The Dodgers should be kicked out of baseball

[chpettit19]

20 minutes ago, Rigby said:

I would agree with the bulk of your post, however, allowing the Dodgers (or anyone else) to circumvent the meager rules that are in place (luxury tax) is an increasingly huge detriment to the game.

I don't know that I'd call it circumventing, though. The rule is spelled out very clearly in the CBA. I'd agree that the wording could've/should've been different, but the CBT language is very strong on how it's calculated. And I'd bet there was a lot of thought and discussion on it. 

[Parfigliano]

3 hours ago, Battle ur tail off said:

That is about it for my post. 

Sign Ohtani to a ridiculous contract that will pay him until hes dead and now throw the highest contract ever to a pitcher in the span of about 2 weeks.

Kind of sick of it. Similar to NIL BS in college football. Sports just aren't as much fun when the outcome is already known. LA, yes, they might not win a WS, but there is no doubt they will win their division or at least be in the playoffs. 

Baseball, just like every other sport out there besides football, is broken. Garbage.

NHL isnt broken or garbage.

[Vanimal46]

I’m just mad that the Dodgers announced this on the same day the Twins announce the signing of old friend Niko Goodrum… Give us one full day to celebrate being in the news, Dodgers! 

[ashbury]

9 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

I’m just mad that the Dodgers announced this on the same day the Twins announce the signing of old friend Niko Goodrum…

 

Happy now?

[SteveLV]

Just to be crystal clear, I am NOT blaming the Dodgers for doing what they are doing.

I am NOT blaming Ohtani or Yamamato or any other player for getting a huge contract.

I am angry that MLB is getting ruined by the current salary system.

The young, great players are getting screwed.

The minor leaguers are getting completely screwed.

The average MLB'ers are getting screwed.

The older Superstars are getting over compensated.

The league teams are not on equal footing and it is non-competitive by its structure, or lack thereof.

NFL is fair.

MLB is not.

The owners, players and agents have endorsed a CBA that guarantees it is unfair.

But they don't care, because they have been doing it that way for 40 years.

 

Fear not:  I will follow our plucky little team and hope against hope they catch lightning in a bottle once every few decades.  But I will certainly never follow it all as closely as the NFL, and I actually like the game of baseball better.

[tony&rodney]

9 hours ago, Battle ur tail off said:

Baseball, just like every other sport out there besides football, is broken.

Dude, go watch the movie, Concussion. Football is literally broken.

However, not fair by me because I don't follow the game since working on the sidelines and seeing the effects decades ago. To each their own. 

[tony&rodney]

3 hours ago, SteveLV said:

Just to be crystal clear, I am NOT blaming the Dodgers for doing what they are doing.

I am NOT blaming Ohtani or Yamamato or any other player for getting a huge contract.

I am angry that MLB is getting ruined by the current salary system.

The young, great players are getting screwed.

The minor leaguers are getting completely screwed.

The average MLB'ers are getting screwed.

The older Superstars are getting over compensated.

The league teams are not on equal footing and it is non-competitive by its structure, or lack thereof.

NFL is fair.

MLB is not.

The owners, players and agents have endorsed a CBA that guarantees it is unfair.

But they don't care, because they have been doing it that way for 40 years.

 

Fear not:  I will follow our plucky little team and hope against hope they catch lightning in a bottle once every few decades.  But I will certainly never follow it all as closely as the NFL, and I actually like the game of baseball better.

It's ok, you are primarily a football fan, despite liking baseball better as an idea. Football is absolutely humongous in the United States and totally worthless in every other country in the world. I don't know why that is but what we call soccer as well as basketball and baseball are far, far more popular outside of the U.S. than football. This makes no difference  really and people should choose their own entertainment. Tik Tok is way, way more popular than football to a very large segment of the U.S. population which is equally confusing to me but I just say, people should find happiness in something. 

I stopped following football decades ago but have many relatives and friends who are diehard fans of the game. I'm a baseball fan and even Manfredball has failed to extinguish my interest in and love for the game. 

