Why not put both New York teams, Boston, and the Chicago teams in the same division? Granted that would cause a few strokes among purists but it seems a good way to level the playing field.

No, it sounds like a good way to make sure 80% of good baseball players go to your proposed division. We've already got the NL not spending money because they don't have to compete against the Yankees and Red Sox, so what's stopping an undercapitalized owner like McCourt from cutting LA's payroll to $50 million and hoping for 88 wins?

Plus there's only so many times teams in unfairly stacked divisions like yours will miss the playoffs before they start talking breakaway. Get a few other big market teams and you've got most of the money in baseball walking away.

Funny thing about the NL. There's more parity there than probably any league anywhere. Everybody has their 2 or 5 yr run.

No, it sounds like a good way to make sure 80% of good baseball players go to your proposed division. We've already got the NL not spending money because they don't have to compete against the Yankees and Red Sox, so what's stopping an undercapitalized owner like McCourt from cutting LA's payroll to $50 million and hoping for 88 wins?

Plus there's only so many times teams in unfairly stacked divisions like yours will miss the playoffs before they start talking breakaway. Get a few other big market teams and you've got most of the money in baseball walking away.

I was looking at things geographically. And there's no hidden agenda at play in getting 80% of the players in one stacked league. There are lots of different permutations to play with...Make a super divison to include the LA teams as well plus Sann Francisco to make it an even 8. Then the other 22 can go about their business, spending what they can to compete for 6 or 7 playoff spots. But the biggest factor is ensuring that revenue sharing money from the big market teams goes to payroll and not to the owners pockets. Each of those remaining 22 should be able to spend between $60 and $100 million if revenue-sharing money were factored in. If they can't: fold them, move them or compel the cheapskate owners to sell.

Here, Matt, just in case you've forgotten the words. There won't be a dry eye in the Yanks' clubhouse when they hear it.

Hey, thanks for that. Good stuff.

Are the Brewers still in the AL? The Brewers mostly can't compete with the Yankees, but that's because they are in the NL, right?

A few points:

1. As someone else pointed out, the Rays got to the playoffs in large part because they have been run far, far more intelligently under Friedman than they had been. If having high draft picks for several years guaranteed success, the Pirates and Royals would both be contenders.
2. The NFL/NBA comps are often a little specious, since the sports are all very different. The NBA is basically about getting a franchise player and taking it from there. You can build a championship team with several very good players--e.g. the Dumars Piston teams (the ones he played and ran) but it is not easy. Football is like baseball in that it is about having MANY good players, particularly on the lines, at CB and at QB. But the NFL is not sold or marketed the way MLB is, due to the nature of the sport and the schedule. The Lakers and Celtics getting good again is, actually, a surprise and has resulted from a combination of luck, good player moves, and timing--as with any sport. It is unrelated to "competitive balance" issues.
3. I agree with the "embrace the Yankees" thing. In general, sports are better off when the national fanbase/national hatebase teams(Celtics/Lakers/Cowboys/Raiders/Packers/Steelers/Yankees/Red Sox/Cubs) are in the mix. It is frustrating for some fans, but even then, it stimulates interest.

A salary cap would have unintended consequences, both good and bad. I think the best things to do are to change some aspects of the FA compensation system and to restructure revenue sharing. The third team in NY--might help, but I don't see it happening.

Here is what I would like to see:

- A salary cap based only on free agent contracts & salaries over a certain high dollar amount.
- Teams that drafted/picked up/traded for/ players don't have their salaries count against their cap. I'd also include long time players, like anyone who's played over 6 years for an organization.
- Make the salary cap be a 2,900% tax on every dollar over the limit. $1 for each team for each dollar over that can go into a revenue sharing pool.
- Do more revenue sharing of media related money. TV and radio deals should be shared 50/50. Share gate receipts to some extent as well.
- Put all the revenue sharing money into a big pot. Rank the teams by market size and doll it out that way.
- From that point on teams who win games or spend the money they get will get a larger share. Teams that lose or don't spend the money will get less money.
- Over time some well run, large market teams may actually get more money back then they put in, while poorly run low payroll teams may get nothing.
- Keep the current revenue distribution ratio between the owners and the players. If salaries decrease due to this, the owners pay the rest back to the players association.

The idea here is the link putting a good team on the field with making more money. Obviously large market teams will have an advantage, but the goal is to make it an advantage in making money more so than in fielding better players.

What about something like restricted free agency? Put a guy on the open market, let him get his top offer, and then give his original team the option of matching at, say, 90% or something. It'd at least give some teams a fighting chance at keeping their home-grown stars, or make the Yankees and Red Sox of the world pay just a little bit more than they'd otherwise have to.

"Yeah, Chicago and the San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose markets are larger but they're shared. Philly is a little bigger too according to Neilsen, but the pieces of other markets push Boston past Philadelphia."


There's also a cultural thing that nobody ever takes into account with this. All of New England identifies Boston as its major city. There's literally no other city to compete with Boston culturally in all of New England. Sorry Burlington, Manchester, Springfield, Worcester, Portland, whatever, you guys ain't cutting it. Providence is the only thing that comes even remotely close, and there aren't any professional teams there anyway so it's moot. Practically everyone in New England considers Boston their major city and there's a neat four professional teams to rally around.

Chicago would be the same except it's shared. Chicago has huge massive suburbs that all consider Chicago "their" city.

Now, take, say, San Francisco. San Francisco competes with Oakland competes with San Jose. There's a ton of people in the area, but they don't all identify with San Francisco. And you if you go east you hit the mountains and if you go north you hit Sacramento and if you go south you hit people who identify with Southern California. San Francisco's the dominant player here, but it doesn't enjoy anything close to the "one show in town" status places like Chicago and Boston get. And it's shared.

Or take Houston. Houston's a huge place, but it has no traditional suburbia that rallies around it. So while the big city population of Houston can support the teams, it doesn't get the massive population advantage suburbia would lend it like, say, the Cowboys get in Dallas where practically everyone in the state identifies with that team.

The suburbs are what's important here. City populations aren't nearly as important as the number of people who identify with that city. If you're not drawing from the suburbs, you're not drawing.

Only the reserve clause can save baseball!

Anything is better than the carnival of mediocrity that is the NFL.

Are you kidding? There's been one fabulous game after the other on national TV for the past month, all with playoff implications. There are six or eight very good teams with a legitimate shot at going to the Super Bowl. The NFL postseason lineup this year, once the four cripple teams get knocked out in the first round, are going to leave this year's baseball playoffs in the dust.

Yep. Although I believe absolute parity in MLB would be just as "bad" as the present state (it's not that bad), I don't think many NFL fans outside of SF long for the pre-cap days. What the salary cap in the NFL has done is put a premium on scouting and player development, which I believe are the skills most valued by most of us here.

But the MLB has one thing the NFL doesn't: huge disparities in local TV deals (except for pre-season). A salary cap wouldn't be necessary if all broadcast revenues were distributed equally. The Yankees would probably take the case to the Supreme Court if MLB ever tried to take a bigger piece of YES from them.

[Edited to make sense.]

Also want to point out that a salary cap does not necessarily put money in Attanasio's pocket; depends on where it's placed. You could put the cap only somewhat south of where the Yankees are and most teams still wouldn't touch it. Financially, a salary cap would probably help the Yankees more than anyone. It's not just a phony ploy by the owners to line their pockets. Most of them are baseball fans, too, and I think they do care where their teams finish in the standings, regardless of how much profit they're making. Nobody here would join a fantasy league in which 3-4 teams had an automatic 25% advantage going in.

Sorry - hadn't realized how old this thread was.