A way to make MLB better without a salary cap?

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by crackpott

Quite simply because teams get to keep their own players. Under the current system, half the league won't even get to keep their own players, they're just a farm system for the rich teams once free agency rolls around.

But it's still going to be the same under your system. This isn't going to impact the Yankees much, considering how much higher their payroll is comparing to others. Their bid on players they want are often way higher than everybody else.

What it would do is mostly dragging down the ability of second tier rich teams to spend to compete with the Yankees.

If your intention is to make players stay longer, something like increasing the experience needed to reach FA or adding something like franchise player rule might be simpler. We don't really know what's the implication to trade anyway. Reducing the trade window might achieve the most actually. If you don't allow in-season trades, you'll have way fewer short term rental kind of trades, and greatly reduce the chance a player would hop around a lot of teams.

[jbergey22]

So the pool consists of luxury tax dollars or what?

I just dont understand how this would work.

So if The Twins want to keep Mauer, Morneau, Kubel and Span and lets make an extreme but possible example.

Lets say market value on each of them is 20 million. Twins would get 20 million X 30 percent x 4 players = 24 million out of this pool.

While lets say the Pirates have 2 players with a market value of 5 million and nothing else. Then they would only get 5m X .30 X 2 = 3m?

Im not really seeing how this is making the Pirates more competetive. And Im not sure how they are going to feel about losing out on all this money that is suppose to be helping them.

It may help keep some players on their original teams but its not going to help make the crap teams any better IMO. In all likelyhood they would just trade their good players for prospects anyway because they will be still unable to compete.

If you were talking about just putting revenue into a big pool. Why would teams that make huge amounts of money want to give that up and make nothing? Sorry Yankees I know you won the World Series this year and made 200 million but you have to put all your profits into this pool so the Pirates can keep Gorzianney(or whatever his name is) and the Nationals can keep Zimmerman.

And great news Pirates since you once again sucked it up big time this year you dont have to put money into the pool instead we will give you money and allow you to sign your best crappy player for over the market value. Great season.

[crackpott]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

So the pool consists of luxury tax dollars or what?

I just dont understand how this would work.

So if The Twins want to keep Mauer, Morneau, Kubel and Span and lets make an extreme but possible example.

Lets say market value on each of them is 20 million. Twins would get 20 million X 30 percent x 4 players = 24 million out of this pool.

While lets say the Pirates have 2 players with a market value of 5 million and nothing else. Then they would only get 5m X .30 X 2 = 3m?

Im not really seeing how this is making the Pirates more competetive. And Im not sure how they are going to feel about losing out on all this money that is suppose to be helping them.

It may help keep some players on their original teams but its not going to help make the crap teams any better IMO. In all likelyhood they would just trade their good players for prospects anyway because they will be still unable to compete.

If you were talking about just putting revenue into a big pool. Why would teams that make huge amounts of money want to give that up and make nothing? Sorry Yankees I know you won the World Series this year and made 200 million but you have to put all your profits into this pool so the Pirates can keep Gorzianney(or whatever his name is) and the Nationals can keep Zimmerman.

And great news Pirates since you once again sucked it up big time this year you dont have to put money into the pool instead we will give you money and allow you to sign your best crappy player for over the market value. Great season.

Outside of international scouting, teams have an equal ability to develop talent. In fact, the crappier teams get better draft picks (Getting them to use them on the best players may admittedly be another issues). If the Twins have a ton of good, young players it's cause they deserve to have them as a result of them doing something right. If the Pirates don't... well, they should learn to develop better players. The goal here isn't to make every team equal in talent level, it's simply to give teams a shot at keeping the players they develop instead of watching the Yankees just suck them all up.

I disagree with Skipaway that it wouldn't make a difference. His comments imply the Yankees will just spend absolutely whatever, and again I would state that the Yankees HAVE been interested in free agents and not sign them. That wouldn't be the case if they would just spend anything to get whoever they wanted.

I see no reason they would trade their good players for prospects unless they have very few good players, and then they probably should be trading them for prospects. When a number of good prospects come up at once, such as with the Twins, then resign them all. Suddenly a small market team can compete.

To your point about "Why would big market teams want to put revenue into a pool?" They already do, that revenue just gets distributed differently.

The Pirates currently also receive more from that pool than they put in currently. Under the proposed system that would only happen if they were to use it on their players instead of pocketing it.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by crackpott

The goal here isn't to make every team equal in talent level, it's simply to give teams a shot at keeping the players they develop instead of watching the Yankees just suck them all up.

But they already get exclusive control over those players for six years' worth of Major League service, which can equal eight MLB seasons depending on how often the player is optioned during his three option years.

Seems to me what really be proposed is a restricted/unrestricted free agency system, only with the restricted part having the salaries funded by league revenue rather than solely by the original club matching the offer made by another club.

[Skipaway]

Originally Posted by crackpott

I disagree with Skipaway that it wouldn't make a difference. His comments imply the Yankees will just spend absolutely whatever, and again I would state that the Yankees HAVE been interested in free agents and not sign them. That wouldn't be the case if they would just spend anything to get whoever they wanted.

That's not the point. You basically means the barrier for acquiring free agent help is raised by 30%. Looking at the payroll, it's pretty obvious that the Yankees would be the only obvious one that would still be able to get players they want. Surely even their ability to do that would be hindered, but much less so than other big market teams.

You'd essentially drag down the Cubs a lot but the Yankees not so much. It would make a difference, but not a desirable difference.

[Skipaway]

Put it this way, if a player is worth $10m, a reasonably rich team might be willing to overpay a bit just to win the player in the free agent market with $11m. The original team can easily match that by offering $12m, and in reality only paying $12m*70%=$8.4m. The original team wins big this way, and the player is happy too, because he gets to be paid above the originally perceived market value.

Now, what team would be able to pay this $10m player $15m and make it not worth it for the original team to retain the player anymore? Only the Yankees.

In the end, the system would ended up even more everybody vs. the Yankees than it is right now. In the mean time, it would also simply boost the total payroll, because teams suddenly are forced to spend somebody else's money on players.