Thinking outside the box: salary cap

[incubus]

I just had an idea concerning salary caps that I believe would satisfy both sides.

Instead of creating a hard salary cap, how about a roster penalty? By this I mean, if a team goes over 125M they lose a man off of thier roster. Over 150M, 2 men, 175M; 3, and so on. On the other side, my plan would also include increasing the regular season roster to 27.

This could do three main things:

1. Hinder over-spending by teams

2. Appease the players union by increasing the roster spots available

3. Make big contract free agents think twice about taking every dollar they can (the more they make the less rest they get.)

I'm not saying this is the perfect solution to the problem, I'm simply suggesting adding an element to building a team that makes a more balanced approach necissary.

Thoughts?

[sangar]

Most teams have a set amount budgeted for player salary so increasing the roster to 27 men would decrease the average salary. I doubt the players association would agree.

[GoldGlove21]

Most teams have a set amount budgeted for player salary so increasing the roster to 27 men would decrease the average salary. I doubt the players association would agree.

The union would not approve of fewer major leaugers either. Could you imagine that? Guys I found a way to either decrease your annual salary by increasing the number of major league players or increase your salary by cutting a few major leaguers.

[sangar]

The union would not approve of fewer major leaugers either. Could you imagine that? Guys I found a way to either decrease your annual salary by increasing the number of major league players or increase your salary by cutting a few major leaguers.

Right? Either work harder or make less money. Sounds like my job. Haahahahaha.

[incubus]

Most teams have a set amount budgeted for player salary so increasing the roster to 27 men would decrease the average salary. I doubt the players association would agree.

For teams that can't really afford it, were talking about two players making league minimum, approximately $700k additional. It's likely that even the Marlins could afford that.

[incubus]

The union would not approve of fewer major leaugers either. Could you imagine that? Guys I found a way to either decrease your annual salary by increasing the number of major league players or increase your salary by cutting a few major leaguers.

This plan would only negatively effect roster spots on 4-5 teams.

Let's assume; 22 men for the Yankees (-3), 23 for Boston (-2), 24 for The Mets (-1), 24 for LAD (-1), 24 for The Angels (-1). That's 8 roster spots lost, while 25 other teams have a total summed increase of 50, so 42 more roster spots are created.

Granted, some years Detroit, the Chicagos, and maybe even Baltimore in the coming years, may periodically be impacted by it, but you still end up with increased overall roster spots.

Obviously the player's union wouldn't present it in the manner you suggest, they would have to sell the idea on it's strong points, not it's weak points.

[RShack]

They're not gonna buy a salary cap, I don't care how you do it. If I was them, I wouldn't either.

However, they'd jump at the idea of roster expansion. They'd love it. More spaces to enable current voting members to hang around...

[Migrant Redbird]

... Instead of creating a hard salary cap, how about a roster penalty? By this I mean, if a team goes over 125M they lose a man off of thier roster. Over 150M, 2 men, 175M; 3, and so on.

Already proposed many times over the past several years, most recently here.

... require each franchise to pay a portion of their revenue into a player compensation pool, from which all players would be paid. This "tax" would be negotiated between MLB and the players association, but would probably be slightly less than 50%.

... Since teams would retain over half their revenue, they would continue to have a strong incentive to maximize their revenue.

Since teams would no longer be paying their players directly, their largest expense would be removed from their books. The richer teams now spend more on payroll, so that would also offset the fact that they'd be contributing more revenue into the compensation pool.

Player salaries would be based upon their performance for the previous season. Team rosters would be reduced in size if the total compensation for their players exceeded league average by more than a certain threshold, which would prevent the more attractive teams from assembling all star rosters.

The roster size penalties would work to maintain competitive balance. Teams would still have advantages enabling them to attract more of the players they want -- geographic location, team environment, commercial endorsement potential, etc. -- but they wouldn't be able to spend 5-10 times as much payroll anymore to build teams capable of steamrollering their weaker opposition.

A team whose players perform exceptionally well during a season will likely have too many players earning too much money going into the following season, so they will need to selectively inform some of those players that they won't be able to return.

