The Yankees Payroll
Posted: November 5th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 431 Comments »
The following is a screed about the Yankees payroll. If you are a Yankees fan uninterested in a screed about the payroll, don’t read it. You won’t enjoy it. Go out, buy a championship T-shirt, reminisce about this great team, enjoy the victory. I’m telling you: Don’t read it.
As for the rest of you: The following is a screed about the Yankees payroll. It is, I think, something that is always bubbling below the surface of baseball (when you are not a Yankees fan). I rarely write about it because … it’s like writing about the heat in Phoenix. We all know it’s there, and we don’t really want to talk about it anymore. But with the Yankees winning the World Series and then talking about how it showed the team’s character, well, yeah, I thought maybe this once …
Here’s the thing about the New York Yankees huge payroll: It has been talked about so much that, in reality, it is hardly talked about at all. I know this makes little sense, but what I mean is this:
A. Everyone knows the Yankees spend much more money than any other team to win games.
B. Because everyone knows it, people have been complaining about it for many years.
C. Because people have complained about it for many years, everybody is sick of hearing about it.
D. Because everyone is sick of hearing about it, nobody really listens.
E. Because nobody really listens, people don’t talk about the Yankees spending much more money than any other team to win games.
Yes, this is a weird circle. But in this bizarre world of spin where Alex Rodriguez tries to project himself as an underdog* and Yankees types try to recast George Steinbrenner as sympathetic figure, I think this Yankees money fatigue is very real. As soon as you start talking about it, people turn off. What we’re talking about this again? Or, as indignant Yankees fans, they get angry: “Oh man, you’re not going to talk about the Yankees MONEY thing again, are you?”
*One good thing about this postseason is that it does seem to have killed the A-Rod as choker myth once and for all. Good man Alex Belth sends along these numbers:
A-Rod during regular season: .305/.390/.576
A-Rod during playoffs: .302/.409/.568
Same thing. Same player. Same guy.
Now, let’s think about this for a moment: You have a sport where the New York Yankees — in large part because they are located in America’s largest city and they have baseball’s richest television contract — can viably spend tens of millions of dollars more than any other team to acquire baseball players. You have one team (and only one team) playing the video game on cheat-mode.
This is much starker than people think, by the way. I quickly went back and looked at the numbers before writing my column for SI.com, and I’m going to reprint them here because even as someone who has also grown sick of hearing about the Yankees payroll, I found them to be stunning:
In 2002, the Yankees spent $17 million more in payroll than any other team.
In 2003, the Yankees spent $35 million more in payroll than any other team.
In 2004, the Yankees spent $57 million more in payroll than any other team. I mean, it’s ridiculous from the start but this is pure absurdity. Basically, this is like the Yankees saying: “OK, let’s spend exactly as much as the second-highest payroll in baseball. OK, we’re spending exactly as much. And now … let’s add the Oakland A’s. No, I mean let’s add their whole team, the whole payroll, add it on top and let’s play some ball!”
In 2005, the Yankees spent $85 million more than any other team. Not a misprint. Eight five.
In 2006, the Yankees spent $74 million more than any other team.
In 2007, the Yankees spent $40 million more than any other team — cutbacks, you know.
In 2008, the Yankees spent $72 million more than any other team.
In 2009, the Yankees spent $52 million more than any other team.
Now, the conceit of American professional sports is that every team has a chance. That is certainly the conceit of baseball — what the commissioner calls Hope on Opening Day.*
*He took this “Hope on Opening Day” thing from me, by the way. Bud Selig read it in a column I had written about the Kansas City Royals, called me about it, and began to trumpet it around. My contribution to baseball. I’m not proud of it.
So how can the Commissioner of baseball promote such nonsense as Hope on Opening Day when the game is set up for one team to spend tens of millions more than anyone else? Well, it’s actually an interesting thing, I think. I see it as a two-pronged play.
One: Baseball happens to be a sport where dominance can be obscured. It doesn’t look like dominance. What I mean is this: Baseball, for many reasons, is built in such a way that the best teams win less often than in other sports. A 13-win NFL team wins 81% of the time. A national championship contending football team might lose once or twice — or not at all. A 60-win NBA team wins 75% of the time, and a big time college basketball team will win closer to 90%.
A 100-win baseball team wins 62% of the time … and there was only one 100-win baseball team this year. The New York Yankees. Every baseball team that won even 56% of the time this year made the playoffs. It is a sport of small triumphs, good months, one-run victories. I believe it was Whitey Herzog who said that the key to baseball is not getting swept … the idea being that if you can play well most of the time and steal at least one in a three-game series when you’re not playing well, then you will be in good shape at the end of the year.
So, dominant baseball teams don’t LOOK dominant in the same way they do in football or basketball. It’s like the billionaire CEO who doesn’t wear ties and rides coach on planes. He’s still a billionaire but he doesn’t LOOK like a billionaire. No team goes winless or undefeated in baseball. Few ever go winless or undefeated even over 16-game stretches. No team in baseball loses fewer than 40 games, and no team wins more than 120, and it’s only the rarest of teams that get anywhere close to either of those numbers.
I think of it this way, using a mockabet: I would bet if the Indianapolis Colts played the Cleveland Browns 100 times, and the Colts were motivated, they would probably 95 of them — maybe even more than that. But if the New York Yankees played the Kansas City Royals 100 times, and the Yankees were motivated, I suspect the Royals would still win 25 or 30 times. That’s baseball.
