The Pohlads May Still Be Planning to Sell the Twins

[TheLeviathan]

3 minutes ago, NYCTK said:

The exact same as the kings of parity the NFL. 

This is such a ridiculous argument.  

The NFL has parity because of its revenue and talent distribution systems.

MLB has "parity" because baseball is flukey as *@$^*.

[NYCTK]

Just now, TheLeviathan said:

This is such a ridiculous argument.  

The NFL has parity because of it's revenue and talent distribution systems.

MLB has "parity" because baseball is flukey as *@$^*.

OK, and that's basically my argument. Why would we need to institute an anti-player pro-owner restriction on the sport? 

Just cheering for a salary cap that fixes nothing but helps the owners protect their investment. Wooooo! 

 

[TheLeviathan]

Also....the argument that a salary cap is the owners winning is only based on how the players/owners decide to split the overall revenues.  

Salary caps, by themselves, are a wonderful thing.  If they are implemented in a system where revenues are split 80/20 for owners/players....then yeah, the money is screwed up.  But the problem is entirely unrelated to the cap itself.

[TheLeviathan]

1 minute ago, NYCTK said:

OK, and that's basically my argument. Why would we need to institute an anti-player pro-owner restriction on the sport? 

Just cheering for a salary cap that fixes nothing but helps the owners protect their investment. Wooooo! 

 

A salary cap is what allows for equality in talent acquisition.  It's like the (much needed) regulations we have that (should be) preventing Apple from leveraging their market share to bully out smaller businesses.  

That regulation can't solve an overall economic system that pushes 90% of profits towards the big cats.  

And that's the problem - how they split the pie that determines the cap.  The cap itself is not part of that.  I hope players win a 70/30 share.....with a salary cap/floor/rev sharing agreement.

[NYCTK]

Just now, TheLeviathan said:

Also....the argument that a salary cap is the owners winning is only based on how the players/owners decide to split the overall revenues.  

Salary caps, by themselves, are a wonderful thing.  If they are implemented in a system where revenues are split 80/20 for owners/players....then yeah, the money is screwed up.  But the problem is entirely unrelated to the cap itself.

What exactly does a salary cap fix that a luxury cap doesn't do, which is already in place and I think will/should be even more aggressive?

Salary caps, just in their theory, are very obviously not a wonderful thing. Imagine there being an industry imposed salary cap in your profession and try to explain that as a wonderful thing. 

[The Great Hambino]

11 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

This is such a ridiculous argument.  

The NFL has parity because of its revenue and talent distribution systems.

MLB has "parity" because baseball is flukey as *@$^*.

There is no team entering the season in the NFL knowing they have no chance to compete due to their revenue and payroll imbalance.  There are teams that have no chance, but those reasons have nothing to do with their market size.  

One thing the players should think about: there already is a salary cap in place for about two-thirds of the league - they just call it a luxury tax threshold.  And this is with no floor other than the sum of minimum salaries and the occasional empty threat of a grievance.

Might be time to AGGRESSIVELY push for a floor.  And I mean an actual floor like the NFL, not whatever pathetic non-offer offer the owners made that wouldn't have affected team behavior in any meaningful way

 

[TheLeviathan]

1 minute ago, NYCTK said:

What exactly does a salary cap fix that a luxury cap doesn't do, which is already in place and I think will/should be even more aggressive?

Salary caps, just in their theory, are very obviously not a wonderful thing. Imagine there being an industry imposed salary cap in your profession and try to explain that as a wonderful thing. 

I don't work for an industry that has ridiculous exemptions from normal laws where the minimum salary is hundreds of thousands of dollars.  

MLB is not a normal business - part of what makes any sport league work is that the audience feels as though the game is fair.  MLB is quite obviously not fair.  MLB can certainly continue on this path and get further and further out of the public eye.  Seems stupid, but sure...they could do that.

A salary cap stops the Dodgers and Yankees from having a built-in advantage that has nothing to do with their competency and merely with the population surrounding their stadium.  The league's popularity is a shared value, the revenues yielded from that should also be shared.

[NYCTK]

3 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

A salary cap is what allows for equality in talent acquisition.  It's like the (much needed) regulations we have that (should be) preventing Apple from leveraging their market share to bully out smaller businesses.  

There already exists regulations in place that do this.

In order to hire a mid-high tier reliever in the offseason, the Twins would have to pay about $10M to that player. The Dodgers or Mets, due their luxury tax situation would have to pay about $20M in order to acquire that same player, the player getting $10M and another $10M going to the rest of the players through the funding of their programs and remaining totals going to the rest of the league.  

