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2016 Baseball Thread

Started by Bison, January 06, 2016, 11:07:40 PM

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Bison

I disagree.  The advent a free agency lead to large contracts and no loyalty to the franchise.  It became about the individual and the $$$.  I don't begrudge anyone making money, but free agency as we know it today has hurt the ability to create dynasties.  The cap hurts too, but with free agency dynasties are a dead concept anyway so your better off looking for parity. 

OJsDad

I'm not a baseball guy, but I think the farm system sets bb apart from football.  With the farm system, bb teams has a large number of players that they can call on to play in the majors to fill needs.
'Here at NASA we all pee the same color.'  Al Harrison from the movie Hidden Figures.

Bison

True and minor league games at great fun to attend too.

MetalDog

Quote from: Bison on January 18, 2016, 07:50:49 PM
I disagree.  The advent a free agency lead to large contracts and no loyalty to the franchise.  It became about the individual and the $$$.  I don't begrudge anyone making money, but free agency as we know it today has hurt the ability to create dynasties.  The cap hurts too, but with free agency dynasties are a dead concept anyway so your better off looking for parity.


First, all sports franchises are in business to make money.  As much of it as they can.  The only loyalty the owner has is to making money.  Second, until Curt Flood, baseball players were property of the team they were signed with and had no right to go anywhere unless they were traded.  So their continued play for the same team was not of their doing so you can't equate it with loyalty.  Third, the advent of free agency allowed players to finally choose where they were going to play, but even then, they had to give up some of their service time to REACH free agency.  And with the ability to choose came the ability to decide for how much money they would sign from the offers they received from teams interested in their service.  If their current team offered the most, and the relationship between player and management was agreeable, then it was likely the player would re-sign.  But he could go elsewhere, and THAT was the greatest difference.

Now, all things being equal, you take the job that offers you the most money.  So players will go to the team that offers the most money.  And even without a cap, owners, who are in it to make money, know approximately how much they want to spend.  And if the owner can get and keep a core of players to build a dynasty, he should.  But, if he can't or won't spend the money, the free agent can go elsewhere.  As it should be.

Now, with a cap, you are only allowed x amount of dollars and no amount of fudging or creative accounting is going to get you one red cent more.  So when you reach your limit, you are out of the bidding.  That forces players to look elsewhere.  The decision is taken out of their hands. 

Loyalty to a franchise is for fans.  And we want so badly for the players we like/look up to/worship to be as loyal as we are to the home team.  But this is ultimately just another job.  And if you switch jobs and noone gives you crap for it, why should a player be blamed for taking another offer?  They shouldn't.  But because you are a fan, you give the practice a bad connotation because the player has ruined your team.  Which is the furthest thing from the truth as you have zero ownership stake in the franchise and they aren't paying you.  You're just letting your fanatic show through.

Tell me again how free agency is ruining dynasties?
And the One Song to Rule Them All is Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones


"If its a Balrog, I don't think you get an option to not consent......." - bob

Arctic Blast

Quote from: Bison on January 18, 2016, 07:01:12 PM
The Orioles contract with Davis is ludicrous.   I'd love nothing more than to see a salary cap instituted into baseball.

And they were pretty much just bidding against themselves. Keep our decent pitcher hitting free agency for half as much? Nope, let's dump enormous money on a guy who is going to become absoutely useless the instant his bat speed drops even a slight bit.

MetalDog

So...no comment because you agree or because you think I went over the top?
And the One Song to Rule Them All is Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones


"If its a Balrog, I don't think you get an option to not consent......." - bob

Bison

A little emotional yes.  Free agency is no better or worse than a salary cap if the criteria is a dynasty.  The fact is that the New York Yankees glory years would have never been possible under current free agency and arbitration.  The lack of a salary cap only benefits a handful of very large market teams.  The rest are basically nothing more than a higher level farm system, because you know that no matter what the team will most likely lose their star/popular players to free agency.  Spending the money doesn't guarantee success, but it ultimately hurts the game.  Baseball is losing popularity for a number of reasons and the only one that is truly controllable is an effort needs to be made to bring parity to the game.  You might want to call the NFL a watered down league, but teams like Tampa Bay never sniff a championship without the salary cap.  It allows them to be competitive, because all teams are held to the same constraints.  Whether or not your management can deal with the money issues and scout good talent is another question.  The salary cap doesn't prevent players from leaving to make more money, I get and support their ability to do that, but it also means that the team who initially invested in the player has a chance to keep the player financially.  That is ultimately better for the league and fan base. 

bayonetbrant

Quote from: Bison on January 19, 2016, 10:05:12 AMBaseball is losing popularity for a number of reasons and the only one that is truly controllable is an effort needs to be made to bring parity to the game.