So you have this sport that tends to equalize teams. That helps blur the dominance of the Yankees. If the New England Patriots were allowed to spend $50 million more on players than any other team, they would go 15-1 or 16-0 every single year. And people would not stand for it. But in baseball, a great and dominant team might only win 95 out of 160, and it doesn’t seem so bad.
The second thing is that ,at the end of the year, the best teams are thrown together in a succession of short series that are fun to watch but are not designed to pick the best teams. Quite the opposite: A short series in baseball is designed to shelter weaknesses and expose strengths. Yuni Betancourt can out-hit A-Rod in a five-game series. Livan Hernandez can out-pitch Tim Lincecum in a one-game match-up. Baseball doesn’t hide this — they slam it down your throat. October baseball! Anything’s possible! And so on.
And in that way the expanded playoffs have been genius for baseball — not only because they are milking television for every dime but because the short series have been baseball’s one Yankee-proofing defense against the ludicrous unfairness of the New York Yankees. Hey, if the game is rigged, rig the game. The Yankees spend a lot more money than any other team. As a direct result, they had the best record in the American League in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2009. They made the playoffs every single year but one this decade (and going back to 1995). They are the best team with the best players every year — that sort of big money virtually guarantees it.
So, you create a system where the best team doesn’t always win. In fact, you create a system where the best team often doesn’t win. For years the Yankees didn’t win. They lost to Florida. They lost Anaheim. They blew a 3-0 series lead against Boston. They lost to Anaheim again and Detroit and Cleveland — and how could you say that baseball is unfair? Look, the Yankees can’t win the World Series! See? Sure they spend $50 million more than any other team and $100 million more than most. But they haven’t won the World Series! Doesn’t that make you feel better?
And this has been the Wizard of Oz slight of hand game that Baseball has been playing for a long time … ignore the man behind the curtain who makes more money off of baseball than anyone else and can buy just about any player he wants. Ignore the absurdity of it all. Just remember: The Yankees haven’t won in a while! Just remember: Anything is possible.
There’s something else that people say: They talk about how money doesn’t guarantee wins. And they point out that other teams (the Mets, the Cubs, the Astros, etc.) spend a lot of money and don’t win. I think this actually makes for an interesting argument if you want to talk about the inequities of baseball … big markets, small markets, all that.
But the Yankees are a whole different argument. They are their own argument. The Yankees are not a big market team. They DWARF big market teams. They are quantitatively different from every other team in baseball and every other team in American sports. They don’t just spend more money than every other team. They spend A LOT more money than every other team. The Boston Red Sox spend $50 million more than the Kansas City Royals? Who cares? The Yankees spend $80 million more than the Boston Red Sox.
The Yankees have a pat hand.
This is the way baseball is structured, and we have reached a point where people simply don’t want to hear any griping about it. Don’t like it? Don’t watch. Some people have stopped watching, I suppose. But many of us keep on because we love baseball and there’s enough randomness in the game itself and enough volatility in the playoffs to distract us from the lunacy of having the game so ridiculously tilted toward one team.
The trouble is that, inevitably, that one team will make good choices. They will put together a team of All-Stars. They will sign a dominant left-handed starter and slugging switch-hitting Gold Glove first baseman and a right-handed starter who throws curveballs that bend like wiffle balls. That team will be a remarkable collection of stars, and they will play often beautiful baseball, and they will win more games than any other team during the season. That team will roll through the playoffs without facing an elimination game or anything resembling real drama — though there will be constant efforts to make it SEEM like there’s drama.
And then: That team that spent $50 million more than any other team, that team with three sure Hall of Famers and as many as four others, that team that bought Milwaukee’s best pitcher and Anaheim’s best hitter and Toronto’s No. 2 starter and Boston’s favorite Idiot and the most expensive player in the history of baseball and so on, that team will win the World Series, and spray champagne on each other, and they will tell you that they won because they came together as a group and kept pulling themselves off the ground and didn’t listen to the doubters.
And then, if you are a not a Yankees fan, you will want to throw up. If you are not a Yankees fan, you are left hoping that next year the randomness of a short playoff series will get the Yankees and allow some other team to win so we can celebrate the hope of Opening Day. And that’s baseball.
But the system sure beats the one that the NCAA’s got going for football. . .
Great post. The one thing I would add is that regular season baseball is not saved so much by the randomness within games (though that surely plays a role), but rather by the fact that pitching rotations do not perfectly synchronize, so you have number 3 or 4 starters from expensive teams pitching against small market aces. The Yankees would be a lot more like the Colts if Sabbathia was starting every game (rested).
Bravo.
By their own definition, this Yankees team was merely adequate. This is a franchise which openly declares — boasts, even — that any season that doesn’t end in a World Series win is automatically a failure. By definition, then, winning the World Series is merely performing up to expectations. What were they yelling when they were jumping up and down on the field last night? “Hooray! We were adequate!”?
How can this be a thing for anyone to feel joyful about?
Circle me Bill Gates.
I actually enjoy the fact that there is one team that everyone can hate without feeling any pinge of sympathy for when the get washed out in the playoffs and know that they blew the gnp of several small countries on over the hill has beens and got nothing for it.
You can make a case that the Mets, Cubs, and Astros all have had several winning seasons because they spent a lot of money on players. All 3 have made the playoffs several times in this decade alone.