If a salary cap existed, there's friction league wide in those salaries, and that pitcher now might only get $7.5M. 

So, tell me again, why are we trying to save the billionaires money? 

[TheLeviathan]

1 minute ago, The Great Hambino said:

There is no team entering the season in the NFL knowing they have no chance to compete due to their revenue and payroll imbalance.  There are teams that have no chance, but those reasons have nothing to do with their market size.  

One thing the players should think about: there already is a salary cap in place for about two-thirds of the league - they just call it a luxury tax threshold.  And this is with no floor other than the sum of minimum salaries and the occasional empty threat of a grievance.

Might be time to AGGRESSIVELY push for a floor.  And I mean an actual floor like the NFL, not whatever pathetic non-offer offer the owners made that wouldn't have effected team behavior in any meaningful way

 

Agreed.  The NFL/NBA/NHL have their outcomes determined more by skill than my luck of population and media revenues. 

A sport whose outcomes are determined more by market size than competency is a league doomed to fail.  It might be slow, but it will experience doom.

I want four things: 60/40 revenue split owners/players, full media revenue sharing, aggressive salary floor, hard salary cap.

[NYCTK]

3 minutes ago, The Great Hambino said:

There is no team entering the season in the NFL knowing they have no chance to compete due to their revenue and payroll imbalance.  There are teams that have no chance, but those reasons have nothing to do with their market size.  

Do you think the Twins aren't competing because of their market size? 

Are the Brewers not competing because of their market size? 

Terrible argument. To the trash with it. 

[TheLeviathan]

Just now, NYCTK said:

There already exists regulations in place that do this.

In order to hire a mid-high tier reliever in the offseason, the Twins would have to pay about $10M to that player. The Dodgers or Mets, due their luxury tax situation would have to pay about $20M in order to acquire that same player, the player getting $10M and another $10M going to the rest of the players through the funding of their programs and remaining totals going to the rest of the league.  

If a salary cap existed, there's friction league wide in those salaries, and that pitcher now might only get $7.5M. 

So, tell me again, why are we trying to save the billionaires money? 

The salary cap is irrelevant to saving owners money.  The only thing that saves them money is A) the lack of a floor and B) Poor split in overall revenue sharing.

The Dodgers and Mets revenue situations allow them a massive advantage through no competency of their own.  That is a doomed model for a sports league.

[NYCTK]

5 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

I want four things: 60/40 revenue split owners/players, full media revenue sharing, aggressive salary floor, hard salary cap.

This is why I call you a duped fan spreading propaganda for the owners. You might be completely unaware but all the major leagues target a small minority in revenue sharing ~49%, although if I'm not mistaken, due to the unique nature of signup bonuses, et al, this figure in MLB is more like 55%. 

So...40% is, frankly, a terrible target that would only be sought by ownership reps. 

[darin617]

The simplest and most horrible thing is that they will still be owning this team until some time in 2027. That would be the earliest they would sell the team.

[Vanimal46]

Are we ever going to learn to stop giving Charley Walters attention? He is the biggest hack sports writer in town. 

[nicksaviking]

1 hour ago, NYCTK said:

The Milwaukee Brewers are the best team in baseball right now after winning 90+ games the two seasons prior. What did they spend on payroll this year? There have been 19 different teams in the World Series the last two decades. The exact same as the kings of parity the NFL. 

You're cheering for the Owners to be able to limit how much they have to spend on payroll, and somehow unaware that you're spreading the owners propaganda for them. 

Your frustration is not with the lack of a salary cap. Your frustration is with ****** owners that will not become good owners when they're told other teams aren't able to spend as much money in certain ways. 

This is no less ridiculous in thinking than cheering for tax cuts for the billionaires so that it can trickle down to you. 

Stop with the hyperbole, you damn well know that I and 99% of the rest of this board are not cheering for owners. But just because their interest and the fans interest align on this ONE thing, doesn't mean we should kill this ONE thing. We only want the salary caps because it is the only way to get salary floors and equitable payrolls.

The Brewers can be the best team all year, all they want, let's see how the World Series turns out for them. We watch these sports to see our teams win and the 2015 Royals and the 2001 Angels are the only teams that has won a World Series without having a top 10 payroll since 1991. That doesn't work for a pro sports league.

I don't know a New York fan can argue this stuff when their owners were the ones who both caused and most benefited from the inequality.

