Salary Caps Have Widened The Money Gap In Pro Sports
Salary caps: maybe not what you think, says Forbes' Mike Ozanian. Shysterball's summary of this article is here.
over 1 year ago
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It doesn't say anything about the competitive gap
Only the money gap
I think it’s pretty intuitive that salary caps will make rich teams richer. The owner still makes the same amount, but they are limited to what they can spend
I think it's difficult to separate the two
The clubs can agree not to spend the extra money on salaries, but see this discussion for a scenario of what a rich club might do with its overstuffed coffers instead in order to increase the flow of relatively inexpensive talent that it enjoys.
I had that discussion with AxDxMx, and his response was, extend the cap to all spending on talent: salaries, bonuses, development, everything. I don’t think that’s really practical — money will find a way. But even if it can be limited, there’s still a good argument there about why a rich team is likely to remain a successfully competitive team.
The NFL is a perfect example. The wealthier teams might on average be more successful due to better front office staff and coaches but the overall competitive balance of the sport is much better than baseball.
Is it?
Assume I know nothing about the NFL — which is pretty close to the truth — and convince me that its competitive balance is much better than baseball’s.
Salary cap is a lot more effective in football then it would be in baseball.
In football, teams minor leauges consist of a 10 man practice squad. This means that teams can’t stockpile talent. This means teams can go up or down in how good they are each year a lot easier then in baseball. The biggest factor in football that makes the teams uneven is the play of quarterbacks. No matter how much they are paid, they are way underpaid for thier relative value if they are elite. Basically, a quarterback would be the equivent in baseball of a pitcher who pitches every inning of every game. However, one tackle later that advantage can be gone.
Go Royals!
Is it the limiting of salaries that allows teams to reset themselves more quickly
or is it more that NFL contracts aren’t guaranteed? They don’t stockpile reserve talent under their rules, but on the other hand I think they have far less incentive to do so — when they cut a guy who’s not performing, they can spend the money they had earmarked for him (other than for bonuses) on somebody else.
Zito, Sabean wants to see you in his office. Now.
No, not having guaranteed contracts does not really favor bad teams.
It favors front offices that can recognize when to cut bait, and this most likely would help richer teams, with everything else being equal. If you are a terrible team, you are still just a Matt Castle playing better, and a couple of good drafts and a couple of free agent signings away from contending for your division.
Go Royals!
So I think you agree
that “the money gap”, which salary caps promote, also influences “the competitive gap”, given that richer teams are more likely to have front offices that can recognize when to cut bait etc. Yes?
Anyway I totally agree that money plus a nimble front office is going to result in a competitive team on the field more often than money alone. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the ’80s Yankees.
Proving that is actually an interesting question
In the NFL, to have a winning season you need to go 9-7 which reflects a 56.25% winning percentage.
In the MLB, you need a to go 82-80, which is a 50.6% winning percentage.
I don’t think teams with a winning record is an accurate way to measure things.
Teams who won their division and teams who made the playoffs are skewed in the NFL’s favor because of the 4 divisions and the fact that 6 teams make the playoffs instead of 4.
Any suggestion on a stat that could prove or disprove whether won league has a better competitive balance?
If the competitive balance of the two sports are equal then baseball’s playoff system makes it seem more unequal relative to the NFL because only 4 teams from each league make the playoffs, which is a pretty common benchmark of a team’s perceived success.
Well, less games makes you seem more equal because sample
size comes into play. Football will always have that advantage.
Go Royals!
No, I don't know how to measure it
but assumed you did, given that you made the assertion that the NFL’s was “much better”. What was the basis for that comparison? is basically my question.
I think the basis, in my eyes, is the threshold for a team to feel like they had a successful season. The only metric that I think comes close to approximating that is playoff appearances.
So I’ll back off from the suggestion that the competitive balance isn’t as good in baseball. The thing that isn’t as good in baseball is the average fan’s perception of the competitive balance because very few people care about having a winning season devoid of post-season play.
Makes sense
and implies that leagues with a higher ratio of postseason berths to teams will be perceived as having greater parity, regardless of whether there are greater or lesser discrepancies in talent between the rich and poor teams of the league.
12 / 32 > 8 / 30. Q.E.D.
Yes
I still don’t get why fans instintively think a cap = parity. All it does is drag salaries which indirectly helps lower income clubs, but its not like the Royals will suddenly be able to keep their players or get the A-Rods. Revenue sharing is what puts money in the Royals pocket and enables them to keep their players.
Relive Royals History at royalsretro.blogspot.com
And NFL fans should note that
because of the absence of local TV deals etc. a good argument can be made that parity in that league may be due to superior revenue sharing as much as or more than other factors.
If the Royals really can't survive as a team on what they bring in,
maybe they should be contracted. Why should the teams with more money have to put up with our poor team that loses money?
Yankees - Red Sox every night, all season!
But anyway, where’s the fiscal evidence that shows the Royals are doomed to remain non-competitive with the money that have available to spend? Two of the eight 2010 playoff teams had payrolls comparable to the Royals’, and a third playoff team had a significantly lower payroll. The team with the second lowest payroll overall, about half the Royals’, missed the playoffs by one game.
Management plays a huge role.
It’s definitely possible for the Royals to be competitive, but that will require a great deal of superior skill in team management, which isn’t likely to happen because the major market teams can afford better scouts, better coaches, and they can afford to play a higher quantity of players in the lower levels, increasing their opportunities to “hit” on prospects.
When the Yankees stop giving their money away like fools they’re very, very hard to beat.
No franchises
have more farm teams than the Royals have now, right? Not the Yankees, not anyone.
I completely agree that wise spending is what’s tough for teams with lower revenue to beat. I’m not so sure that wealth promotes smart front offices in baseball, as BabyBlues suggests is the case for football. I will simply say, like Joan Payson said when they were picking the name: “Mets. I like Mets.”
I think Baseball is harder for a perennially bad team to turn the corner because the draft is so unrewarding relative to the NBA, NHL, and NFL. In those sports it appears to me that the predictability of a player’s major league talent is so, so much better than in baseball.
Certainly, it can be done and looking at teams who have been as bad as the Royals have for as long as we have proves that there is (or at least has been) a serious management talent deficiency.
The thing about the draft
is that it becomes, on percentage, rapidly less rewarding the farther you go past the very highest picks, even within the first round. Meaning that perennially successful teams that draft lower year by year are likely to have a significantly lower yield of major league talent. Really, it’s hard for everybody to restock quickly, which I’d suppose has a tendency toward promoting league parity, absent other effects.
Anyway I think the Yankees are just about done reaping the benefit of the Gene Michael drafts that resulted in their run of success of the ‘90s and aughts, when they drafted very well and then followed that up by spending large. Could be that we’re about to enter another era of dumb money. Have to wait and see.
Maybe my point wasn't clear.
The Royals are on public assistance and the Yankees are the rich team that gets overtaxed to pay for our free stuff. It’s the Royals own damn fault for being poor, so why should the Yankees have to suffer?
If tv money was split evenly,
I’d agree with you. Right now the Yankees (and others) get way more money out of their TV deals that it’s not close to “fair” deal.
Glad I came, just wish I hadn't stayed so long.
People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball...Rock Chalk Talk
And the value of the Yankees huge TV deal is driven up
the more Yankee viewers have a chance to saver vikteries over the poor loosers like the Royls.
So in a way, for them revenue sharing is like paying the Washington Generals — after all, somebody has to be the other guys.
Yankees fan == bad speller
Not original to this thread but to the one on the main page about potential Grenky tradez. I’m just going with the flow today.
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