DiamondCentric Roundtable: What Do We Do About Financial Inequality in MLB?

[FargoFanMan]

28 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

Want to speed up the development process? Give the worst teams more picks before the best teams. I've written two articles on ways to do this, that don't hurt the new players. 

But that won't fix teams like Baltimore and Pittsburgh that are not spending now..... While their windows are wide open. 

Ding ding ding! Agreed! Why does the draft have to be solely based on record? Why does it have to be in a certain order? Why can’t there be an international draft. If MLB is truly in the business of making baseball better and not just in it for the money then then the changes need to come in the drafting, intl signing and development side. Not the FA side with a cap and floor. A cap and floor simply changes the terms of what is currently used to a degree.

Mike Sixel. Do you have links to these articles? I may have missed them. I’d love to read your plans on this as I believe this is the avenue you use. Change things at the front end instead it always being about the back end.

[FargoFanMan]

12 minutes ago, jorgenswest said:

Intriguing.

MLB has a formula for competitive balance picks. I can’t argue one or an another if it effective at finding the teams that need that competitive balance. Assuming it is a good measure…

Let’s move those picks to the start of the draft. Let’s make them conditional based on spending enough vs revenue in order to earn those picks. Let’s determine the order by record of those teams and reward the team with the best record with the first pick.

I can see several possible results that would be beneficial to me.

• Reward smaller market teams for their efforts to compete
• Competitive balance picks can be traded now but imagine the value if they are at the top of the draft
• Would there be fewer sellers at the deadline if teams are fighting for wins and better draft position? Fewer sellers will for the rich teams to pay up more for their trade deadline acquisitions

I am with Mike in his earlier comment also. It isn’t World Series or bust for me. I want to watch a season full of competitive baseball games. This will help.

Totally agree! Having the draft based solely on record seems archaic. There’s so many other ways to measure success and how to allocate draft and international capital. Giving smaller market teams a bigger piece of the prospect pie. Giving incentives to sign those guys to contracts once they’ve established themselves to stay with those teams and creating an international draft where the smaller market teams get a bigger priece of that talent. Instead of it taking 6 years to rebuild cut that time in half ensuring the big market teams have plenty of young competition. Everything is so money centric but there are avenues to improve teams fast on the front end.

[TheLeviathan]

3 hours ago, FargoFanMan said:

Well, I look at it differently than the players getting more money than the owners. I don’t want a cap because that’s an excuse for the owners just to pocket money the same way some do now. A salary floor just gets older players paid just for the sake of spending. You kind of see it now with these pre ML debut contracts but essentially finding a way where there’s more of an incentive for smaller market teams to acquire more prospect capital and then those teams being able to sign those younger players to contracts and essentially avoid the arbitration structure. You want smaller market teams to have a bigger slice of the prospect pie and those teams to have the ability to sign those players to contracts. The braves are a great example of this. They are not at the top of spending because they are throwing money at big tier FA’s but because they lock their young players up early to ensure they have them together in their peak years. That’s what you want as a fan. 

Except the Braves have the 5th highest revenue in baseball.  They are part of the problem.  Yes, they do things in a way you'd like smaller market teams to do, but they can afford to because they have a giant TV contract.  

While I'm perfectly fine giving smaller market teams more bites at the prospect pool, it doesn't change the other problems that high revenue teams pose to competitive balance.  It may allow some teams to pop up and challenge them, but those teams still have a year-in, year-out advantage based purely on their market and TV deals.  

Truth is....owners will siphon money no matter what.  This is why they keep their books closed to the public.  They siphon money from the states/cities they reside.  The tax payers.  The players.  The states/cities their affiliates are in.  On and on.  It's how wealth works in this country regardless of MLB.  And while there are downsides to a floor, the upsides to a cap are worth the risk.

[Original_JB]

Blow it up. Floor of $125M on a 3 year rolling average; cap at $250M rolling 3 year average; earlier free agency; all TV revenue shared. This would allow expansion into more (smaller) cities because the cost parameters are known and controlled. Salt Lake City, Nashville, the Portlands, Vancouver, Montreal, Buffalo, extra NY or Cali teams could all exist. Make making the playoffs a more lucrative situation. Maybe my numbers would need to be tweaked, but give ALL the players a better situation overall. No more "competitive balance money" would need to exist. If the players don't like it, they can go play in Japan or wherever. Now I'm not 'siding' with ownership, I want the $$$ being made to be more or less like the roughly 50/50 balance the other major sports have. If the the LAs and NYs don't want to play ball, they don't have to. For the overall long term good of the game, they need to pull the band aid off and look at reality.  Pretend you were starting the league from scratch, how would you go about it? Certainly not like it is now, right?

