(02-06-2021 07:13 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(02-06-2021 12:54 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  The player's union is far too powerful. There will never be anything resembling a true salary cap.

The MLBPA might be too suspicious of a salary cap. What they really need is a salary floor to stop teams like the Pirates. The NBA's salary floor, for example, requires every team to spend at least 90% of the cap number on salaries. The penalty for not spending at least that much is that they have to do it anyway -- a team that is below 90% of the cap has to distribute the difference between the salary floor and the team payroll to the players on their roster.

Example for MLB: The MLB luxury tax threshold for 2021 is $210 million. Let's say there was a salary cap that, like the NBA's, is roughly 80% of the luxury tax line. That would make MLB's hypothetical 2021 cap number $168 million. The salary floor would be 90% of that cap number, $151.2 million. That would be an enormous benefit for the players currently on low-payroll MLB teams. There might be half a dozen MLB teams whose 2021 payroll will be half that amount or less.

(02-06-2021 12:54 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  The only way to incentivize any sort of competitive balance is to tie the revenue to winning. You win games, you get a bigger share of the TV revenue. Now obviously the teams with better inherent resources will have the opportunity to win more, but MLB will never create anything more than inducements to spend less. It won't happen.

Yes, TV revenue should be tied to winning. The English Premier League has a graduated revenue distribution that gives the most TV money to the team that wins the league and each team down the table gets a little less than the team right above them. For MLB, I would distribute half the national TV money evenly, and distribute the other half according to regular season wins, with each playoff team getting a bonus TV revenue share that gets larger the farther they advance in the postseason.

I think the salary floor is an interesting concept. That could work although I wouldn't use percentages as high as 90% or 80%. I think we have to remember that the current system in place doesn't adequately reward a team for taking a risk on FAs. Depending on the situation, you can lose draft picks just for signing someone. That's going to have a detrimental affect on the FA market because some teams have less resources to gamble with. They will bet on their own scouts and coaches to find cheap talent as opposed to going out and spending for it.

I would set the luxury tax at $200 million. It's a nice even number that's easy to divide by. If we set the luxury tax there then I would say the floor needs to be $75 million. The small market teams can afford that without dramatically altering their business model. I say that simply because some markets are inherently richer/larger than others so I think it's fair to account for that. Until we have a media contract that shares all TV revenue then we have to also consider some local contracts are far more rewarding than others.

With that said, there should be incentives to reach higher plateaus. Let's say if you spend at least $100 million then you get extra draft picks. If you spend $150 million then you are allowed greater flexibility with roster management...more call-ups without affecting your ownership of a player's contract for example.

If you can get more clubs into that $100-$200 million range then that would do a lot for competitive imbalance and the players would make more money in the process.

I would definitely tie national TV revenue to winning in the manner you stated. The EPL has a good formula although I would say that if a team surpasses the luxury tax then they forgo the playoff bonuses. They're getting plenty of reward for that anyway so they don't really need it.

Forgive my ignorance, but I'm not sure what the current penalty is for surpassing the luxury tax. I would say that it should be tied to charity. You pass the $200 million mark and you have to match dollar for dollar to a charity(ies) somewhere in your home market. Win/win for everyone.