Great analysis.
My question is, why do the other owners put up with this? Why does the players union?
Thanks Joe. Write this for SI. Shout it from the rooftops.
Our society is not built on what one can buy. We have historically prided ourselves on what we can make. The decline of this American empire is reflected in the gold of the Yankees 2009 WS rings.
I agree with you about almost all of this, except that I don’t blame the Yankees for this. The Yankees do what every fan wants their team to do: whatever it takes under the current set of rules to win. They are far more capable of taking advantage of the rules than any other team, but I don’t begrudge them the success they’ve earned by taking advantage of their natural advantages. I blame the system. To the extent that the Yankees are to blame for helping to perpetuate the status quo, they deserve blame, but the other owners don’t care enough about the inequity to do anything about it. There is too much money being made by baseball in general to change the system.
I don’t know how to fix this issue, because there are aspects of salary caps and revenue sharing that are repugnant, as well, but it is the system that is broke, not the Yankees.
joe, one thing you are missing a little bit is that the big market/small market deal exists in the NFL and NBA but it is just hidden better behind their salary caps. Look at the cash outlays the Knicks had when Isiah was running them as well as the cash outlay’s the redskins spend under snider. teams in those leagues circumvent the caps all the times. so there does have to be a certain competency floor for organizations front offices to combine with the oversized spending amounts. as a cubs fan i’ve seen this firsthand.
What a joke.
Joe – you were right about one thing, I shouldn’t have read your post. But really you’re too good for this:
“E. Because nobody really listens, people don’t talk about the Yankees spending much more money than any other team to win games.”
If you were a Yankee fan, you would know how ridiculous this is. Find me an article about the Yankees 27th Championship without a mention of their payroll.
And with the 24th highest payroll: Your Minnesota Mauers! Great job against the Bombers, guys.
(Sorry to see you go, Seven.)
You need to invent a word for this situation (“love-hate”):
I love it when people say baseball has more parity than ever because the Yankees don’t win every single year, and in the 20s-50s it was basically the Yankees every single year. And by “love” I mean I hate it. I can’t stand that argument. In what reality are the pundits living in where the Yankees don’t win every year?
To which they counter that all but the very bottom-dwelling teams have made it to the playoffs this decade…but the thing is that nobody will ever have a string of 19 out of 20 years of competition the way the Yankees have – it will come to the smaller teams in bursts of two or four years, and then they’ll have to tear down and rebuild and trade Sabathia and Lee and Martinez for prospects, while the Yankees can not only afford to keep the good guys they do develop, but also pick up the good guys you couldn’t afford to keep.
Ugh. I can tell you, as an Orioles fan, there hasn’t been ANY Hope on Opening Day for a decade. Not even imagined, Centaur-riding hope.
It’s amazing to me that folks still argue there is no correlation between spending money and winning in baseball.
Sure, the Rays or Twins could be competitive in any given year, but the Yankees, and to a lesser degree, the Red Sox, are competitive every year. They can spend to re-load, whereas the A’s, Rays, Twins, etc. simply cannot do that.
It would be interesting if someone like Warren Buffett or Mark Cuban bought a team like the Brewers or Pirates and spent $300 million/year on players. I would bet the New York press would be writing articles all day long about the need for a salary cap.
Well put. I wrote a blog recently about how the Yankees don’t even need to outspend anymore. Didn’t Teixeira turn down a bigger deal with the O’s to go to New York so he could win a championship? It is bound to turn into an infinite loop where the top 25 players in the league end up with the Yankees.
My husband found out yesterday that the Yankees have won 27 World Series (he’s not a baseball guy). He was disgusted. “Baseball has only been around for 100 years!” He said. I nodded. What else is there to say? My small market, cheap Twins have only won 2 – 3 if you include the Senators.
@Roarke
That’s true, but when the Rays won the division and the American League last year, it was awesome because 1) the effing Rays won the American League and 2) we did it through a strong farm system and smart trades. Had they just gone out and bought the top three free agents and then won the AL, would I still have been happy? Of course. Would it have felt more than a little cheap? Yup.
If the Yankees didn’t exist, we’d have to invent them. It’s great to have such an obvious heel to root against. One obvious bandwagon team can attract the most-annoying fans and the easiest-to-dislike mercenary players.
It’s win-win. Either you get to watch great baseball or an even greater trainwreck.
I like data driven analysis. Show me data.
The problem is – what do you do about this?
Look – I’m a Yankees fan, and have been my whole life. My parents are Yankee fans. My mother’s parents were Yankee fans (my father’s parents were Giants fans, and never got over them leaving NY). It’s in my blood, and I don’t apologize for it.
But I do recognize the problems with the system. Obviously the Yankees spend more; but they also draw more fans (home and away), sell more merchandise, and otherwise bring in a lot more revenue. Should they not be awarded that revenue?
I completely agree that the Yankees should split half of the gate, half of the TV revenue, half of the merchandise revenue, half of the internet revenue .. but they would still end up with more money.
Does MLB create a cap system? All that does is force more money into owners’ pockets (while screwing over the players). Do we get rid of free agency and ditch capitalism (in the limited form you’re allowed in MLB)? That would definitely hold down salaries, but again it would just hurt players. Do you raise the league minimum and simultaneously add a cap? That would limit the differentiation between players (ARod is the best player in baseball, but only makes 4x what Yuni makes, or something) – it doesn’t feel like better baseball to me.