[FargoFanMan]

6 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

Except the Braves have the 5th highest revenue in baseball.  They are part of the problem.  Yes, they do things in a way you'd like smaller market teams to do, but they can afford to because they have a giant TV contract.  

While I'm perfectly fine giving smaller market teams more bites at the prospect pool, it doesn't change the other problems that high revenue teams pose to competitive balance.  It may allow some teams to pop up and challenge them, but those teams still have a year-in, year-out advantage based purely on their market and TV deals.  

Truth is....owners will siphon money no matter what.  This is why they keep their books closed to the public.  They siphon money from the states/cities they reside.  The tax payers.  The players.  The states/cities their affiliates are in.  On and on.  It's how wealth works in this country regardless of MLB.  And while there are downsides to a floor, the upsides to a cap are worth the risk.

Then if we are in consensus that the players are still gonna get paid massive contracts and the teams and owners are gonna screw everybody and we’re gonna have the whoah is me mentality then what the hell are we even talking about? Everything just sucks and there’s nothing we can do about it and we’ll all just agree on that. Jeez

[FargoFanMan]

47 minutes ago, Original_JB said:

Blow it up. Floor of $125M on a 3 year rolling average; cap at $250M rolling 3 year average; earlier free agency; all TV revenue shared. This would allow expansion into more (smaller) cities because the cost parameters are known and controlled. Salt Lake City, Nashville, the Portlands, Vancouver, Montreal, Buffalo, extra NY or Cali teams could all exist. Make making the playoffs a more lucrative situation. Maybe my numbers would need to be tweaked, but give ALL the players a better situation overall. No more "competitive balance money" would need to exist. If the players don't like it, they can go play in Japan or wherever. Now I'm not 'siding' with ownership, I want the $$$ being made to be more or less like the roughly 50/50 balance the other major sports have. If the the LAs and NYs don't want to play ball, they don't have to. For the overall long term good of the game, they need to pull the band aid off and look at reality.  Pretend you were starting the league from scratch, how would you go about it? Certainly not like it is now, right?

And the league will devolve into a real life version of BASEketball that everyone loves. It’ll have robo umps and AI controlling the parameters of the games. Nobody will go to games as they can just watch it on their VR headset. Draft kings will be the official sponsor of MLB and bud light will be delivered to your door with a subscription to MLBTV. The players will be required to take steroids, to justify their salaries, and they’ll all have cameras following their every move all the time to give fans an inside look at their lives. Uber eats will partner to deliver your favorite snacks for each game. And we’ll all live happily after. The owners will become filthy rich in the background and the players will get paid more in indorsement deals and cameos on reality VR shows than they do playing the game itself. 

[TheLeviathan]

40 minutes ago, FargoFanMan said:

Then if we are in consensus that the players are still gonna get paid massive contracts and the teams and owners are gonna screw everybody and we’re gonna have the whoah is me mentality then what the hell are we even talking about? Everything just sucks and there’s nothing we can do about it and we’ll all just agree on that. Jeez

Well, you dodged the fact that your example worked against your point.  But it's the key to understanding mine: your suggestion only works if there is a cap/floor system.  Without a way to cap the massive financial advantages, extra shots at the prospect pool is irrelevant.  And I don't think there is any path to smooth those advantages without a cap/floor.

[FargoFanMan]

On 2/8/2025 at 8:52 PM, TheLeviathan said:

Well, you dodged the fact that your example worked against your point.  But it's the key to understanding mine: your suggestion only works if there is a cap/floor system.  Without a way to cap the massive financial advantages, extra shots at the prospect pool is irrelevant.  And I don't think there is any path to smooth those advantages without a cap/floor.

Dude, go look at the NBA and NFL and tell me it’s fair. all the same teams are consistently playing each other in the title games. it looks the exact same as MLB but worse. the cap/floor will just lead to different inequalities because it rewards the same structure thats already in place. go do a deep dive in the MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL. especially the historic financials. the evidence isnt there that a cap/floor creates parity. it gives the illusion there is but the results say different.