[SteveLV]

I like watching pro football, but baseball is my first love and I played it for 26 years.

It is just a simple fact that the NFL has parity, and MLB does not.

I enjoy a level playing field.

[gunnarthor]

Labor over management. Glad these guys are making what they are worth. More players should.

[Woof Bronzer]

12 hours ago, terrydactyls said:

Who is Tris?

Speaker.  Good player.

[ChermesZ]

5 hours ago, gunnarthor said:

Labor over management. Glad these guys are making what they are worth. More players should.

At whose expense?  They’ve rigged it to come at the fans expense.  If you think they are taking it to the ‘man’, you are unfortunately incorrect.  They are all taking it to us.

 

Publicly funded  stadiums, expensive tickets, and food prices way out of whack with reality show how disconnected they all are with us.

 

Millionaires vs billionaires….they are both wrong.  I honestly hope the whole system burns down so we can remake it with publicly owned teams and players who do not own a massive mansion and sports cars while the common person struggles to afford groceries and gas.

[Otaknam]

22 hours ago, Original_JB said:

Have you looked at the payroll disparity of Premier League Soccer? https://www.planetfootball.com/quick-reads/premier-league-wage-bill-ranking-2023-24-man-utd-liverpool-arsenal   And that's not including the "lower" Champion League teams.  I've floated this idea before, and it is this: Combine the Majors and AAA teams (condensed down to around 50 teams total) and run MLB as a 2 tier system similar to the Premier League. Run the same type relegation plan. That way, the big spenders can do as they will, and teams that are more modest in how they want to run their team can be opportunistic and move up to the higher league depending on how they perform. Sure, you'd need to upgrade a few stadiums, but with so much of the money being in TV and the blackouts going away, I think you could grow the game. Yankees/Dodgers coming to Toledo/Durham? Heck yeah. You might get owners who are more willing to own teams if they felt they could run a $25M payroll and be competitive for the lower championship, and not trying to "keep up with the Jones". And this whole thing only comes about if they (owners/players) decide that there will never be a cap and never be a floor and every team is more or less, an independent contractor.

Following the soccer plan is great way to destroy MLB. It would take a generation for such an extreme makeover for fans to accept, which I never would. The Dodgers are like Godzilla, destroying everything in its path to achieve its goal. MLB needs a salary cap and salary basement more than ever.

[Eris]

22 hours ago, Riverbrian said:

Wasn't it the owners who were trying to get a salary cap into the CBA and the players union rejecting it firmly? 

 

The MLBPA has always been about getting the most money for the best players in free agency —irrespective of the consequences for the average player. Remember it was the MLBPA who opposed steroid testing. 
 

All teams, including the Dodgers, have a limited amount of money to spend.  When free agents get ginormous contracts it reduces the $$ pool for the average player.  What will eventually happen (maybe we are here already) is there will be a two tiered salary structure.  Lots of $$ for the very best free agents and league minimum for most of the other players.  Also, these long term deals will eventually impact what future players get paid.

IMO, the best salary structure for the long term interests of the game would be base salary + real performance bonuses (performance bonuses based on production are currently prohibited by the CBA).  This approach has some issues such as a team would enter a season with an unknown payroll.  Also, how is performance value measured (WAR or some other metric) does not capture a players true value. However, the current system is only functional because it takes advantage of young “cost controlled” players (and minor league players) by paying them only a fraction of their true value to the team/league. It also will impact the careers of average middle aged players as there will be less opportunities for them as they can be most easily replaced by young players making significantly less than an average veteran.

 

 

 

[DJL44]

10 hours ago, SteveLV said:

It is just a simple fact that the NFL has parity, and MLB does not.

I enjoy a level playing field.

Simple, but wrong. The worst baseball teams generally win 40% of their games and the best ones 60%. The NFL has a much wider spread of outcomes. The Panthers have a .143 winning percentage - that would never happen in baseball. The worst WP% over the last decade in baseball is .450 (Rockies and Royals) and in the NFL is .397 (Commanders). Teams are more likely to make the playoffs in the NFL but that's because the NFL has a lot more playoff spots, to the point where teams with losing records make the playoffs. Finally, you can't ride one player to success in MLB. In the NFL you can just hire Tom Brady and make the Super Bowl.

