# If there is a baseball strike, which party is most to blame?



## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

From Z'Loth


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## James_F (Apr 23, 2002)

As I said in another tread, its just some cheap owners who don't want to spend the money and ruin it for teams such as the Diamondback and Giants who are doing well.


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## Timco (Jun 7, 2002)

Professional Baseball is on the wane. Salaries must come down or the interest of the public must be increased in some way. If one or the other does not happen, bankruptcy stares every team in the face. 

Albert Spalding, Owner
Chicago White Stockings, 1881 



You go through The Sporting News for the last one hundred years, and you will find two things are always true. You never have enough pitching, and nobody ever made money. 

Donald Fehr, Executive Director 
Major League Baseball Players Association


It never changes.


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## Guest (Aug 13, 2002)

I think it is the fans who are at fault. Stop going to the games!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

I thinks its the players fault, how many millions are some of these guys get paid, and do they deserve it, hell no!? All these guys should go work in some factory for a week and make $5.15/hour and see what it feels like. This is one reson why I like NASCAR the best, drivers actually EARN their money, if they don't drive in a race they don't get paid. 

If there has to be these outrageous salaries here's my proposal. Figure out how many $$$ a player makes per INNING, and if they dont play in an inning for whatever reason subtract that from their total paycheck, and if a player has poor performance for an inning only give him half the $$$.


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## James_F (Apr 23, 2002)

Hey the Dimondback are going to win the west. Why should I ruin my season, just because some teams don't want to pay the players.


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## Timco (Jun 7, 2002)

Are you telling me if someone offered you a five million dollar raise, you would turn it down? It's not the players fault that the owners are to stupid to manage their money. If my boss came to me and wanted to renew my contract for an extra $1.5 mil. I'm not going to turn him down.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

Now thats a point I never thought of, but what about playing for the game. These players already get millions, whats an additional 5 million to them.


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## Timco (Jun 7, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Steve Mehs _
> *Now thats a point I never thought of, but what about playing for the game. These players already get millions, whats an additional 5 million to them. *


I agree. The amount of money they get paid is inconceivable. If you want to see players truely playing for the love of the game, you have to watch minor league games. Most of those guys don't have a shot at making the major leagues and they are out there busting their butt.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

Why cant they live off of the millions they are making right now? Is that enough? Is any amount going to ever be enough? When will it all end? They may end up wanting to go on strike once again in another couple of years, regardless any how.


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## gopherscot (Mar 25, 2002)

Let's see . A-Rod gets paid $114,000 per game ... that's quite a loss if they go on strike. One simple solution: Stop paying the players this kind of money, stop buying each others players, and if collusion is necessary to get this done .. do it very quietly.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

Just tell them to simply to sign a contract on a certain deal and if they dont abide by the contract then it will be the other way around to make the players pay for breaching contract. 

The players are supposed to play not just for the money (they get plenty of that) but for the sport and joy of the game, what ever happened to that?


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## JosephF (Apr 23, 2002)

The players... they have not lost a court case in years (make that decades). Their claim that they are afraid that they MIGHT be locked out by the owners is pure cr.....

If the owners attempt a lock out, the union will take them to court and the owners will get hit for collusion (what a joke).

Minor League Baseball... here I come.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

They need to set an example and fire the ones that want to become part of the strike and replace them. This will give them a lesson.


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## James_F (Apr 23, 2002)

And its against the law. That ain't going to happen.


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## Jacob S (Apr 14, 2002)

They should make it against the law for them to break their contract to pay for a certain amount of money too. They should be allowed to be replaced if they are not willing to do their job for the agreed amount.


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## James_F (Apr 23, 2002)

They are a union, they can strike... The government can force them back to work if they believe that their strike is unlawful. Doesn't happen much. There can also be a "cooling off" period where neither side can strike or lockout.


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## John Corn (Mar 21, 2002)

There's a problem with baseball, lets not just blame the players for striking

This is what I view as the underlying problem with baseball. Which is that there are basically thirty different economies, one for each team. What is fair and equitable for one team may not be for another. The fact that arbitration assumes that all teams are equal is a big problem. The fact that all players assume that all teams are equal is as well.

Of course the best players are just going to flock to the teams with the best economies if the reality of each teams economics are reflected in what they can get from arbitration, etc. So the real trick is to as much as possible equalize these various economies...