[TheLeviathan]

39 minutes ago, FargoFanMan said:

Dude, go look at the NBA and NFL and tell me it’s fair. all the same teams are consistently playing each other in the title games. it looks the exact same as MLB but worse. the cap/floor will just lead to different inequalities because it rewards the same structure thats already in place. go do a deep dive in the MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL. especially the historic financials. the evidence isnt there that a cap/floor creates parity. it gives the illusion there is but the results say different.

I think you lost the thread of your argument.  Yes, the NFL and NHL are much fairer systems.  NBA as well, but that system is far too convoluted. 

Championships are a poor metric of parity in all leagues, but baseball chief among them.  With the Super Bowl in the rearview mirror, I get the tendency.  People think the existence of dynasties or repeat contenders is a knock on parity, but that simply isn't true.   A good system should allow for teams that are sound decision makers to thrive.  And thrive often!  (If they keep making good decisions with their competitively balanced resources!) 

It also gives those without the benefit of an LA TV market or a Yankees branding power the ability to truly compete with draft picks, free agents, and others.  MLB doesn't have that and the data clearly shows that those advantages do have an effect on winning.

All I want is a league, like the NHL and NFL, where your competency with your resources and leadership decides your fate, not your market size.

[Cris E]

Just gotta say that Houston is not an example of doing things the right way.   They dropped their payroll down to $30m in order to lose and amass draft picks. But Houston is the fourth largest city in the country, significantly larger than #5 and much larger than any other with only one team, and they are always near the top of league revenues, fourth last year and seventh the year before.  For someone with those resources to be in the bottom few payrolls in the game is exactly the competitiveness problem that needs solving.

What I would do about this is a poverty tax, where the gap between your payroll and the expected range gets taxed, and I'd include a multiplier based on your revenues to hit rich teams extra hard for not spending.  The Twins are middle range in revenue and pretty close in payroll, about 52%. But last year the Red Sox made over $550m and only spent about $220m, about 40%. The Rays and As only spend about a third of their small revenues and that too is a problem. Tax those teams.

I'd also add a multiplier to the luxury tax based on revenue rank so that teams spending way above their revenue (like San Diego the past few years) don't pay the same luxury taxes as teams with huge resources. Maybe teams with rev more than a standard deviation away from the mean get a 15% multiplier and two deviations get  25% (and same for those falling one or two deviations below the mean, but a discount.) I'd apply this to the current formulas that hit repeat offenders to amplify the effect even further.

But we'd also need to change how the massive piles of luxury tax money gets allocated. You'd need some way of helping the low rev teams but not rewarding the ones just along for the handouts. Perhaps only sharing it out to those who have hit a minimum mark over the past three years (to allow rebuilding) and perhaps funding MLB.COM to improve the non-RSN broadcast product that many teams are coming to rely on for revenue.

 

[Major League Ready]

22 minutes ago, Cris E said:

Just gotta say that Houston is not an example of doing things the right way.   They dropped their payroll down to $30m in order to lose and amass draft picks. But Houston is the fourth largest city in the country, significantly larger than #5 and much larger than any other with only one team, and they are always near the top of league revenues, fourth last year and seventh the year before.  For someone with those resources to be in the bottom few payrolls in the game is exactly the competitiveness problem that needs solving.

What I would do about this is a poverty tax, where the gap between your payroll and the expected range gets taxed, and I'd include a multiplier based on your revenues to hit rich teams extra hard for not spending.  The Twins are middle range in revenue and pretty close in payroll, about 52%. But last year the Red Sox made over $550m and only spent about $220m, about 40%. The Rays and As only spend about a third of their small revenues and that too is a problem. Tax those teams.

I'd also add a multiplier to the luxury tax based on revenue rank so that teams spending way above their revenue (like San Diego the past few years) don't pay the same luxury taxes as teams with huge resources. Maybe teams with rev more than a standard deviation away from the mean get a 15% multiplier and two deviations get  25% (and same for those falling one or two deviations below the mean, but a discount.) I'd apply this to the current formulas that hit repeat offenders to amplify the effect even further.

But we'd also need to change how the massive piles of luxury tax money gets allocated. You'd need some way of helping the low rev teams but not rewarding the ones just along for the handouts. Perhaps only sharing it out to those who have hit a minimum mark over the past three years (to allow rebuilding) and perhaps funding MLB.COM to improve the non-RSN broadcast product that many teams are coming to rely on for revenue.