Well run small market teams routinely make it to the playoffs in baseball (see Tampa and St Louis). In the past 10 years Arizona, Kansas City, Cleveland and Tampa have all made it to the World Series. In the past 20 seasons the Yankees have only won it all once.

There are some small market teams that really don't have a chance but mostly because their owners are not trying to win baseball games.

[DJL44]

9 minutes ago, Eris said:

When free agents get ginormous contracts it reduces the $$ pool for the average player.  What will eventually happen (maybe we are here already) is there will be a two tiered salary structure.  Lots of $$ for the very best free agents and league minimum for most of the other players.  Also, these long term deals will eventually impact what future players get paid.

The money paid out to players as a percentage of revenue declined over the previous CBA (30% increase in revenue, 6% drop in payroll: see MLB’s revenue sharing problem, and how to solve it - Bless You Boys). That is why the MLBPA pushed for a higher luxury tax limit. And it turns out they were right - the only way to get more money out of the owners was to let the large market clubs spend money. Revenue sharing gives small market teams less incentive to win because spending money to create a winning team only decreases their profit.

A $1M minimum salary is long overdue. These players are putting on a 3 hour prime-time television program 162 nights a year. Actors would be paid at least $1M for that. That puts things in perspective - it's cheaper to hire actual baseball players to play in MLB than it would be to hire actors for a fictional baseball program that aired 3 hours daily, 162 nights a year.

[MGX]

21 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

I don't know that I'd call it circumventing, though. The rule is spelled out very clearly in the CBA. I'd agree that the wording could've/should've been different, but the CBT language is very strong on how it's calculated. And I'd bet there was a lot of thought and discussion on it. 

Agree with this & would add that the idea to defer the money came from Ohtani & his representatives. Every team in baseball wanted to add Ohtani - he comes to the Dodgers with a deal that is clearly within the rules & the Dodgers decide it works for them. Are they supposed to say no to that?

[Riverbrian]

1 hour ago, Eris said:

The MLBPA has always been about getting the most money for the best players in free agency —irrespective of the consequences for the average player. Remember it was the MLBPA who opposed steroid testing. 
 

All teams, including the Dodgers, have a limited amount of money to spend.  When free agents get ginormous contracts it reduces the $$ pool for the average player.  What will eventually happen (maybe we are here already) is there will be a two tiered salary structure.  Lots of $$ for the very best free agents and league minimum for most of the other players.  Also, these long term deals will eventually impact what future players get paid.

IMO, the best salary structure for the long term interests of the game would be base salary + real performance bonuses (performance bonuses based on production are currently prohibited by the CBA).  This approach has some issues such as a team would enter a season with an unknown payroll.  Also, how is performance value measured (WAR or some other metric) does not capture a players true value. However, the current system is only functional because it takes advantage of young “cost controlled” players (and minor league players) by paying them only a fraction of their true value to the team/league. It also will impact the careers of average middle aged players as there will be less opportunities for them as they can be most easily replaced by young players making significantly less than an average veteran.

 

 

 

You are exactly right... Even the Dodgers have a budget... It may seem endless but it's not. When the Dodgers throw that kind of money at Ohtani, Yamamoto and Glasnow, they are essentially squeezing the mid level free agent out of work or at best severely limiting their options to teams that are rebuilding.

The Twins for example would not be able to afford a Correa contract without Lewis, Duran, Ryan, Ober, Julien, Jax and Kirilloff being good major league baseball players and combining to make what a single player like Hunter Renfroe cost the Royals.

The Royals wouldn't need Renfroe and his 98 OPS+ if they had the equivalent of Lewis, Duran, Ryan, Ober, Julien, Jax and Kirilloff and the presence of Renfroe just takes a roster spot that could be used for someone at the major league minimum. 

The current free agent system agreed upon in the CBA... is a road block for the average free agent and it basically demands that farms systems produce. 