[Woof Bronzer]

1 hour ago, NYCTK said:

The Milwaukee Brewers are the best team in baseball right now after winning 90+ games the two seasons prior. What did they spend on payroll this year? There have been 19 different teams in the World Series the last two decades. The exact same as the kings of parity the NFL. 

You're cheering for the Owners to be able to limit how much they have to spend on payroll, and somehow unaware that you're spreading the owners propaganda for them. 

Your frustration is not with the lack of a salary cap. Your frustration is with ****** owners that will not become good owners when they're told other teams aren't able to spend as much money in certain ways. 

This is no less ridiculous in thinking than cheering for tax cuts for the billionaires so that it can trickle down to you. 

I get your point, but no need to use misleading data to support it.

How many of those World Series appearances were teams in the bottom 1/3 of payroll?  One team with a payroll in the bottom third has won a Series since the Twins' last title (Marlins).  

In the NFL the smallest market team in professional sports (Green Bay) happens to be one of the more successful franchises.  

You can say caps benefit owners, which is true, without falsely claiming that there's as much parity in MLB as the NFL. Come on man.  

[NYCTK]

1 minute ago, nicksaviking said:

I and 99% of the rest of this board are not cheering for owners.

Just because you're unable to connect the dots doesn't make it any less true. 

2 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

let's see how the World Series turns out for them.

Oh. So we don't care that they've built a perennial contender? Seems like you're cheering for them to fail so that you can point and say "see, they aren't ACTUALLY good because they have a small payroll". 

 

[nicksaviking]

1 hour ago, TheLeviathan said:

I agree with this and I'm heavily on the side of "pay players more"....however, there is no denying that the cap/floor/revenue sharing issue has blame on both sides of this debate.  The owners want some portions of those things for the wrong reasons and the players want none of those things for the wrong reasons.  

And we the fans suffer.  (Except Dodgers fans)

And it's only the top earning players who want none of it. Bryce Harper can threaten the commissioner all he wants (which I'm good with) but he's being selfish too. Salary caps and salary floors may limit his earnings, but they would bump the low earning players on his team ten fold. 

[NYCTK]

2 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

How many of those World Series appearances were teams in the bottom 1/3 of payroll?

Who cares? 

4 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

You can say caps benefit owners, which is true, without falsely claiming that there's as much parity in MLB as the NFL.

It's literally true though? I understand you don't like this fact. But that doesn't mean it's any less true. 

[Rhyno006]

That pending labor stoppage could kill MLB, and I can't help but wonder if the players aren't shooting themselves in the foot if a salary floor/cap is a non starter during negotiations... 

Regarding the Pohlads selling them team, I won't hold my breath. I will, however, exhault to the highest heavens the day it actually happens... whenever that may be. 

[NYCTK]

1 minute ago, Rhyno006 said:

That pending labor stoppage could kill MLB, and I can't help but wonder if the players aren't shooting themselves in the foot if a salary floor/cap is a non starter during negotiations... 

Regarding the Pohlads selling them team, I won't hold my breath. I will, however, exhault to the highest heavens the day it actually happens... whenever that may be. 

Remember, any potential labor stoppage is the OWNERS fault, not the players. 

A bunch of idiots forgot this back in 1994. 

[nicksaviking]

1 minute ago, NYCTK said:

Just because you're unable to connect the dots doesn't make it any less true. 

Oh. So we don't care that they've built a perennial contender? Seems like you're cheering for them to fail so that you can point and say "see, they aren't ACTUALLY good because they have a small payroll". 

 

I'm connecting the dots, you are just obtuse. Everything will always benefit the owners all day, every day all the time. NOT having a salary cap also benefits the billionaires. Why do you think your New York and LA overlords have been against it for the last 40 years? They don't want to share their money. Now they might be interested because they can see the game is on life support. So they do the right thing now and we say, screw it, I'm watching soccer I guess.

Perennial contender? We're Twins fans, we've been there done that. It means jack squat. Spend money to be an actual threat to win a championship.

[nicksaviking]

14 minutes ago, Woof Bronzer said:

 

You can say caps benefit owners, which is true, without falsely claiming that there's as much parity in MLB as the NFL. Come on man.  

It does seem like NY fans never think there is a parity problem. And how OUR billionaires benefitting from any changes is sinful while THEIR billionaires benefiting from not changing things is completely acceptable.

[NYCTK]

2 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

It does seem like NY fans never think there is a parity problem. And how OUR billionaires benefitting from any changes is sinful while THEIR billionaires benefiting from not changing things is completely acceptable.