 

How anyone looks at one of the best examples of sustained success in MLB and concludes they had a bad plan is absolutely mind boggling.   There should be penalties (funding withheld) but forcing a team to put free agents on the field instead of developing their young talent is absurd.  How many times have people posted here that they don't want the twins to be taking up roster spots with mediocre veterans.   Most of us hate the idea so why would we want to force teams to do it.  

[Cris E]

I'd rather we saw mediocre vets than kids promoted way before they were ready or bad AAAA players.  If you don't have any prospects with a good future then you need to hire some players, but those tank teams in Houston ten years ago were terrible and it took a while to get some young kids into place to start digging out. That 2013 team had only three guys making more than $1m (2.9m, 1.1m and 1.1m) and they lost 111 games, but at least there were some future stars out there. The 55 win teams that preceded it were only different in their utter lack of talent and the cadaver of Carlos Lee still drawing a check. the Sacramento team this year would have been happy to suck if it weren't for the threat of the players' assn suing them for not trying, but they're going to be far better to watch because they signed a couple decent guys. It's far better than the back end of the rotation they sent out last year.

[FargoFanMan]

On 2/10/2025 at 9:05 PM, TheLeviathan said:

I think you lost the thread of your argument.  Yes, the NFL and NHL are much fairer systems.  NBA as well, but that system is far too convoluted. 

Championships are a poor metric of parity in all leagues, but baseball chief among them.  With the Super Bowl in the rearview mirror, I get the tendency.  People think the existence of dynasties or repeat contenders is a knock on parity, but that simply isn't true.   A good system should allow for teams that are sound decision makers to thrive.  And thrive often!  (If they keep making good decisions with their competitively balanced resources!) 

It also gives those without the benefit of an LA TV market or a Yankees branding power the ability to truly compete with draft picks, free agents, and others.  MLB doesn't have that and the data clearly shows that those advantages do have an effect on winning.

All I want is a league, like the NHL and NFL, where your competency with your resources and leadership decides your fate, not your market size.

I’m simply attempting to provide an actual solution to improving the game that can be accomplished without blowing the current system up. Implementing a salary cap and floor simply presents a different side of the same coin. It equates to a lockout/strike. It equates to team inequalities at an under the radar area. It equates to massive concessions to large market teams in terms of a TV/Streaming contract. The NFL and MLB have 2 very different structures. One size does not and will not fit all. Forcing investment on one side and limiting investment on the other presents you with a different side of the same coin. We’ll agree to disagree as you’re simply not seeing the larger picture of all of this. The data shows a negligible difference at very best if it involves all facets of this argument. Not worth losing a whole season in a 1994 type event when the system could be made better by simply reallocating money and resources from the back end to the front end. 

[TheLeviathan]

6 minutes ago, FargoFanMan said:

I’m simply attempting to provide an actual solution to improving the game that can be accomplished without blowing the current system up. Implementing a salary cap and floor simply presents a different side of the same coin. It equates to a lockout/strike. It equates to team inequalities at an under the radar area. It equates to massive concessions to large market teams in terms of a TV/Streaming contract. The NFL and MLB have 2 very different structures. One size does not and will not fit all. Forcing investment on one side and limiting investment on the other presents you with a different side of the same coin. We’ll agree to disagree as you’re simply not seeing the larger picture of all of this. The data shows a negligible difference at very best if it involves all facets of this argument. Not worth losing a whole season in a 1994 type event when the system could be made better by simply reallocating money and resources from the back end to the front end. 

I can appreciate your motivation, I think bandaiding a gaping wound the last 30 years is precisely the reason we are where we are.  I'm all done with band-aids personally.

The NFL has seen their most recent dynasty come out of the Kansas City market.  The NHL's most recent dynasty was in Tampa Bay.  And the NBA's was in Oakland.

Think about how preposterous the very notion of any of those three markets doing the same in MLB.  That's the issue, right there.

[FargoFanMan]

23 hours ago, Cris E said:

I'd rather we saw mediocre vets than kids promoted way before they were ready or bad AAAA players.  If you don't have any prospects with a good future then you need to hire some players, but those tank teams in Houston ten years ago were terrible and it took a while to get some young kids into place to start digging out. That 2013 team had only three guys making more than $1m (2.9m, 1.1m and 1.1m) and they lost 111 games, but at least there were some future stars out there. The 55 win teams that preceded it were only different in their utter lack of talent and the cadaver of Carlos Lee still drawing a check. the Sacramento team this year would have been happy to suck if it weren't for the threat of the players' assn suing them for not trying, but they're going to be far better to watch because they signed a couple decent guys. It's far better than the back end of the rotation they sent out last year.

