Would anyone like to see mlb have more football style contracts

[kidrock]

I dont know about you all, but watching the stars of my youth playing out their careers while being an embarrassment to the game is absolutely heartbreaking to me.  I like how football does contracts with a portion being guaranteed and a portion, typically the last year or two not guaranteed.  Football contracts are typically much shorter.  I think it’s partially steroid related, but these baseball players seems to hit a cliff in their low 30s now.  Obviously this isn’t true for all players, but these massive contracts seem terrible for the game.  
 

any thoughts on how to make baseball contracts better? The obvious answer would be to not give out foolish contracts, but that always happens as gms are understandably short sighted.

 

[Frobby]

As a fan, I’d probably like the football style contracts better.   But baseball has a stronger union and I doubt we’ll see a change any time soon.    

[Number5]

There's nothing stopping a team from not offering guaranteed contracts, other than the fact that the only players you would get are the guys no other team will offer a contract to.  Guaranteed contracts are a drop in the bucket to the Yankees, Red Sox, and Dodgers.  They can afford the inevitable losses on some of those deals.  Teams like the Orioles and Rays can't afford those huge losses and have to be much more careful.  There's no way that the Yankees and the other rich teams will ever give up that competitive advantage and stop offering guaranteed contracts..

[kidrock]

Good points all around.  The union is incredibly strong.  I dislike how much the union favors the older players. I’m all for players making a ton of money.  Just seems ridiculous to pay guys the most money on the team while the player is horrible.

[Moose Milligan]

On the contrary, I'd like to see more baseball type contracts in football.

Growing up, watching the Redskins, they had players that stayed with the team for their entire careers.  Darrell Green, Joe Jacoby, Art Monk (except for those last stints as a Jet and an Eagle at the end) and a bunch of others.  

You rarely get that in football anymore, unless we're talking about a quarterback.  An NFL team will tie itself to a QB for a longer period of time because it's the most important position.  Aaron Rodgers will retire as a Packer, most likely.  Patrick Mahomes isn't going anywhere.

The rest is up for grabs, pretty much all the time.  It's exceedingly rare in the NFL to have a player last his entire career with one team and their contract structure/salary cap allows for that.  

Last night I watched my Washington Football Team beat the Steelers.  I saw a talented young defensive front that will probably have a very short window of time together to make an impact.  They won't be able to keep that unit together for 5-6 years which is a shame.  They're going to have to make decisions on who to keep and who to let walk.  

There's something to be said for having players stay their whole career in one place, or at least the bulk of their career in one city.  It's getting more and more rare in baseball, it's pretty rare in the NFL and practically non-existent in the NBA.

Call it romantic or sappy, I admit that it is.  But I like seeing great players in one uniform for their careers.

 

[Sports Guy]

18 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

On the contrary, I'd like to see more baseball type contracts in football.

Growing up, watching the Redskins, they had players that stayed with the team for their entire careers.  Darrell Green, Joe Jacoby, Art Monk (except for those last stints as a Jet and an Eagle at the end) and a bunch of others.  

You rarely get that in football anymore, unless we're talking about a quarterback.  An NFL team will tie itself to a QB for a longer period of time because it's the most important position.  Aaron Rodgers will retire as a Packer, most likely.  Patrick Mahomes isn't going anywhere.

The rest is up for grabs, pretty much all the time.  It's exceedingly rare in the NFL to have a player last his entire career with one team and their contract structure/salary cap allows for that.  

Last night I watched my Washington Football Team beat the Steelers.  I saw a talented young defensive front that will probably have a very short window of time together to make an impact.  They won't be able to keep that unit together for 5-6 years which is a shame.  They're going to have to make decisions on who to keep and who to let walk.  

There's something to be said for having players stay their whole career in one place, or at least the bulk of their career in one city.  It's getting more and more rare in baseball, it's pretty rare in the NFL and practically non-existent in the NBA.

Call it romantic or sappy, I admit that it is.  But I like seeing great players in one uniform for their careers.

 

The great players normally do stay in one uni for most, if not all their careers.  The Skins, for example, will have Chase Young for at least a decade, assuming health and high level of play.

 

 

[weams]

I would like them to have whatever contracts can be permitted under a collectively bargained agreement. 

[forphase1]

I also agree and think these long term fully guaranteed contracts are not good for the game or usually the team.   See Davis, Chris.  All sports contracts should,  in my opinion, be tied to a reasonable performance.

[Can_of_corn]

I think teams should practice restraint when it comes to offering these type of deals

 

[kidrock]

13 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I think teams should practice restraint when it comes to offering these type of deals

 

Yeah they should 

[DrungoHazewood]

On 12/5/2020 at 1:36 PM, kidrock said:

Good points all around.  The union is incredibly strong.  I dislike how much the union favors the older players. I’m all for players making a ton of money.  Just seems ridiculous to pay guys the most money on the team while the player is horrible.

During CBA negotiations years ago teams argued that they should have some return on their investment in young players by maintaining control over players during the early years of their careers.  The owners were also reluctant to pay high salaries to players who had not established that they were good major league players.  The model they agreed upon was that players were bound to the team they debuted with for approximately six years, with minimal salaries the first three and salaries decided by arbitration the next three.  With most players in their late 20s or early 30s before reaching those six years of service, free agency has always been buying into a declining market.  But it's one of the only markets, so a disproportionate share of money flows to free agents. 

There's nothing stopping the MLBPA and the MLB owners from negotiating a different deal, but there will be other market imbalances in whatever model is likely to be implemented.  Or, fans may not like the alternative, which is young players making the bulk of the money and often seeing smaller market teams trading up-and-coming stars that they can't afford to pay market rates.  In a playing-value-based system Manny Machado would have been worth $30-40M or more a year from age 21 or 22.  You would probably see teams like the Rays and maybe Orioles trading for older players wiling to play at a discount.

And teams will always try to lock up good players for a long time.  If you have all the money in the world, why wouldn't you sign Mike Trout to a 10-year deal?  When you do that there's always a risk that he suffers a catastrophic decline and the deal looks bad.  If a player signs a 5/50 deal and starts playing like Hank Aaron the team isn't going to offer to renegotiate a contract at a HOF level of compensation.