MLB Salaries and Collective Bargaining

[Voice of Reason]

Major league baseball's collective bargaining agreement expires December 1. The owners have thrown a couple ideas out.

One proposal was to lower the cap and implement a floor. I believe the floor the owners proposed was $100 million. This year there are 12 teams below $100 million. Along with that the owners proposed a $200 million cap and a stiffer luxury tax for teams that go over the cap. The only two teams over $200 million this year are the Dodgers and the Yankees. The Reds are right at the league average this year.

The second proposal by the owners was to change free agent eligibility and arbitration rules. The owners proposed a $1 billion pool for all arbitration and players are eligible for free agency at age 29 1/2. 

Obviously the players won't accept either of those but that gives us a direction for negotiations. 

Baseball has the worst payroll system is sports by far. The current system creates inequity and costs baseball fans IMO. If I looked at this correctly, every playoff team except the Rays and Brewers are above the league average in payroll. Year after year, if you want to see who will be in the playoffs in baseball, just look at team payroll.

I like the first proposal. It flattens payroll narrowing the gap between the haves and have nots. That should even out competition. It should eliminate salary dumping, which I believe is the worst thing in MLB. 

What do you like and what do you think baseball should do to even competition?

[The Raven]

I'm all for a salary floor.   Seeing the Dodgers pay 3 players more than Pittsburgh pays their entire team and have the Pirates wonder why they stink has to stop.   Plus it gives incentive and ability to keep your better players instead of selling them off every year in August.

A cap would be nice.  To keep LA and the NYs from basically buying every decent FA on the market.  But that's not really realistic.

[ChickenWyngz]

A salary floor and a cap are a must, IMO. 

No chance of the changes in free agency happening. 

It will never happen for more reasons than I can even think of, but I would love to see more leagues go the MLS route. If you don't perform, you're moved down. 

Another interesting idea I'd love to see is for the league to set a standard of performance for the ownership. If you go X amount of years below .500 you have to sell to the highest bidder. If you go X amount of years without advancing in the playoffs you have to sell, etc. 

Neither of the last two options will ever happen, but I think it would make things a lot more interesting than they are now. 

[theguru]

5 minutes ago, ChickenWyngz said:

A salary floor and a cap are a must, IMO. 

This is where I am at and I would like to see the range be pretty small, something like 100 million to 125 million or at the extreme 150 million to 200 million. 

[Tigerpride94]

I don't see much changing because players aren't going to vote for anything that may limit there earning potential. I like the 200 million cap and a 125 million floor.

[Voice of Reason]

If the owners increase the overall pool total on salaries with the cap and floor model, they might get some buy in from the players. The the challenge is going to be the players will want that top end to stay as high as possible. 

[DragonFire]

As much as 1994 stunk, the owners should probably have held their ground indefinitely and gotten the cap implemented back then at all costs. Baseball’s payroll issues inherently lead to a bad product overall. There are too many teams that are DOA year after year. 
 

Contraction might have been another way to help that issue back in the day. Frankly, the Marlins should not exist. There are others. 

[CincySportsFan]

18 hours ago, Voice of Reason said:

If the owners increase the overall pool total on salaries with the cap and floor model, they might get some buy in from the players. The the challenge is going to be the players will want that top end to stay as high as possible. 

There is also another challenge too, I think, within the owners.  Look at it this way, there's 12 teams this year that had payroll below $100 million.  Why?  Because they chose it.  Also, there's 2 teams that were over $200 million.  Again, why?  Same answer, because they chose it.  So, there's 14 of 30 teams that obviously...whether it's for "economic" (ie: profit) reasons, or for competitive reasons...like payroll to be where it's at today.  Are they really going to want to offer to change?

Will the Yankees and Dodgers want to commit to a structure that will bring them back to the pack?  Will the Orioles, Pirates and Marlins want a system that would automatically double their payroll?  I have my doubts.

Unfortunately, there's no "central" party that's truly looking out for the game, that's going to be a decision maker in this process.  What may be good for the game, is not likely going to be viewed favorably by one, if not both, of the other sides.  Which is a shame.