Not necessarily true - they can control when games are on TV.  World Series games that start at 9pm on weekends when there's no reason under the sun to start after 3pm Eastern is just stupid.  Trying to pick up 1/2 a rating point on the West Coast has cost them an entire generation of viewers on the East Coast.  My son probably can't name more than 10-12 baseball teams, at the most.  But he can name most of the NFL / NHL teams, and every soccer team in the EPL and most of the Championship.
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Bison

Life does exist west of the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.  :)

3PM?  I think around 7PM give or take is would be the right time to schedule the games.

bayonetbrant

Quote from: Bison on January 19, 2016, 10:33:49 AM
Life does exist west of the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.  :)

3PM?  I think around 7PM give or take is would be the right time to schedule the games.

why?  I get doing it on weekdays when you need people home from work to watch.  But why not a 4pm EST Saturday start?  For a decent 7pm game, the kids can't stay up 'til the end, even on weekends.
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

Bison

No other professional sport starts their championship games that early.  Why would baseball?  The Super Bowl is on around 7PM.  The Stanly Cup likewise.

OJsDad

I agree with Brant, it's stupid that some of these games start so late.  College football is the worse.  In 2002 when Ohio State played Miami in the championship game, it was a Friday night.  I had a house full of people to watch the game.  Now, the games are on Monday night, and no one gets together.  Heck, this year I was tired and had to work the next day, and didn't even stay up for the whole thing.  Last year, when OSU was playing, the kids headed to bead before half time because of school the next day.  It's no way to encourage fans to watch. 
'Here at NASA we all pee the same color.'  Al Harrison from the movie Hidden Figures.

MetalDog

Quote from: Bison on January 19, 2016, 10:05:12 AM
A little emotional yes.  Free agency is no better or worse than a salary cap if the criteria is a dynasty.  The fact is that the New York Yankees glory years would have never been possible under current free agency and arbitration.  The lack of a salary cap only benefits a handful of very large market teams.  The rest are basically nothing more than a higher level farm system, because you know that no matter what the team will most likely lose their star/popular players to free agency.  Spending the money doesn't guarantee success, but it ultimately hurts the game.  Baseball is losing popularity for a number of reasons and the only one that is truly controllable is an effort needs to be made to bring parity to the game.  You might want to call the NFL a watered down league, but teams like Tampa Bay never sniff a championship without the salary cap.  It allows them to be competitive, because all teams are held to the same constraints.  Whether or not your management can deal with the money issues and scout good talent is another question.  The salary cap doesn't prevent players from leaving to make more money, I get and support their ability to do that, but it also means that the team who initially invested in the player has a chance to keep the player financially.  That is ultimately better for the league and fan base.

That Yankees glory years were financed by Big Stein throwing his money around.  Teams nowadays do the same thing.  So, the Yankee dynasty would have been just as easy today as it was yesterday.  The lack of a salary cap benefits all teams.  The ones that spend can say, 'Look at how much we spend to bring you a winner.'  The ones that won't can say, 'Look at those bullies throwing their money around!  We just can't compete.'  Spending and lack of spending are two sides of the same coin.  And let's be honest, baseball does its due diligence before it sells a team.  If the new owners couldn't, theoretically, spend large amounts of money, they wouldn't approve the sale of the team.  So the teams that cry about how much is being spent, should be ashamed of themselves and their fans SHOULD hold the clubs feet to the fire.  I'll give you a perfect example.

Carl Pohlad, the former owner of the Minnesota Twins, was estimated to be worth 3.6 Billion dollars at the time of his death.  He bought the Twins in 1984.  In 2001, he offered to sell the team to MLB for $150 million as part of a proposed contraction plan.  Due to baseball's attempt at limiting spending of the big teams, they instituted a soft cap.  Anyone passing the cap threshold paid a luxury tax, to be distributed to teams who were, 'less well off.'  Pohlad received that compensation yearly from those teams that went over the threshold.  His family continues to own the team.  The payroll for the Twins is 20th in the league this year at $86.15 million.  All of those things together bespeak a cheap ass owner.  At over three billion dollars, he most assuredly had enough money to spend on his teams, but, he chose not to AND he took money from other teams who did.  So, who is in the wrong?  The teams that spent?  Or the billionaire owner who didn't?

Don't get me wrong, Bison, I get where you're coming from.  We want baseball to be something it's not, loyal, fair, and able to prove, 'wait 'til next year,' can be true for ALL teams, regardless of how much money they spend.  But it's not.  It's a business.  And the low payroll teams crying poor and bad mouthing the big spending teams is poor sportsmanship at the least and disingenous at most.

It's ok to root for who you root for.  Downing a team for spending money and rooting for a team that won't doesn't make a salary cap and parity the answer.  Spending the money to make your team competitive is.  And just so you know, HOW you spend it is more important than WHO you spend it on.  And fans should hold their favorite teams accountable for THAT.
And the One Song to Rule Them All is Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones


"If its a Balrog, I don't think you get an option to not consent......." - bob

Bison

No the Yankee big years from the 1920s through the 1960s.  When the majority of Yankee titles were won.

MetalDog

There was more team control of players during those years than at any time.  How much of a role spending large amounts of money had to do with anything during that time, I've never heard.  It's always been my impression that the owners were pretty tightfisted in that era.
And the One Song to Rule Them All is Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones


"If its a Balrog, I don't think you get an option to not consent......." - bob