Since chatter about this topic is dispersed over like 3 different threads I think it makes more sense to consolidate the discussion in one place to stimulate more direct conversation without getting lost in the daily game threads and individual team discussions.
First, I'm on the record, and will remain so as being adamantly against the owners and Manfred for how they have approached negotiations this year. They have been blatantly dishonest about the reasons behind their proposals and their main goal early in the process has been to win over the fans to their side to pressure the players into accepting a salary cap.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/news/baseball-union-head-criticizes-mlb-salary-cap-ad-campaign-says-claims-of-economic-woe-are-perverse
In a way it's brilliant to negotiate with the fans instead of the players, but it's in no way a good faith way to enter into negotiations by leveraging a third party against the players. Their most stunning success in this campaign has been the shockingly easy path they've had to convince fans that a cap would create "competitive balance." Gullible fans all over the country have now taken to this banner hoping for some sort of panacea by way of a cap that will help the downtrodden billionaires that own these teams compete. This is despite the real reason being publicly known as well, the owners think a cap will increase the value of their teams by introducing artificial cost control on labor.
The problem with the competitive balance argument is of course that the team with the 2nd highest payroll (Mets) is a last place team and that 3 divisions are led by teams with the 19th (Brewers) 23rd (Rays) and 25th (ChiSox) payrolls. Looking at the data we also see that out of the bottom 15 teams in the league in payroll only 3 of them are totally out of the race and more than 6 games under .500 while there are 4 such teams more than 6 games under among the top 15 payrolls. The standings reveal that baseball has actually already achieved 98% of the promised competitive balance that the owners are talking about.
The elephant in the room is the Dodgers, but I'm flabbergasted at how easily some people are swayed by recency bias and are ready to give the owners a cap. In the last 25 years we've had 16 different franchises win the World Series. The most any team has in the span is 3. And while yes the Dodgers remain heavy favorites to make a deep playoff run this year, history tells us that any well run franchise can win the World Series. All of these deferred bills will come due some day and we'll laugh at the Dodgers. All of these stars will get old and we'll laugh at the Dodgers.
All this to say that all the hand wringing about the Dodgers and the dreams of a cap fixing baseball's problems are simply bad takes when we look at the actual data. The game is healthy and competitive across all markets. The Juan Sotos and Shohei Ohtanis of the world are never going to sign to play in Tampa, and that's just fine, I wouldn't want to play in the Trop either. Maybe when they open a new stadium and start drawing more than 10K per game they'll have something to offer free agents to entice them.
First, I'm on the record, and will remain so as being adamantly against the owners and Manfred for how they have approached negotiations this year. They have been blatantly dishonest about the reasons behind their proposals and their main goal early in the process has been to win over the fans to their side to pressure the players into accepting a salary cap.
https://www.nbcsports.com/mlb/news/baseball-union-head-criticizes-mlb-salary-cap-ad-campaign-says-claims-of-economic-woe-are-perverse
In a way it's brilliant to negotiate with the fans instead of the players, but it's in no way a good faith way to enter into negotiations by leveraging a third party against the players. Their most stunning success in this campaign has been the shockingly easy path they've had to convince fans that a cap would create "competitive balance." Gullible fans all over the country have now taken to this banner hoping for some sort of panacea by way of a cap that will help the downtrodden billionaires that own these teams compete. This is despite the real reason being publicly known as well, the owners think a cap will increase the value of their teams by introducing artificial cost control on labor.
The problem with the competitive balance argument is of course that the team with the 2nd highest payroll (Mets) is a last place team and that 3 divisions are led by teams with the 19th (Brewers) 23rd (Rays) and 25th (ChiSox) payrolls. Looking at the data we also see that out of the bottom 15 teams in the league in payroll only 3 of them are totally out of the race and more than 6 games under .500 while there are 4 such teams more than 6 games under among the top 15 payrolls. The standings reveal that baseball has actually already achieved 98% of the promised competitive balance that the owners are talking about.
The elephant in the room is the Dodgers, but I'm flabbergasted at how easily some people are swayed by recency bias and are ready to give the owners a cap. In the last 25 years we've had 16 different franchises win the World Series. The most any team has in the span is 3. And while yes the Dodgers remain heavy favorites to make a deep playoff run this year, history tells us that any well run franchise can win the World Series. All of these deferred bills will come due some day and we'll laugh at the Dodgers. All of these stars will get old and we'll laugh at the Dodgers.
All this to say that all the hand wringing about the Dodgers and the dreams of a cap fixing baseball's problems are simply bad takes when we look at the actual data. The game is healthy and competitive across all markets. The Juan Sotos and Shohei Ohtanis of the world are never going to sign to play in Tampa, and that's just fine, I wouldn't want to play in the Trop either. Maybe when they open a new stadium and start drawing more than 10K per game they'll have something to offer free agents to entice them.