 

 

 

[gunnarthor]

5 hours ago, ChermesZ said:

At whose expense?  They’ve rigged it to come at the fans expense.  If you think they are taking it to the ‘man’, you are unfortunately incorrect.  They are all taking it to us.

 

Publicly funded  stadiums, expensive tickets, and food prices way out of whack with reality show how disconnected they all are with us.

 

Millionaires vs billionaires….they are both wrong.  I honestly hope the whole system burns down so we can remake it with publicly owned teams and players who do not own a massive mansion and sports cars while the common person struggles to afford groceries and gas.

First, why shouldn't players be paid what they are worth? Why shouldn't they own "massive mansion and sports cars"?  The common person doesn't generate the revenue professional athletes do. I'd much rather see players get paid much much more than they are then gripe about how they live.

Second, why should LA be constrained by Minnesota or Tampa Bay's budget? The Dodgers are iconic and have built up their fanbase through decades of (mostly) being competitive and giving their fanbases fun baseball to watch. They have earned the ability to pay players their worth. And players should get their worth. Big salaries drive up everyone's salaries in baseball (we can lament how valuable/harmful deferred money and opt outs are later). If the Pohlads hadn't spent decades trying to blackmail the state to fund their stadium and tank season after season, maybe the fanbase would be more supportive. Instead, they complain about fans not watching their ****** product.

[big dog]

23 hours ago, terrydactyls said:

Who is Tris?

One of the female-type androids in Bladerunner.

[Heiny]

1 hour ago, DJL44 said:

The money paid out to players as a percentage of revenue declined over the previous CBA (30% increase in revenue, 6% drop in payroll: see MLB’s revenue sharing problem, and how to solve it - Bless You Boys). That is why the MLBPA pushed for a higher luxury tax limit. And it turns out they were right - the only way to get more money out of the owners was to let the large market clubs spend money. Revenue sharing gives small market teams less incentive to win because spending money to create a winning team only decreases their profit.

A $1M minimum salary is long overdue. These players are putting on a 3 hour prime-time television program 162 nights a year. Actors would be paid at least $1M for that. That puts things in perspective - it's cheaper to hire actual baseball players to play in MLB than it would be to hire actors for a fictional baseball program that aired 3 hours daily, 162 nights a year.

I love how this world has become immune to insanity.  Yes, good athletes generate huge money because the average Joe is willing to dole out ridiculous portions of his income to be entertained.  You believe that a 1M dollar minimum salary is long overdue?  To play baseball?  I laugh at this because in my opinion, nobody is "due" that kind of money to play a game.  What is the median income in the US?  Around $32,000.  So a two income family lives an average life on $64.000 per year.  And minimum salary in MLB is more than 10 times that without having proven yet that you can even stay in the big leagues.  $700,000 plus?  Oh, we can argue all day about the value of the product and what is reasonable, but in "My Mind" at least, it is totally ridiculous.  My wife and I have retired, very comfortably I might add, on       "a total of less" than that million dollar annual minimum you suggest.  So, there is my rant and I realize it is no longer even in the realm of reality,  but neither is the current state of this ridiculous form of entertainment.

[Heiny]

18 minutes ago, Heiny said:

I love how this world has become immune to insanity.  Yes, good athletes generate huge money because the average Joe is willing to dole out ridiculous portions of his income to be entertained.  You believe that a 1M dollar minimum salary is long overdue?  To play baseball?  I laugh at this because in my opinion, nobody is "due" that kind of money to play a game.  What is the median income in the US?  Around $32,000.  So a two income family lives an average life on $64.000 per year.  And minimum salary in MLB is more than 10 times that without having proven yet that you can even stay in the big leagues.  $700,000 plus?  Oh, we can argue all day about the value of the product and what is reasonable, but in "My Mind" at least, it is totally ridiculous.  My wife and I have retired, very comfortably I might add, on       "a total of less" than that million dollar annual minimum you suggest.  So, there is my rant and I realize it is no longer even in the realm of reality,  but neither is the current state of this ridiculous form of entertainment.