So, to conclude, I’m not disagreeing with you – baseball isn’t “fair”. But I do question the continued complaint about baseball fairness without reasonable, thought out solutions. Don’t be a talking head on TV, listing problems, but providing no solutions. Take a step back, pull together the smartest people you know, and start putting together a plan that doesn’t just benefit the owners, while also restoring competitive balance.
^^————————–^^
They put up with it because of revenue sharing. Owners like David Glass take the revenue sharing money and put it straight into their own pocket. The last few years Glass has spent a lot more on the team, but 4 or 5 years ago he could practically cover the payroll with revenue sharing and radio/TV contracts.
I have never liked the argument that since the Yankee’s didn’t win the World Series from 2000 to 2009 that is proof you can’t buy a championship. They didn’t win the Series, but for many of those years they had the best record in baseball and mowed down smaller teams. Selig has to do something, or you should revoke the Hope on Opening Day because there isn’t much hope anymore. Look at the playoffs this year. New York, LA, LA, Philadelphia… oh and two other teams who were creamed in the first round.
and you have Bud Selig up there saying what a great guy Steinbrenner is and how this is for him.
The steroids issue has overshadowed the Yankee issue in baseball for the last decade and there is one guy who dropped the ball on both.
We’re looking at you Bud Selig.
I looked at trying to convert the baseball records to the equivalent of 16-game football records to show what you are talking about. It’s not exact, as teams don’t play everyone equally in baseball, but I called each home division season series one game and each road one another (so NY beat Bos 5-4 at home and lost 4-5 on the road), and then did an weighted expected wins estimate for non-divisional games based on season series wins against all other opponents. The Yankees are the equivalent of a 14-2 NFL team this year, the road loss at Boston and an overtime loss against the Angels in the regular season, and alot of blowout wins. The Royals were roughly a 4-12 team.
You are probably right on the Colts-Browns versus Yankees-Royals estimates. The difference is number of plays. There are roughly 65 offensive plays per team in the NFL (and that doesn’t include other plays like kickoffs, punt returns, and field goal attempts that also affect the outcome).
In contrast, there are roughly what, 40 offensive at-bats per team in a 9 inning game?
More plays favors the better team. If football games lasted 2 quarters instead of 4, then the Colts would probably lose to the Browns about as frequently as the Yankees lose to teams like the Royals. If baseball games lasted 12 innings in regulation, the Yankees would beat the Royals 90-95% of the time, and go 127-35 over the course of a season.
I am one of the ones who stopped watching.
I used to love baseball, and I suppose I still do abstractly. I think it’s a great game, and I still think there is nothing better than catching a game at the ballpark, hot dog in hand, on a late summer evening.
However, I am a Pittsburgh native and Pirates fan. The Pirates don’t have the money of even the middle of the pack teams, and haven’t had a team with a winning record for 17 years. A lot of the struggle was due to bad management, but at the heart of it all was the fact that they Pirates simply can’t spend their way to a better on-field product, and I expect they never will be able to.
I think Joe is right in talking about the conceit in baseball that the playoff system disguises the huge advantage big money teams have. I would include others as well, the Yankees obviously are on their own level, but the $73 million more dollars the Red Sox pay for players over the Pirates also makes a difference. Granted the Yankees spend $161 million more, either way you’re getting a big advantage.
I remember being exasperated last year as the Tampa Bay Rays climb to the World Series and were lauded by the league and announcers as “proof” that well-run small market teams can compete. I thought at the time that I hoped the Rays would get their World Series win that year, because I thought their window to get back (even to the playoffs) could close fast. Well guess what, the Yankees picked up Tex, C.C. and A.J. and their back on top, and the Rays didn’t even make the playoffs.
Teams like the Rays can maybe squeak by on off-years, and get hot in short series and maybe, just maybe, if everything goes perfectly, eek out a championship. That’s a far cry from the prospects of teams that have money, and as Joe pointed out, yet another huge leap to the prospects of the Yankees, who are on their own level.
That’s why I quit watching. I like what the new Pirates GM is doing, and I think that with the way their are drafting and building their team, they might someday build an organization that is as good and exciting as the Tampa Bay Rays were in 2008. But why would I stick around for another decade of losing and tinkering on the blind hope that things might fall into place so the team could make one run at a title – especially with an almost certain guarantee that even when the team does get good, their window for success will be short and unsatisfying.
Teams like the Rays, or the Brewers, or the Twins, or A’s, Indians, etc. They’ll all make runs at various times, but they’ll never be successful like the teams with money, and they’ll never be successful as the Yankees.
A lot of talk has been made about parity in sports. I think it’s safe to say that the only real parity fans care about is the hope that their teams will one day have the chance to be great.
That’s what’s great about sports like football, basketball and hockey. The Saints can go from being bad for years to a juggernaut, the Cavs can go from joke to contender with one draft pick, the Penguins can resurrect a franchise with an 18-year old phenom center… there is no equivalent in baseball.
The Pirates (or Royals, or Padres, or Orioles, or…) are bad. They will always be bad. And on the off-chance that one magic day, they get a good group of guys together… they’ll play well for a short-time, and then it will all vanish as magically as it came. That’s why I don’t watch baseball.
I heard someone say once that if MLB were a giant game of Monopoly then the Yankees start every game with all four railroads and Board Walk. Sure someone else could win, but if they get Park Place, it’s over.
