Baseball and baseball owners have changed over the years. When Calvin Griffith was the owner of the Minnesota Twins he truly ran his own team. Griffith was the owner, President, and General Manager. Today we have an owner, we have a President, a Head of Baseball Operation and a General Manager and too many other executives to count. The business of baseball in current times is truly a business with layer upon layer of management.
This off-season the free agent players got their butts kicked by the owners who have refused to pay longer term contracts and the big money deals of years gone by. The owners in essence have instituted a salary cap with their luxury tax and the players union stood by and said “what just happened”.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel one bit sorry for those players that passed up a $17.4 million qualifying offer only to find that they can’t get near that amount now. That is what greed gets you boys! I also don’t believe in long-term contracts, if I was the commissioner I would try to get baseball changed over to one of two things, either everyone becomes a free agent each year or all contracts are for one year only. Contracts are not a one way street with an up side only, you have a crappy year you should take a pay cut.
The owners need a swift kick in the behind too, it isn’t a one way street here either, the owners need to step up and work to make sure that all teams are competitive. There is no excuse for the top spending teams to have a payroll of $200-$300 million while other teams sit a $34 million. There should be a floor for payroll based on a percentage that the top payroll teams spend. I can see the day when the fans wise up and start protests against these cheap teams and just flat-out quit supporting them. That day is coming my friends.
Overly simplistic you say? Why does everything have to be so complicated? Complicated doesn’t make things better, it makes them worse. The more complicated something is the more that can go wrong. “Keep it simple stupid” has been around a long time and it is still good advice.
Back when I was a kid growing up it was fun to talk with my friends and propose baseball trades that should be made. It was simple back then, trade value for value. Now days talk of trades in the general baseball public is nowhere to be found. Why? Simple, trades are too complicated, you don’t trade a good player for a good player, you have to look at the money they make, their arbitration status, their free agency status, who their agent is, etc.
The owners and players brought this mess on themselves. Fox example, who was the idiot owner who accepted the first player “opt out” clause for a long-term contract? The players are laughing themselves silly over this one I bet.
The funny thing about this blog is that it started with a simple little blurb that I ran across in a Sporting News from March of 1968.
Would Twins owner Jim Pohlad do this today? Probably not, you would never catch him mingling with baseball fans, he is up in his suite.
The Griffith-era was unique in that owners on a very very limited basis would pay a player more money than they made. And a lot of times players were told that they made more than what an honest working man made working all year, and had three months off to find other work and build towards a career after baseball.
And owners can argue about losing money and all, and some do lose money…until they sell the team. Others leverage what the team is worth to borrow money to keep going or take a payday sooner rather than later (I believe Carl Pohlad, for all his bankerness, borrowed money against the team because it was a wise thing to do, and then reinvest it in other projects. The money he may lose “paying interest” offset gains from other venues).
Sport teams do have to have a certain player base, someone the fans will cheer, call their hometown hero et al. Sell the shirts, promote products. Every franchise needs a face, and sometimes a player can turn that into a hefty contract.
And used to be that players would like to play for a winning team, or one of the top three or four teams, who received bonus money for going to the championship or even coming in second or third. Often THAT money could multiply what a player was paid that year…not to mention the hefty checks plays do get from mlb licensing now, based on service.
There is a total uneveness to the playing field regarding revenue streams of franchises. Some teams play to a bigger region. Some even have a national following, and both of those give more dollars to a team than one that plays to a citywide arena or even a statewide audience, and we know some states/regions CAN BE smaller than others. Baseball ahs tried to share the wealth, but face the fact that some teams can pay a player twice as much or more than any other team could even comprehend. The only telling grace is that a team can only put 25-men on the field, so everyone will end up somewhere at some price.
Teams still have a certain amount of control. They can have 4-5 years of development, still keep a player up-and-down for another few years, have a couple years or arbitration thrown into the mix. Which is why many many players don’t see free-agency until they hit age 30. The evils of everyone being a free-agent every year is that a good year can increase your salary and a bad year doesn’t allow the hometeam to give you a lot less. Maybe it would if everyone is a free agent (which is basically what cutting a player during the arbitration years does…but the hometeam loses rights to resign the guy for a fraction of what they might’ve had to pay him).
It still is a funny business, where the owners and the executive staff and even the field staff make a lot less than the guys they are ordering around on the field. In all my years of work, I wish I had made money than my bosses, and their bosses, too.