Houston was actually a great example at how fast a team could be turned around. They are the model. The Twins should have done more of the same and we’re seeing the consequences of that inability right now. I remind you that the Twins were in the same group with Houston and the Cubs who were rebuilding at the time. The twins didn’t blow it up. They kept trying to half compete. Meanwhile, the cubs built it back and won a World Series and the Astros went on to become a dynasty who is now looking to be at the end. Also, anybody coming out to A’s games to watch Severino pitch is negligible at best. Signing an aging Brent Rooker to a long term contract simply hamstrings a future A’s team. 

[ashbury]

1 hour ago, FargoFanMan said:

Houston was actually a great example at how fast a team could be turned around. They are the model. The Twins should have done more of the same and we’re seeing the consequences of that inability right now. I remind you that the Twins were in the same group with Houston and the Cubs who were rebuilding at the time. The twins didn’t blow it up. They kept trying to half compete. Meanwhile, the cubs built it back and won a World Series and the Astros went on to become a dynasty who is now looking to be at the end. Also, anybody coming out to A’s games to watch Severino pitch is negligible at best. Signing an aging Brent Rooker to a long term contract simply hamstrings a future A’s team. 

It's interesting to compare the 2017 Astros (who won the WS) and the 2017 Twins (who had a surprising winning campaign after Total System Failure in 2016).  In a nutshell, the Astros bludgeoned their way to the title, and for every Astros batter who contributed hugely, the Twins had a similar candidate who came up short by comparison.  All the Astros' bets seemingly came up aces; we had Buxton beset by injuries compared to Correa, and Sano beset by, well, being Sano compared to Altuve.  The Astros signed a big contract with Josh Reddick, which paid off handsomely for them in their WS year and then he was below average for the remaining 3 years of his contract.  

I didn't analyze any deeper, but those observations on the surface lead me to expect that the conclusion comes down to execution and luck, more so than the master plan itself.

One thing I remember, though, is that supposedly the Astros' TV ratings measured literally 0 at one point during their 3 years of 100+ losses, and ballpark attendance declined significantly during that period.  It's a lesson I suppose can be taken - that Ownership has to be on board with losing money or breaking even on low revenue for a few seasons in the pursuit of potential profits down the road.  The Twins seem to have a plan that involves a profit every year even if the team on the field is bad.  (I also note that the Astros didn't get back above .500 before they started trading for players making significant money and signing free agents again. Chicken and egg, somewhat.)

Anyway, Terry Ryan never uttered the word "rebuild" to the best of my recollection, but it was evident when he came back as GM that that was exactly what he was doing.  It just didn't work.  But signing Josh Willingham and Ryan Doumit didn't impede Byron Buxton's development.  Carlos Correa panned out; Buxton, at least to the same degree, simply didn't.  Perhaps, with perfect hindsight, the plan should have been to take Kevin Gausman or Max Fried instead of Byron, but Correa himself was off the board on draft day.

[Cris E]

Oh, and then the Astros spent $100m more than MN. That step shouldn't get glossed over.  They went on to win because not merely because they had a lot of draft picks, but because they added free agents, they re-signed stars, they spent a lot of money. The notion that a team with those resources put their wallet away for four or five or six years and then spent means that they didn't try for a v e r y  l o n g time. The Twins have fallen short of 60 wins once in the entire time they've been in MN (2016) and the Astros did it for three years running, and didn't win a ton on either end of that streak.  If the Pohlads did this you wouldn't be pleased at the plan, you'd be furious, and that doesn't consider the fact that Houston has a lot more money than MN.

[Linus]

Does a change in tv revenue sharing have to be collectively bargained with the players union?  If not, a great first step would be to pool all tv revenue and divide equally.  Each franchise still keeps all other revenue so a well run franchise will still be rewarded,  I know the top 4-6 teams will balk at this so here is the next part of the plan: the rest of the teams charge any team not in the revenue sharing a participation tax equal to the amount of the missing revenue sharing.  Don’t want to pay the tax?  Great.  You can play the other 4 non revenue sharers 162 times a year while the other 28 teams have a real league with roughly equal revenue.  I know this is a long shot idea but something has to change.