The fundamental problem economically in baseball is the fact that the same player is worth vastly different amounts of money depending on the market. Many have complained about the amount of money the NY Yankees payed for Jason Giambi. Well, given his production and the revenues of the Yankees they likely payed him precisely what he is worth to them. And thats an important thing to keep in mind. Jason Giambi is worth more to the Yankees then he is to any other team. And he's not unique in this. Every single player in baseball not playing for the Yankees would be worth more to the Yankees then they are to their current team. This is due to the fact that the Yankees are the most popular team in the most populous and affluent market in Major League Baseball. The Yankees have also been a very well run organization for the past decade or so. The combination of their market and their impressive ability to exploit it has lead to revenues that are well in advance of any other team in baseball. According to figures released by MLB the Yankees earned $242,208 million in 2001. This is nearly $40 million more then the number two revenue team (Seattle), and nearly $60 million more then the Mets who came in at number three.

So what does that mean? It means that there are thirty different economies at work in MLB, and that a lot of bad things happen when you try to pretend that they are all the same. Lets assume that 62% of revenues should go to player payroll. This isn't out of line with what the NFL does. It's probably a bit unrealistic to expect a low revenue team to be able to afford this much since non payroll expenses are going to tend to make up a larger percentage of their total budget then they would for larger revenue teams, but it keeps things reasonably simple if we ignore this fact. We'll define a currency called "The Yankee dollar". We can compare other teams currency to the Yankee dollar as a percentage. We can then multiply a teams exchange rate by a given player contract and determine what that player is worth to that team. Sorry if that sounds a bit confusing. Hopefully it will become clearer. Here is a table that compares teams 2001 revenues as reported by MLB and lists their payroll exchange rates in relationship to the Yankee dollar.

Team 2002 Revenues Payroll $'s VIRYD

ANA 91731 56873.22 0.38 
ARI 125132 77581.84 0.52 
ATL 146851 91047.62 0.61 
BAL 128302 79547.24 0.53 
BOS 176982 109728.84 0.73 
CHI(NL) 129774 80459.88 0.54 
CHI(AL) 111682 69242.84 0.46 
CIN 70887 43949.94 0.29 
CLE 162242 100590.04 0.67 
COL 131813 81724.06 0.54 
DET 106791 66210.42 0.44 
FLO 60547 37539.14 0.25 
HOU 124629  77269.98 0.51 
KC 63696 39491.52 0.26 
LA 143607 89036.34 0.59 
MIL 113350 70277.00 0.47 
MIN 56266 34884.92 0.23 
MON 34171 21186.02 0.14 
NY(NL) 182631 113231.22 0.75 
NY(AL) 242208 150168.96 1.00 
OAK 75469 46790.78 0.31 
PHI 81515 50539.30 0.34 
PIT 108706 67397.72 0.45 
STL 132459 82124.58 0.55 
SD 79722 49427.64 0.33 
SF 170295 105582.90 0.70 
SEA 202434 125509.08 0.84 
TB 80595 49968.90 0.33 
TEX 134910 83644.20 0.56 
TOR 78479 48656.98 0.32 


Revenues and projected payroll dollars are in millions. VIRYD stands for "Value In Relationship to a Yankee Dollar". This is basically 62% of that teams revenues divided by 62% of the Yankees revenues. 

What does all this mean? Lets assume a player is playing for the Yankees and making $10 million per year. Lets furthermore assume that this is a reasonable contract in the context of the Yankees revenues. If that player were instead playing for the Devil Rays they would be worth $3.3 million. If they were playing for the Red Sox they would be worth $7.3 million, and so on. And this is the key problem that both the players and the owners ignore. Of course it's superficially in the best interests of the players to fail to acknowledge this reality. Since the advent of free agency and arbitration they've used this differential to their advantage by taking the contracts granted in more lucrative markets and using them as evidence that an equivalent player should be payed the same in a less lucrative market. This has been less of a problem then you might think though for two reasons. One, baseball players were almost certainly very underpaid at the dawn of free agency, so their was a fair amount of "extra" revenue there to absorb the load. And two, baseballs revenues have increased at a steady and impressive rate for many years now. Still, I think we may be beyond the point where these two factors can compensate.

OK, so what does it all mean in the context of revenue sharing, caps and luxury taxes? Good question. Sorry about the chart, I had to copy and paste it from ESPN.


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## James_F (Apr 23, 2002)

Nice post John!

See I have no problem with that. Being from California, I'd take 7 million from the Giants rather than 10 million from the Yankees. You should get paid more to play in bigger markets. Why the hell not?


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