Completely independent of my Mets fandom. I'll ALWAYS be in favor of labor, never with the owners trying to exploit labor. 

Anyone cheering for a salary cap should just skip a step and buy a "Pohald $$" jersey. 

[nicksaviking]

7 minutes ago, NYCTK said:

Completely independent of my Mets fandom. I'll ALWAYS be in favor of labor, never with the owners trying to exploit labor. 

Anyone cheering for a salary cap should just skip a step and buy a "Pohald $$" jersey. 

 There has never been an easier thing for a fan of a NY team to say. How convenient that the deck is already stacked in your team's favor as it is.

The union is more than capable of demanding and getting concessions from the owners in exchange for the cap and floor, which again, significantly benefits the lower earning players. Fewer years of service time, exponentially higher pay for arb and pre-arb players. Which are things that likely have to happen with a floor anyway. If the Twins were forced to have a 220M payroll, they'd have to be paying some pretty low-end players some pretty significant money.

[Woof Bronzer]

7 minutes ago, NYCTK said:

Who cares? 

It's literally true though? I understand you don't like this fact. But that doesn't mean it's any less true. 

Uh, you care, you made the point and you are screaming at all us idiots who dare to disagree.  You can't possibly make the argument that the MLB has a ton of parity while hand waving away the data point that 1/3 of teams in every season have almost zero chance of winning a series.  Maybe your definition of parity is different than mine, but the last thing I'd call a league where 1/3 of the teams have no chance and 5-6 of them make no effort to try to win in any given year a "king of parity".

And it's not "literally true".   I know we live in a world where people think something is true just because they want it to be, but that isn't how things work.  There's no formula for parity so there's no objective truth to be had here.  You are an expressing an opinion; I'm expressing my own opinion that suggesting MLB has more parity than the NFL is absurd.

[Woof Bronzer]

13 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

It does seem like NY fans never think there is a parity problem. And how OUR billionaires benefitting from any changes is sinful while THEIR billionaires benefiting from not changing things is completely acceptable.

The dude is a METS fan?  Hahahahahahahahahahahaha it all makes sense now.  

[DJL44]

1 hour ago, TheLeviathan said:

The league's popularity is a shared value, the revenues yielded from that should also be shared.

That has nothing to do with a salary cap. If the owners want to share TV revenue more evenly that solves 90% of the problems. Share the media revenue 100% since that comes from merely existing in the league. Stop sharing in-stadium revenue to incentivize teams to sell out their stadiums (win games = more money). They can easily do this without a labor stoppage.

1 hour ago, The Great Hambino said:

Might be time to AGGRESSIVELY push for a floor.

$3M minimum salary would be a good floor.

The owners are pushing for a hard salary cap because busting the union gives them a lot more money. If the salary cap didn't make them money, they wouldn't want it. It's that simple.

I don't think MLB thinks that parity is the biggest issue. The league maximizes revenues when the Dodgers and Yankees are in the playoffs every year. It isn't good for business to have a perennial contender in Milwaukee or Kansas City. They're using parity as a smokescreen to get the fans on their side when they lock out the players. If they get a salary cap, I'm guessing they'll set it up in a way that keeps the Yankees and the Dodgers in the playoffs.

[NYCTK]

41 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

Why do you think your New York and LA overlords have been against it for the last 40 years? They don't want to share their money. Now they might be interested because they can see the game is on life support.

Why do a bunch of baseball fans think the game is on life support?

Viewership has changed and the NFL is a way more dominant king than ever, but the sport of baseball is still very healthy. It will never recover it's cultural height in the 1920s-1970s, but attendance is strong, and last year's World Series was seen by more than the NBA Finals.

Seems like nothing more than ownership propaganda that you're spreading. 

 

[Woof Bronzer]

7 minutes ago, NYCTK said:

Why do a bunch of baseball fans think the game is on life support?

Viewership has changed and the NFL is a way more dominant king than ever, but the sport of baseball is still very healthy. It will never recover it's cultural height in the 1920s-1970s, but attendance is strong, and last year's World Series was seen by more than the NBA Finals.

Seems like nothing more than ownership propaganda that you're spreading. 

 

Shockingly, a Yankees-Dodgers Series had more viewers than an Oklahoma City-Indiana NBA championship.  I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I'll need a little more evidence than that to show that baseball's in great shape.

Can you share a comparison between the 2023 World Series viewership and the 2024 NBA finals?  I'll patiently wait.  

There's a name for cherry picking data to support your own beliefs and ignoring the data that doesn't...prop...propag....ack, I'll think of it...