I want my grandchildren going to games where one team has an even chance against another.

I thought it was the civic responsibility of owners to invest as much as they can in team payroll?

Wouldn't a cap just increase the profits of the owners?

That's right.

His (brianod's) complaints tend to run contrary to each other.

On one hand, Angelos is cheap ...... it is his civic responsibility to invest as much money as possible into the team that he owns and its fans, which would have (in brianod's view) meant signing Cruz and/or Andrew Miller in the off-season.

On the other hand, baseball's lack of a salary cap is unfair to poor Peter Angelos and the other mid-market and small-marker teams in the major leagues.

Which is it ???

[weams]

o

That's right.

His (brianod's) complaints tend to run contrary to each other.

On one hand, Angelos is cheap ...... it is his civic responsibility to invest as much money as possible into the team that he owns and its fans, which would have (in brianod's view) meant signing Cruz and/or Andrew Miller in the off-season.

On the other hand, baseball's lack of a salary cap is unfair to poor Peter Angelos and the other mid-market and small-marker teams in the major leagues.

Which is it ???

This is what he truly wants I feel.

[mdbdotcom]

Salary Cap