Yea you get a cap system. I don’t think the players are hurting too much right now. League minimum is still a healthy salary for playing a game, and way way more than I will ever earn. I don’t care if a cap would cut ARods salary from $30 million a year to a measly $15 million. I don’t care one bit. I just want competition in baseball, otherwise it isn’t a game.
Football has a salary cap and that’s probably what baseball needs. Because of the cap, tiny little Green Bay can compete with New York. If the owners make more money, then so be it. Here is a thought, put in a salary cap and make the owners lower ticket prices. They will be saving money on payroll and will be able to afford it.
*Mandate that all teams share their tv/radio revenue. Without an opposing team, there is no product, so the opposing team should receive half of the revenue. The Yankees may sniff their noses at half of the KC tv/radio revenue, but the Royals would gladly take half of the NY broadcast fees for their games v. the Yankees.
*Any subsidies from local governments for stadiums should be deducted from a team’s revenue sharing, so that cities/states can’t create an economic advantage for their teams.
Of course the Yankees have a massive advantage over other teams–does anyone really question this? The real issue is whether the Yankees’ massive advantage is also an unfair advantage.
The Yankees’ financial advantage is a product of the fact that they are in the largest city and have the best TV contract, as Mr. Posnanski writes–but another way of stating the source of the Yankees’ advantage is that they have by far the most fans. These fans pour money into the team and the team pours money into players.
Calling this advantage unfair is like saying President Obama had an unfair advantage over John McCain because there are more Democrats in the U.S. than Republicans. If you don’t like it, the best solution is to find more supporters, not complain about the challenge. There’s a difference between a fair fight and an even fight.
Mike, are you suggesting we elect the World Series winner every year?
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Thanks, Joe. It really is hard to watch as a fan of one of baseball’s other teams. “Building” a team is just too easy for the Yankees – where would they have been without Tex/Sabathia/Burnett this year – the 3 biggest contracts handed out in the offseason, without which they’d STILL be at the top of the payroll list.
They need to tax, and tax some more until the Yankees come down some. Competitive balance is a good thing – not the enemy here.
Ryan,
I’m suggesting that in a way we already do elect a World Series winner (or at least the playoff entrants). We vote by buying tickets for our favorite team or watching their games on TV. The Yankees and Red Sox have a lot more people voting for them than the Royals and Nationals.
(And yes, I do understand that this analogy can be taken only so far.)
The situation was worse between 1923 and 1964, whether anyone remembers. Just between 1949 and 1964, the Yankees 13 pennants and 11 (if I recall correctly) WS. All that without free agebcy, without huge payrolls.
The history of MLB since 1923 can, in many ways, be described as a series of actions designed to rein in the Yankees. So far, none of those–the “bonus baby” rule of the 1050s, the institution of the amateur draft, in the 1960s, increased revenue sharing, the “luxury tax–all aimed at the Yankees.
But what if MLB did something that Bill James has advocated for a long time…end the “exclusive territory” rule. What if, instead of two teams in NYC, there were 10? What would hapen to the Yankees’ revenue stream then?
It might be worth trying…if the Yankees’ dominance is, indeed, bad for baseball. But that’s a very different question…
did some calculations:
spending, 2001-2009:
Yankees: $1,578,299,197
Red Sox: $1,087,054,090
Mets: $1,006,935,230
Marlins: $332,995,293
The Yankees spent almost 500 MILLION more than the Red Sox, and have half the championships in that time.
The Yankees spent 1.2 BILLION more than the marlins, and have the same number of championships during that time period
In 2009, the difference in team salaries between 1st (yankees) and 2nd place was as large as the difference between 2nd place and 23rd
that folks, is amazing
“Yea you get a cap system. I don’t think the players are hurting too much right now.”
Yeah, there’s no cap system right now.
“League minimum is still a healthy salary for playing a game, and way way more than I will ever earn.”
Screw you, buddy. You’re not one of the best 800 in the world at anything that you have worked at constantly since you were four years old. Also – the players don’t decide what they’ll earn. The owners do. They’re the ones who sign the players. A player’s salary should never, ever, ever be held against him. An owner agreed to that deal because s/he thought the team would be more profitable because of it. They’re OWNERS. They run MLB franchises.
“I don’t care if a cap would cut ARods salary from $30 million a year to a measly $15 million. I don’t care one bit.”
Super. Continue to not care about that. Of course, that’s not what a salary cap would do.
“I just want competition in baseball, otherwise it isn’t a game.”
There is competition in baseball, which is a game.
“Football has a salary cap and that’s probably what baseball needs. Because of the cap, tiny little Green Bay can compete with New York.”
Football’s salary cap “works” because the contracts are not guaranteed. Good luck getting that through the MLBPA. You should also keep in mind that it’s not all about geography. Owners are people, not places.
“If the owners make more money, then so be it. Here is a thought, put in a salary cap and make the owners lower ticket prices. They will be saving money on payroll and will be able to afford it.”
What? What reality do you live in? You need to understand that salaries have approximately ZERO relationship with ticket prices. Ticket prices are set by what we’re willing to pay, not by expenses that need to be met. This is basic stuff.