Edit:  My median income amount is apparently wrong by about half, but I stand by my opinion as a whole.

 

[DJL44]

44 minutes ago, Heiny said:

I love how this world has become immune to insanity.  Yes, good athletes generate huge money because the average Joe is willing to dole out ridiculous portions of his income to be entertained.  You believe that a 1M dollar minimum salary is long overdue?  To play baseball?  I laugh at this because in my opinion, nobody is "due" that kind of money to play a game.  What is the median income in the US?  Around $32,000.  So a two income family lives an average life on $64.000 per year.  And minimum salary in MLB is more than 10 times that without having proven yet that you can even stay in the big leagues.  $700,000 plus?  Oh, we can argue all day about the value of the product and what is reasonable, but in "My Mind" at least, it is totally ridiculous.  My wife and I have retired, very comfortably I might add, on       "a total of less" than that million dollar annual minimum you suggest.  So, there is my rant and I realize it is no longer even in the realm of reality,  but neither is the current state of this ridiculous form of entertainment.

The alternative is the money goes to multibillion dollar media companies and the billionaire owners of MLB. I'd rather the money goes to the players. At least they have an elite skill.

The entertainment industry makes money by capturing your attention and selling it to advertisers. You are the real product here.

[tony&rodney]

Ohtani doesn't make as much money as the top CEOs. Salaries are a choice of a society, just like homelessness. Any country with means can choose to make things different if the will exists. Things are what they are because of the collective decision.

Stadiums, corporations, schools, you name it have been publicly funded for a very long time. The Dodgers signing Ohtani because he wants to live in Los Angeles and Yamamoto because of the allure of being on the same team as Ohtani seems very natural. Did anyone expect otherwise? I sure did not. 

My best guess is that the games will still be played and Kansas City will sweep the Dodgers in a series with little notice. Meanwhile the Detroit Pistons, the San Jose Sharks, and Carolina Panthers among numerous other teams will be much less competitive in their leagues than the lowest MLB team. 

[Eris]

17 minutes ago, DJL44 said:

The alternative is the money goes to multibillion dollar media companies and the billionaire owners of MLB. I'd rather the money goes to the players. At least they have an elite skill.

Multiple items can be true at the same time. As a % of revenue players don’t get enough from the value they produce. Some owners game the revenue sharing system by not giving more to players salaries as the concept was intended. Elite free agents probably get paid too much. Pre-arbitration players don’t get paid enough. And minor leagues players get screwed. 
 

I saw in the news about a week ago that the top 100 pre-arbitration players shared a bonus pool of $50 million (can’t find this number to confirm). I think this is a good idea, but the bonus pool $$ should be 10x larger. 
 

The average career of an MLB player is 5.6 years. The median is lower.  That is, more than half of the players don’t make it to free agency in a position to collect on their years of effort to the game. Some of this is due to skills some is due to injuries. This number also doesn’t include the many minor league players who never make it. 
 

https://www.listfoundation.org/the-average-career-length-of-professional-athletes-in-north-americas-major-sports-leagues

[SteveLV]

The NFL has more parity than MLB.  To just use winning percentage is inaccurate.  A team could be .400 and be 30 games out of first place. More importantly, you see massive swings in wins and competitiveness in the NFL from season to season.  You don't see that in MLB.

As far as the money is concerned, I do agree that more money should go to the players, just not all to the handful of superstars. The system should be merit based, but more money should flow to the younger players who are often times performing best of all.

A hard FLOOR is the key to the discussion, as well as a set percentage that ALWAYS goes to the players.

Because MLB ownership is reluctant to share information on actual revenues, I don't think anyone has an accurate number on what percentage is actually paid to the players.  In the NFL it is hard-wired to 51%.

I cannot fathom that the MLBPA would balk at a deal where the owners would open their books, the players would get a negotiated set percentage paid to them guaranteed, and the teams themselves have hard caps and floors to level the spending.

Then the best teams would be the ones who spend their money wisely and develop the best players and make the best trades.  This as opposed to the richest teams enjoying an unfair advantage over small market opponents.

