Letting the owners off easy?

Question

I read many threads about how Scott Boras is ruining baseball, or about how the players now are just greedy and selfish. However, shouldn't the owners shoulder at least some of the blame?

For almost a century, they treated the players like chattel through the reserve clause. And now they - not the players or agents - are the ones who offer these monster contracts. So why does nobody get on the owners?

Answer 1

Baseball needs a revenue cap. All receipts in excess of, oh, $4 billion should be donated to charity.

Player payroll this year was $2.5 billion; that would leave the owners with $1.5 billion, and that's enough for 30 teams, $50 million each.

------
c$not demonstrates an inability to make an abstract leap in thinking by missing my first paragraph wherein I wryly propose a "revenue cap" which is CLEARLY suggested to be FOUR billion. The rest of the math above propagates from that. I do know that MLB took in SIX billion dollars in fiscal 2007, as Commissioner Selig announced earlier this week.

Reading comprehension is a worthwhile skill, which can be improved through diligent study.

Answer 2

Let's face it, everyone in sports is ridiculously over paid, and that will never change. I'm only 41, and even I can remember when the average ball player, and I'm not talking a rookie either I mean big name players, made 2 - 4 times what the average person made, now it's like 200 times what the average person makes. But I do not agree with a salary cap, in baseball or any other industry. We are, or I should say we were, a capitalistic country. What if there was a salary cap in your indusry that said no one could make more than $10 an hour. Would that be fair? No. Salaries are based on what the market can afford to pay for any given job.

But if there was a salary cap, then you should also have a salary minimum. Why fault the Yankees for spending $200 million a year on salary, it's not like they can't afford it. They are an old team, by old I mean pre-expansion team, and they are in the largest of all the big markets. You have to blame all the expansion teams, Mets excluded, for starting their franchises in areas that can't compete with the big market teams. If people complain because the Yankees are successful and can afford $200 million a year, then to be fair they should also complain that the Tampa Bay Devils Ray, or Rays or whatever their name is now, spends only $24 million a year. No one put a gun to the Tampa Bay Rays to start their team in a location that can't compete with the Red Sox & Yankees. Since the Yankees and Red Sox were each around 100 years before anyone ever dreamed of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, then the big market teams shouldn't have to lower their standards because the new teams can't keep pase with the old teams.

New York City has 8.2 million people as of the 2000 cencus, although they have proved over 13 million actualy live in NYC, another 12 million live in the NYC metro area (NJ, parts of Connecticut, Long Island, etc), that's 20 - 25 million people in the NYC metropolitan area. Just to put that in perspective, the NYC metro area has 2/3 the population of California in an area smaller than the county of LA. NYC alone, forget the rest of the metro area, has more people than the City of Los Angelis, Chicago, Houston, & Philly combined (those are the next 4 largest ciries in the US), more people than 45 states. So there will always be a huge gap in the salary structure of the Yankees compared any other team.

I don't blame the agents, the players, or the owners of the salaries in baseball, everyone wants to make as much as they can, and we, the average person, is no different just on a smaller scale. If anyone is to blame, it's us the fans because we are the ones supporting our teams. Is there a fair solution to fix the discrepency between the big market teams and the small market teams? Well other than for the small market teams closing up, not realy.

Answer 3

Craig S -- I've been trying to tell people this for months. Some players from every era stand out as better than decent human beings. There are some playing now. Agents are like lawyers: everyone hates them until they need one. The money always leads back to the owners. A-Rod didn't rob anyone and Boras didn't threaten to blow up a stadium or anything. Billionaire owners with tax breaks and city revenue and a close watch on the nickels and dimes have been hiding behind their shadows since the beginning of baseball. People here shouldn't bash the foot-soldiers. They should go for the royalty.

Answer 4

Chipmaker has it all wrong. Revenue was $6 Billion his numbers only add up to $4 Billion. Owners should shoulder the blame. Boras is the best agent out there and that's his job. He SHOULD get paid handsomely to do it. Get off his back. ANY deal requires 2 people - it's like Tango. Hence for every "evil" Boras deal there's an "evil" owner giving away his hard earned cash.

Wait... did I say owners giving away cash... we ALL know that they don't. So how could Boras be evil for getting money the owners are willing to part with? That's not what's wrong w/ baseball today. It's uneducated fans who cry about stuff but go to the ballpark and pay 50 bucks a ticket. There's no crying in baseball... there's no fault in a system based off capitalism (I'll argue that point elsewhere in the finance section), and there's no fault in a person who made their hard earned money to spent it on what they want.

No one tells YOU where to spend your cash. Get off the owners back, and get off the agents back. There really isn't any reason to whine except if you're bored and looking to start trouble.

Sidenote: The luxury tax should be increased a little, but NO salary caps. Teams shouldn't be penalized for having a wide fan base due to success or marketing. Good teams will always find fans, and great storys will bring fans in. (Rockies 2007, Red Sox 2004, 2007) Also, I don't hear about the Diamondbacks hurting either.

Answer 5

OK everyone in baseball is to blame for its current situation!!! Bud, the owners, the players association,everybody!!! What baseball needed to do in its last strike with the players is make a salary cap. I would say it should be around 150 million dollars around this time, which I might add is higher than the NFL's at this point. Than it would give teams like Kansas City and Baltimore a chance. Because it would encourage them to spend that kinda money, rather than the 70 or so million the Rangers spent this year. How are they expected to even compete with 400 million plus the Yanks are spending? But everyone in Redsox's nation would complain that our team can't make the playoffs every year. Screw off, at least this way my team would have a shot at it!!! Its like the early 90's when all the Cowboy haters got pissed because our owner spent all the money and got everyone to come and play for them. Well look at it now, the Boys are doing good this year but they have played in one playoff game this century and they lost. So obviously that would work, at least the Tampa Bay Buccs sell out every game and the D-Rays have one sad season ticket holder, the Boys just sold out all of their games for next season not this one, but the Rangers can barely sell out the season opener!!! obviously a salary cap, while to late and the players strike would kill the game is the only chance at saving this game. So basically its screwed and it pisses me off because despite my team having no chance to compete financially or on the field I still would like to see it happen. But it will never happen!!

Answer 6

You are right Baseball now has a standard for paying big bucks to almost anyone who signs and it is because of the owners they never put a stop to it and now 40 year olds are making 8 million a year- don't blame it on the agents that is their job blame it on the owners for paying that much money

Answer 7

I'm not sure what the actual numbers are by I'vd heard that the % of revenues actaully paying players salary has gone down some in the last couple of years!

Sounds to me like some of the teams are getting rich and not reinvesting into their players!? Not that I want the Yankees with a 400 million payroll but just a thought!

It would be so good for the sport if they could get a salary cap of some sorts. Then again with the HUGE differences in revenue between the haves and have-nots I'm not hlding my breath!

Answer 8

Nobody gets on the owners because, the owners are only signing these big players so their team will be successful. Owners have to do their job, they have to fill the seats, and the only way you can do that is by having the players. Having a winning team, and having players that will make people want to go to the ballpark reguraly.

Answer 9

Baseball could use a slary cap, but that would make teams like the yankees and d-rays equal, this is a tough question, that baseball needs to think about