Players will have similar freedom to choose a new team each season. Players will look to go where they will have more opportunities to get playing time and perform at a higher level.

Some advantages of my proposal.

• Since players would be paid for performance, they would no longer need agents except to bring them commercial endorsement.
• Since players would be paid from a common compensation pool, rich teams would not be able to throw money at the best players. Both teams and players would seek the "best fit", where players could maximize their performance.
• Teams which do exceptionally well because of unexpectedly good performances from several players would be forced to restructure after each season to avoid roster size limitations. Ideally, a general manager would get rid of a couple highly paid players who were least likely to continue such high levels of performance. Teams which hadn't done that well would snatch those players up.
• To promote team continuity and discourage the jettisoning of older players, there would be adjustment factors built into the compensation system which would favor retention of veterans and encourage players to make a career with the same team.
• The current revenue sharing and luxury tax rules would disappear. Since small market teams could no longer maximize profits by minimizing salaries, they would no longer have an incentive to stock up on cheap young players.
• Young players would be paid for what they produce instead of having to wait until arbitration and/or free agency to get what they're worth. There would still be compensation advantages for veteran players, but not nearly as much as under the current system.

[orayole]

@redbird

I don't like the idea of paying on performance. How would you determine how much they are worth? Ranking certain stats? Which stats? Wins? losses? ERA? OBP? OPS? BA?

So many different things. And then even if you agree on which stats are used for the rankings it encourages players to be more selfish instead of a team player to increase their salary.

[RShack]

@redbird

I don't like the idea of paying on performance. How would you determine how much they are worth? Ranking certain stats? Which stats? Wins? losses? ERA? OBP? OPS? BA?

So many different things. And then even if you agree on which stats are used for the rankings it encourages players to be more selfish instead of a team player to increase their salary.

He's got some complicated centrally-planned system that would dictate what everybody's salary is, based on formulas.

I don't know why he thinks anybody would go along with it, but he thinks it would work great.

Personally, I don't think it could ever work, unless you had a dictator running things and everybody had to salute.

[DrungoHazewood]

He's got some complicated centrally-planned system that would dictate what everybody's salary is, based on formulas.

I don't know why he thinks anybody would go along with it, but he thinks it would work great.

Personally, I don't think it could ever work, unless you had a dictator running things and everybody had to salute.

Of course it would never work. The closest thing we have to that right now is the Elias rankings for free agent compensation, and those are ridiculously simplistic, based on commonly-accepted metrics from 1981, and (of course)often produce loony results. For example, I'm pretty sure Aubrey Huff is a type A free agent despite hitting like Lenny Sakata's little brother this year. I have ZERO confidence that some pay-for-performance metric would even come close to using state-of-the-art numbers. I'd be stunned if they got beyond unadjusted OPS, ERA, and fielding percentage. I flat-out guarantee they wouldn't use something that made sense like Fangraphs' value numbers.

And since pay is based on last year's major league performance you'd have to have some kind of kludge to make sure young guys with potential, rookies, injured players, and the like wouldn't get completely screwed. And teams would be heavily incentivized to run players (especially pitchers) through the ringer when a pennant was on the line. A playoff spot is worth 10s of $millions, so you could take a hit for CC Sabathia pitching 260 innings with a 24-8 record. Throw him on short rest all of September. Who cares if his arm falls off the next year, he'd only earn a pittance in year three.

And there's the whole matter of eviscerating free agency, taking away job security of multi-year contracts earned through good performance, how to compensate international free agents, and a host of other things that would be absolute non-starters for both players and owners and the union.

[DrungoHazewood]

They're not gonna buy a salary cap, I don't care how you do it. If I was them, I wouldn't either.

The union might accept a cap if compensation was tied to a percentage of overall revenues that was significantly higher than today. Might.

I still think caps are just ham-fisted ways to keep compensation down and do little for competitive balance. Caps do nothing to stop the Yanks from bringing in 2, 3, 4 times the money of the other teams they play and spending it on everything that can help their team besides payroll.

[orayole]

I say we take away draft picks from over spenders.

[incubus]

Like this past year, the Yankees would lose thier top two picks for the next 3 years because they bought 3 type A free agents? Sounds fair to me...