Baseball Salaries Make No Sense To Me

[aloofman]

And yet there are definte economic advantages to the city, its businesses, and to the constituents to having a pro team as well, otherwise the governments wouldn't acquiesce.

Woof, Woof – Dawg

But those same advantages are there with the stadium the team already had. By spending a few hundred million dollars to enrich a private company, the city/county/state has locked itself in to subsidizing an attraction that does not attract much tax revenue from outside that metropolitan area. The money would be spent somewhere else nearby instead, at a movie theater, amusement park, or whatever. It doesn't generate nearly enough new tax revenue to pay off that subsidy anytime soon. A few cities have made a stadium part of an urban renewal plan to good effect, like Baltimore. But this is just as much a function of good planning as it is the new stadium. Taxpayers are not getting a return on their investment other than the emotional sentiment of watching a game at a spiffy new ballpark. If that taxpayer is a fan, that is.

My point is that a non-baseball fan can say, "Hey, I don't care how much the players make because I don't spend any money on them. I can spend it on a local play or whatever and pay their salaries instead." But if the stadium is taxpayer-subsidized, then your taxes are helping pay those players whether you root for them or not.

 

[xsedrinam]

Actually, I swore off baseball after the last strike. Haven't even been to Turner Field. I watch a little here and there during the post season, and keep up on Sports Center, but that's about it. And baseball was my #1 sport, the only one I played. I had a few friends that played pro. They always said I should have stuck with it.

Woof, Woof – Dawg

And there's the "little boy" in us all who grew up with baseball and the love of the game. I don't think anyone is looking with rose colored glasses for a silver bullet solution, but the "business side" of it has hurt the game from various perspectives. I too grew up with baseball as #1 (at Sportsman's Park, St. Louis), and cut my teeth on Harry Cary and Jack Buck when I couldn't go to the game. The modern day concerns are not expressed longings for nostalgia, but rather for the preservation of the game and fair play.

 

[takao]

And there's the "little boy" in us all who grew up with baseball and the love of the game. I don't think anyone is looking with rose colored glasses for a silver bullet solution, but the "business side" of it has hurt the game from various perspectives. I too grew up with baseball as #1 (at Sportsman's Park, St. Louis), and cut my teeth on Harry Cary and Jack Buck when I couldn't go to the game. The modern day concerns are not expressed longings for nostalgia, but rather for the preservation of the game and fair play.

haha i just looked up the local team and just found out that they did win the austrian championship just 2 years go.. i kinda missed that .. looks like that somehow went under between articles about the favourite food of the dogs of our skiing stars and the results of the 3nd regional football league

edit: i misread the title of this thread as "baseball makes no sense to me"

 

[IJ Reilly]

No, he wouldn't be able to do it as the KC Yankees, which is why he is the NY Yankees, and why the Montreal Expos are now the DC Nationals.

But, every time someone sounds the alarm for baseball's health, they rebound and do quite well. Small market teams may not be able to support pro franchises. That's a reality of a free market economy. They have no inherent right to have a franchise.

And yet look at Green Bay in another sport...

And additionally, there are small payroll teams with young hungry talent that often do quite well. And amazingly, the Yankees don't always win

Actually, I swore off baseball after the last strike. Haven't even been to Turner Field. I watch a little here and there during the post season, and keep up on Sports Center, but that's about it. And baseball was my #1 sport, the only one I played. I had a few friends that played pro. They always said I should have stuck with it.

Some of the small payroll teams might do "quite well," but they rarely even win their divisions, let along make it deep into the playoffs or to the series. It's a truly nutty system when one team can spend over $200 million for player salaries every year and another team in the league can only afford $35 million. The disparity is ridiculous, and the results are what you'd expect -- one team that's always competitive no matter how poorly it's managed, and the other never competitive, no matter how well it's managed.

Baseball is not a "free market economy." Far from it!

 

[emw]

Some of the small payroll teams might do "quite well," but they rarely even win their divisions, let along make it deep into the playoffs or to the series. It's a truly nutty system when one team can spend over $200 million for player salaries every year and another team in the league can only afford $35 million. The disparity is ridiculous, and the results are what you'd expect -- one team that's always competitive no matter how poorly it's managed, and the other never competitive, no matter how well it's managed.

Baseball is not a "free market economy." Far from it!