[FargoFanMan]

1 hour ago, TheLeviathan said:

I can appreciate your motivation, I think bandaiding a gaping wound the last 30 years is precisely the reason we are where we are.  I'm all done with band-aids personally.

The NFL has seen their most recent dynasty come out of the Kansas City market.  The NHL's most recent dynasty was in Tampa Bay.  And the NBA's was in Oakland.

Think about how preposterous the very notion of any of those three markets doing the same in MLB.  That's the issue, right there.

I would hardly call it bandaiding a gaping wound. How did those teams you mentioned get to where they are? The same way every other sports team ever has made their way towards relevance. Through drafting and international signing competently. Good development systems and innovative team strategies. As far as markets Kansas City only shares their market with one other major team despite being on the bottom end of sports markets. Oakland is part of the Bay Area market which is one of the largest in the country. The A’s with their stadium situation simply couldn’t compete with the Giants in that market. Same goes for the Rays and their stadium situation. There’s so many other factors besides market size. Ownership goal(profit or winning), sports market saturation, facility inequalities, market capitalization, team strategy, fan involvement. There’s so many angles as to why, simply blowing the whole thing up and implementing salary caps and floors doesn’t get you there. Allow so called smaller markets a bigger piece of the prospect pie through draft pick trading, implementing an international draft, more picks at the top and implementing incentives for bigger developmental budgets with the revenue sharing money.

[TheLeviathan]

8 minutes ago, FargoFanMan said:

 There’s so many other factors besides market size. 

Cool, show me the last small market dynasty in baseball.  Show me the last team in baseball that had a 5-10 year competition window that wasn't New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, or Houston.

We're at a point that in order for you to continue your argument you have to ignore my points.  You ignored how misguided your Braves example was and you're ignoring the difference between the sports.

You know why the Chiefs, Lightning, and Warriors were able to keep competing?  Because, at the end of the day, when the players they drafted and developed were ready for larger contracts.....they were on even footing with all of their peers to retain them.  The New York Giants don't have triple the payroll of the Chiefs.  The Los Angeles Kings don't have quadruple (I'm underselling it by a ton) the budget of the Lightning.  The Warriors aren't worried about the Knicks tripling the terms of their extension.  They all play by the same rules.

Your suggestions, which are fine, are prayers for cancer.  Sure, they may make you feel good.  Cancer DGAF.

[FargoFanMan]

9 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

Cool, show me the last small market dynasty in baseball.  Show me the last team in baseball that had a 5-10 year competition window that wasn't New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, or Houston.

We're at a point that in order for you to continue your argument you have to ignore my points.  You ignored how misguided your Braves example was and you're ignoring the difference between the sports.

You know why the Chiefs, Lightning, and Warriors were able to keep competing?  Because, at the end of the day, when the players they drafted and developed were ready for larger contracts.....they were on even footing with all of their peers to retain them.  The New York Giants don't have triple the payroll of the Chiefs.  The Los Angeles Kings don't have quadruple (I'm underselling it by a ton) the budget of the Lightning.  The Warriors aren't worried about the Knicks tripling the terms of their extension.  They all play by the same rules.

Your suggestions, which are fine, are prayers for cancer.  Sure, they may make you feel good.  Cancer DGAF.

What are you even talking about? I’ve given subtle yet attentive examples to every one of your dull examples. You state things that have no depth to them. You tell me teams that have done this and done that while providing no resources or even an explanation as to how you came to that stance. You’ve named a dozen different teams just claiming facts that you’ve heard talking heads say. I have provided counters to your arguments while you interject opinions you may have heard. I don’t follow talking heads. I research everything I have said and everything you have said. What you state is half truth with no depth whatsoever. Then you either start or end every rebuttal with a childish snide remark to help you aim your point. I’ve made detailed points as to how to actually fix the structure without blowing up the current system and risking a strike/lockout. I’ve made these points several times throughout conversations not only with you but with others. You’ve provided nothing but the same old dead salary cap/ salary floor as if this one thing will be the fix all. So please, if you’re planning to make an intelligent, well detailed example and prove me wrong as opposed to ramblings then make it already. If you’re going to continue to  just disagree then say it. Put the sports page down and defecate or get off the pot already.