The scariest thing to me, is that the big market teams seem to have figured out that when they do pick up a trade-deadline player from a small market team, they no longer have to give up their best prospects to do so. Now, they can give you B level prospects, and you’ll take it, or you’ll settle for getting nothing once that player hits free agency. The Phillies did NOT give up big prospects to acquire Cliff Lee. I think those days are over. So when a small market team loses their star to the Yankees, Sox, Angels, Dodgers, Phillies, they won’t be reloading their farm system with great prospects, just the big boys castoffs.
green bay doesn’t compete because of a salary cap its because each NFL team gets a equal split of the national TV contract. If the yankees had to pool all of their non-stadium revenue (ie their network money) and split it equally things would be different and the yankees couldn’t spend like they do. plus its harder to have an advantage by purely spending more in the nfl and nba because they are team games (baseball is really an individual game or a series of individual events) and require more cohesion and fit/experience with each other.
But how much of the Yankees’ higher revenue is due to ticket sales, how much is merchandise, and how much is YES?
I don’t know the answer to that, but I suspect that it is YES contributing more than anything else. It’s not like the Yankees’ attendance is THAT much higher than other good teams’ attendance (although the prices could tip the scales)…is it?
Non-ticket revenue dwarfs ticket revenue.
What has remained unmentioned is the simpler answer that baseball danced around 6-8 years ago. The Expos were owned by MLB. They had to go somewhere. There is one city where a new team would be an instant success. An immediate hit. Money maker from the get go. Fans aplenty. Advertising and business support beyond imagining. And a new owner who would shower MLB, and fellow owners with tons of money for franchise fee. That city is New York.
Look at DC and tell me with a straight face that it was the better option. The Yankees and Mets do not “own” the New york area and the league can make franchise decisions independently. They WANT this situation.
If I were put in charge, I would get rid of territorial rights and let the Oakland A’s move to the Meadowlands. It would level the playing field more than any tax or revenue sharing.
It’s not like the Mets are winning a bunch of championships. Philadelphia, Florida, and Atlanta have better organizations, and for a long time Montreal produced enough quality players to compete just as well.
Everyone complained about the Marlins, but they’ve won maximizing a small window of opportunity. And were a few unlucky decisions away from a wildcard again this year. Another team from NY in either league and you’d make the odds go down for another town or eliminate them entirely if you keep it at 30 teams. If you shove four or five teams in there to even it out, how many teams do you think an even-lesser followed sport could support professionally?
Merchandise revenue is split by all 30 teams (except for the margin they earn in team stores). It’s too late because of the teams that own their own stations, but splitting TV/radio revenue 30 ways would have been a good idea. Keeps incentives in-line and would bring payrolls significantly closer.
I’m with Josh in DC – I think it is time to put a third team in the NYC metro area to potentially dilute the economic strength.
“For years the Yankees didn’t win. They lost to Florida. They lost Anaheim. They blew a 3-0 series lead against Boston….”
Yes, that last bit makes me feel better, actually.
I know that their payroll is higher than the Red Sox, but I’ve always felt, as a Red Sox fan, I can’t really complain. Sure it’s $50 mil higher, but when there are teams whose whole payroll isn’t even $50 mil, I don’t have much to complain about.
b-o-o h-o-o suckers!
If you put another team in the New York area, are more people overall going to watch? Won’t it make things even more lopsided and “east coast biased”? Are more people going to buy MLB crap? I don’t think so. They have their teams. It would take too long to leach fans away from the Yankees, Mets, and Phillies for another franchise to make it. The Mets at least had ex-pat Dodger and Giants fans ready to support the NL.
Joe, I get the argument, really I do.
I’ve been a Yankees fan since birth and I’ve watched them lose, I watched them (and Mattingly) get robbed of what probably would’ve been a championship in ‘94.
But the fact still remains that the game is played on the field and it’s up to teams to spend the money on players to field a competitive team. Nobody saw this as a problem in the late 80s/early 90’s when we weren’t winning. But now it’s some sort of problem?
That’s hypocrisy.
Now, as for fixing this problem. I say the opposite needs to be in effect first, what most people don’t realize that in the NFL/NBA/NHL there’s a league minimum that teams HAVE to spend.
Implement that into baseball first. See what it does for those small market teams. Look at the numbers for teams like Minnesota and Florida and Washington. Do they have enough revenue to deal with undertaking a hike in salary?
That answer needs to be yes. If they can, without all the help these owners get from big market clubs to “stay afloat” then I say you move ahead and you impose a salary cap in the $120-$150 range.
I am a Yankees fan, I’m not against a cap. But first there needs to be a minimum. Nobody was ‘woe is me’ when the Marlins won it in 97 or in 03. Not when Boston won it in 04 or 07 with the 2nd highest payroll in the sport.
It’s hypocrisy. And as long as teams like the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates (small market team? then tell me how the Steelers/Penguins are championship calibur teams these past few years?) stop shipping all their talent to other ball clubs because they won’t commit any money to these players, though they get a new stadium?
HYPOCRISY
Tell these small market clubs to start taking care of their own and don’t tell me that they can’t afford players, Washington signed Dunn to $10m a year. Minnesota signed Morneau to $80m over 6 years.
These teams HAVE the money they just have owners who CHOOSE not to put it back into the team at the rate that they should.
Make a league minimum at the next CBA. See how it works for 6-8 years. Then decide if a cap is needed.