How so?

If someone decides to put a franchise into a market that cannot support it, and it fails, then the market decided that it did not want that franchise. A free market system does not guarantee that businesses (baseball, Starbucks, Kinko's, whatever) will do well, or that all markets should provide the same support/revenue to a business regardless of location.

That being said, I'd propose that very little about the U.S. economy is truly "free market."

 

[aloofman]

Some of the small payroll teams might do "quite well," but they rarely even win their divisions, let along make it deep into the playoffs or to the series. It's a truly nutty system when one team can spend over $200 million for player salaries every year and another team in the league can only afford $35 million. The disparity is ridiculous, and the results are what you'd expect -- one team that's always competitive no matter how poorly it's managed, and the other never competitive, no matter how well it's managed.

Baseball is not a "free market economy." Far from it!

There are two problems with this generalization:

1) It's always been this way. The Yankees have won a disproportionate number of pennants compared to the other AL teams since they bought Babe Ruth (with a few dry spells). The old Washington Senators didn't compete much. Ditto the St. Louis Browns. That's not to say that the revenue disparity is a good thing, just that it has not gotten worse in recent years.

2) It's not really true. In the last eight years, eight different teams won the NL pennant. In the last five years, both the Twins and A's have competed strongly despite having relatively low payrolls. The Mets and Dodgers mostly haven't despite having high payrolls. And even though there's no hard salary cap, many more baseball teams have been division winners, pennant winners, and World Series winners compared to their counterparts in the NFL or NBA. That's still true even with the many division titles of the Yankees, and the Braves, who win the title but seem to generously step aside in the playoffs for some other long-downtrodden team.

The only fly in the ointment in baseball competitiveness has been the Yankees. But even the Yankees recent success is a combination of both spending AND management. The Yankees of 1982-1995 were big spenders too, but they were not very successful. (The fact that this period happened to coincide with Don Mattingly's career puts frowns on many baseball fans. But I digress.) The Dodgers have similarly been among the highest-spending teams since they last won the World Series in 1988, but they've never come close to a pennant since then. At some point the Yankees' luck will run out, their farm system will be dry, and even Steinbrenner will balk at raising the payroll. When that happens, the American League will be wide open again.

 

[IJ Reilly]

How so?

Explained in a previous post, but in a nut shell, MLB (meaning, the team owners themselves) decides the number of franchises and where they can be located. Congress gave baseball an explicit exclusion from the antitrust laws in order to allow them to operate in this way.

 

[IJ Reilly]

There are two problems with this generalization:

1) It's always been this way. The Yankees have won a disproportionate number of pennants compared to the other AL teams since they bought Babe Ruth (with a few dry spells). The old Washington Senators didn't compete much. Ditto the St. Louis Browns. That's not to say that the revenue disparity is a good thing, just that it has not gotten worse in recent years.

It hasn't always been quite this way. The largest source of revenue for teams in the modern era is TV. Advertisers will pay a lot more for TV time in large markets than they will in small markets. This is the principle reason why the Yankees can afford to spend $200 million a year and the Royals can afford only $35 million.

2) It's not really true. In the last eight years, eight different teams won the NL pennant. In the last five years, both the Twins and A's have competed strongly despite having relatively low payrolls. The Mets and Dodgers mostly haven't despite having high payrolls. And even though there's no hard salary cap, many more baseball teams have been division winners, pennant winners, and World Series winners compared to their counterparts in the NFL or NBA. That's still true even with the many division titles of the Yankees, and the Braves, who win the title but seem to generously step aside in the playoffs for some other long-downtrodden team.

Payroll spending doesn't guarantee success (because you can always overpay for talent), but a lack of spending pretty much guarantees failure (because you're not even in the market for the talent). I believe these things have been studied quite a lot statistically and while there's not a clean linear relationship between payroll spending and win-loss records, a relationship does exist. I think you will also find that of the many teams who have won their divisions over the past few years, that (excluding for permanent outliers like the Yankees) most are within a fairly tight range, probably $80-100 million.

 

[emw]

Explained in a previous post, but in a nut shell, MLB (meaning, the team owners themselves) decides the number of franchises and where they can be located.

Doesn't McDonalds do the same thing?

 

[IJ Reilly]

Doesn't McDonalds do the same thing?

Yes. Are they only company selling hamburgers?