Can we agree on this?

[tony&rodney]

3 hours ago, SteveLV said:

The NFL has more parity than MLB.  To just use winning percentage is inaccurate.  A team could be .400 and be 30 games out of first place. More importantly, you see massive swings in wins and competitiveness in the NFL from season to season.  You don't see that in MLB.

That first sentence is ..... Maybe Carolina and a few other teams could play 162 games so that the difference is noticeable.

Swings ..... 1991 Twins? 2023 Diamondbacks.

I'm not a fan of football but when I was fairly young the Vikings were ridiculously dominant. I seem to remember that they beat the Lions for about 20 years. Again, I don't know but were there teams like New England, San Francisco, and Dallas who won more than a few football games (SB)?

The Texas Rangers won the World Series in 2023. Who won the Super Bowl and was that their first one? Parity between baseball and football is as simple as winning percentage.

[Mike Sixel]

13 hours ago, ChermesZ said:

At whose expense?  They’ve rigged it to come at the fans expense.  If you think they are taking it to the ‘man’, you are unfortunately incorrect.  They are all taking it to us.

 

Publicly funded  stadiums, expensive tickets, and food prices way out of whack with reality show how disconnected they all are with us.

 

Millionaires vs billionaires….they are both wrong.  I honestly hope the whole system burns down so we can remake it with publicly owned teams and players who do not own a massive mansion and sports cars while the common person struggles to afford groceries and gas.

So workers who generate all that money shouldn't get it?

[SteveLV]

Good teams in football are good teams, run by good coaches, good FO's and good scouting (and lucky, too!)

What good teams in football are NOT are spending more than other teams can spend.

Hope that sorts it out for you.

Sure, the DBacks had a great year.

Just look at Vegas, where the real smart people analyze teams' chances.

The Dodgers are +400 to win the 2024 WS.  The A's are +30,000 .

Just noodle on that a bit.  The Dodgers are, according to same very smart people in Vegas, 75 times more likely to win the WS than the A's.

You will NEVER see those kinds of odds to win the Super Bowl 6 months before the season in the NFL. And the NFL actually has 2 more teams than MLB.

[tony&rodney]

30 minutes ago, SteveLV said:

Good teams in football are good teams, run by good coaches, good FO's and good scouting (and lucky, too!)

What good teams in football are NOT are spending more than other teams can spend.

Hope that sorts it out for you.

Sure, the DBacks had a great year.

Just look at Vegas, where the real smart people analyze teams' chances.

The Dodgers are +400 to win the 2024 WS.  The A's are +30,000 .

Just noodle on that a bit.  The Dodgers are, according to same very smart people in Vegas, 75 times more likely to win the WS than the A's.

You will NEVER see those kinds of odds to win the Super Bowl 6 months before the season in the NFL. And the NFL actually has 2 more teams than MLB.

Your point about Vegas is well taken. I don't bet and don't know a thing about +400 and so on. 

I'm only noting that in baseball the winning percentages of the worst teams are always much higher than in football. The winning percentages of the best football teams are also higher than the best baseball teams. I saw that only five MLB have not won a World Series, but twelve NFL teams have not won a Super Bowl.

You are correct to argue/point out that these leagues have quite different financial structures. This can almost certainly be credited to how the owners of the teams in each league wanted their organizations to work. Some credit is due to leadership or lack of leadership from the commissioners in each league as well. The MLBPA has managed guaranteed contracts, something their brethren players in the NFL do not have. So the differences make comparisons relative really. MLB still has an anti-trust exemption that defies reason yet still exists.

If you are a betting man I would try not to bet too much moola on the Dodgers to win it all in 2024. Texas, Houston, Baltimore, and Minnesota all still look good to me from the AL.

 

[SteveLV]

Pete Rozelle had a vision of a NATIONAL league that would be competitive and balanced.  He got it done.

MLB has never had a Commissioner with the power or cajones to do the same.  The MLB Commissioners have acted as employees of the owners rather than caretakers or stewards of the game as a whole.

So unfortunate.