In one way the Yankee’s are good…. Baseball is the only sport that has a villain. In a way, I think this is needed, without them, I think the sport could just become to random. It would start to feel like the early NFL, where the SB was between the teams that managed to make it through the year with their QB’s intact(or payed for a great backup). If the season starts feeling like a series of extended coin flips…it’s just not that interesting. Baseball needs villains, and, for them to be credible…villains need to win once in a while.
I don’t know how to solve the economic inequalities in sports or in society.
I’m just comforted by the fact that out fathers and grandfathers have been bitching about the Yankees payroll after a World Series victory for over 80 years now.
It’s a lovely little American baseball tradition.
Two things: one, I think players should get these large salaries because of the money that the owners make and two, I hadn’t thought of the Yankees as an outlier before today, just one of the big market teams. I ran some numbers thanks to Joe’s post and my mind was changed.
I examined the mean and the standard deviations of the opening day salaries from Cot’s Baseball Contracts.
From 2000 to 2009, not one team falls below a salary level that is less than two standard deviations from the mean. From 2004 to 2009, at least 22 teams are within one standard deviation from the mean.
The only team that ever is above two standard deviations from the mean are the Yankees. They spent that much in 2000, 2002 and 2003. However in 2004 through 2009 they were beyond 3X the standard deviation from the mean of the team salaries of major league baseball.
That is a huge outlier. (I’m looking at the numbers without the Yankees to see how the distribution looks to see if it even approaches normal since the Yankees skew things so much, but even without a normal assumption, I think the Yankees go beyond simple “big market” into a realm all their own.)
I have a problem with this line of argument. Every other team outside of the AL East are on more of an even playing field, because they do not compete with the Yankees to make the playoffs. You have the two highest payroll teams in the game in the AL East. The only teams that could possibly complain are the Rays and perhaps the Orioles and maybe the Blue Jays. The other teams are NOT directly competing against the Yankees for a playoff spot, so the playing field is pretty even outside of the AL East.
Everyone is correct. It isn’t fair.
Neither is life.
It is just one of the many things that makes baseball the greatest metaphor for life ever.
Because it isn’t fair that the Yankees can spend so much more money. It isn’t fair that, with all those CLEAR advantages, they can’t win more than 62% of the time. It isn’t fair that baseball has expanded the playoffs to make it harder for the best teams to win the World Series.
Baseball isn’t fair.
Life isn’t fair.
Baseball is life.
Yes, the Yankees have systemic advantages buying a ticket to the playoff lottery. But if owners in, say, Cleveland paid well to keep their best players, we wouldn’t have seen a Sabathia-Lee faceoff in Game 1. The Tigers, my hometown team, are not afraid to spend (albeit unwisely at times), so I enjoy rooting for them all the more.
Greg T, a partial answer to your question: the players union doesn’t “put up” with this situation. It’s very, very good for the players union. Salary caps limit what players can get paid. Free agency restrictions limit what players can get paid.
If baseball adopted a salary cap equal to this year’s second highest payroll, that would immediately be $52 million in player salaries that were no longer paid. Some of that would be made up by other teams because there would be expensive players the Yankees couldn’t outbid them for anymore. But most of it would not be. For the players union to support a salary cap would be against their own interests. They generally support the luxury tax because it has a smaller impact on salaries while still doing something to promote parity.
Other owners of big market teams that make less money than the Yankees, on the other hand, would support a salary cap in a heartbeat and they HATE the luxury tax. But the small market teams live on that luxury tax so they don’t want it to go away, and it probably would have to go away to get a salary cap.
@Mike
in the 80’s and 90’s the yankees payrolls weren’t many standard deviations higher than the mean since they didn’t have the tv network printing out money.
Joe~while I don’t think it changes the point you make, shouldn’t we really be focusing on the percent increase in salary relative to other teams v. the actual dollar amount?
Spending 35 million more in 2003 is probably spending a lot more compared to the 40 million more in 2007 when you consider the overall increase in payrolls across the league. .
Joe—thanks for posting this. It’s almost become politically incorrect to talk about the Yankees’ advantage, which is of a degree so great as to be a different kind, as they say. I know intelligent decision making is important—give Dayton Moore the Yankees’ budget and he’ll make more mistakes and field a worse team than Brian Cashman, but even Moore could manage to sign Sabathia, Teixera, and Burnett in an idiot-proof free agent market, and watch his team cruise through the regular season and playoffs. Throw enough money into the market year after year, and you’re bound to hit jackpot now and then—it’s the law of averages, the most important law in baseball. Cashman’s alleged brilliance, along with the Yankees’ “guts and glory”, are only two of the more nauseating aspects of the celebration. Watching the Yankees win is like watching the results of a rigged matchup; is this what it’s like to be a fan of the WWE—to watch a fake sport and have people insist you respond like it’s real?
@mike
But the fact still remains that the game is played on the field and it’s up to teams to spend the money on players to field a competitive team. Nobody saw this as a problem in the late 80s/early 90’s when we weren’t winning. But now it’s some sort of problem?
LOL, thanks for that comment. That made my afternoon!
#24: “The Pirates (or Royals, or Padres, or Orioles, or…) are bad. They will always be bad. And on the off-chance that one magic day, they get a good group of guys together… they’ll play well for a short-time, and then it will all vanish as magically as it came. That’s why I don’t watch baseball.”
I think “always” is too strong a word here. Obviously, both the Pirates and the Royals have the ABILITY to succeed in their own small-markets. The Pirates were one of the teams of the 80s, as were the Royals. I mean, who’d have thunk in the late 1980s that the Pirates would EVER fade from being one of the league’s elites?
I’m not saying you aren’t correct to some extent, but I think part of the reason why said teams are so bad IS because of management. I mean, St. Louis isn’t a huge market but the Cards have managed to be successful— at least, moreso than their rivals from up north who spend way more money— this decade.
The thing is, if its the case that you don’t watch baseball anymore because “they’ll play well for a short-time, and then it will all vanish as magically as it came,” well… how is football any different here? The same teams are the relevant teams every year (Colts, Pats, Giants, Steelers) and the same ones are the crappy ones every year (Browns, Lions, Jaguars, Bills). The ones that do have moderate success never seem to sustain it for very long (Titans, anyone?).
Isn’t this the very same reason you don’t follow baseball?
I’ve often felt that the World Series is simply an exhibition, sort of like spring training. ‘Real’ baseball is the long haul of the regular season.
I am a Yankee fan. I foolishly ignored the warnings to not read this column. I just have 3 points.
1. How come you weren’t complaining about Atlanta’s streak of 16 straight playoff appearances? How come you didn’t show the differences in Yankee payroll from others from 1995-2000 when they won 4 WS? If baseball is so unfair how come it has a greater number of different championship teams than any of the other major sports over the last 10 years (especially the super fair NFL, and I love football. Go Giants!)?
2. It seems that capitalist Americans favor a socialist structure for their sports, whilst socialist Europeans have more freedom in their capitalist major sports leagues. Someone please explain this to me?
3. Please preface your responses with whether or not you are currently working at a company where you get less compensation and benefits (and/or prestige) than if you were working for a competitor? Then tell me if you do it because it’s your choice and you do it because you love your customers. The percentage of you who would respond Yes honestly to this question is less than the number of baseball players who are currently doing this.
Joe, you should give up that job at SI and go back to KC or Cleveland. Those guys love you and need you. At SI you’re just another mercenary, although a very talented one. I forget is SI the Yankees of Sports Journalism or the Red Sox?
And yet, payroll isn’t the whole story. The Yankees aren’t the most storied franchise in baseball because of their payroll. They are the most storied franchise in baseball because, over the 150 year history of the game, the best players, the best teams, and the best baseball tradition started in New York and New England.
Even before free agency and bloated payrolls, the Yankees had the best club, historically. This wasn’t because of a TV deal, it was because it was an organization committed to reinvesting profits in the team (as opposed to financing Broadway plays like “No No Nanette”). The Yankees, and Cards, and Brooklyn Dodgers, and New York Giants, were committed to their fans (until the Dodgers and Giants disgracefully jumped ship, that is)
The real disgrace are the teams that take the Yankees revenue sharing fees every year (nearly $30 million in 2009) and pocket the money. That is the rigged game. Some owners are more interested in vaulting coin than fielding a decent baseball team.
You sound like a local museum operator who complains that people don’t attend his exhibits as much as those in the Smithsonian.
Tradition counts for something. And tradition is what makes baseball the American pastime.
By the way, could you be more intellectually dishonest with your talk of buying players? The Yanks rely heavily on their farm system. The big four: Posada, Jeter, Pettitte, Rivera — all homegrown. So is virtually the entire bullpen. So is 2nd base, and center field.
And we did NOT buy A-Rod. We traded one of the best Yankee prospects in the last two decades for him. Alfonso Soriano is nobody’s throw in.
So check your facts. And then look around and show me a team that doesn’t utilize free agency.
@Mike, in response to No. 32: You say that “We vote by buying tickets for our favorite team or watching their games on TV. The Yankees and Red Sox have a lot more people voting for them than the Royals and Nationals.”
This is a really bad analogy, considering the fact that New York is the largest city, and metropolitan area, in the United States. Of COURSE more people are going to buy tickets, hats, watch games, etc. There’s a bigger population to draw from there than there is in, say, Kansas City or Cleveland (DC is big but half of that city is from out of town anyway, so it doesn’t really count). There are only so many people in Kansas and Missouri to draw from to put butts in seats as opposed to the Yankees or Red Sox. That shouldn’t be your argument.
“It would be interesting if someone like Warren Buffett or Mark Cuban bought a team like the Brewers or Pirates and spent $300 million/year on players.”
Guys like that already own small market teams. The Nationals’ owner is the wealthiest in baseball…the Royals theoretically have Wal-Mart money (that’s a lot)….
My question to Joe is, what do you suggest be done? You seem to say that the game of baseball itself creates parity, and I agree. So what exactly is the problem, and what’s the solution? It always seems to me that people’s proposed solutions only take money from “greedy players” and further line the pockets of the owners…who aren’t greedy at all, right? Why make billionaires richer at the expense of millionaires?
Personally, I don’t mind people being upset about payrolls in general, it’s just when it’s about the yankees specifically that I get a little aggravated. Look, would the Phillies have won the NL East the last two years if the Marlins payroll wasn’t the lowest in the game?
I think the Bill James idea of removing the territoriality from baseball is interesting, but do we really believe that if you add a new NY team people will root for it? I appreciate that New Yankee Stadium and Citifield have X number of seats and whatever new team comes to town would have more seats so more people could watch games in NY. And people would go to those games. But where are the fans coming from? Are there really that many people in NY (or elsewhere I guess) that love baseball but hate their team and want a new team to arbitrarily latch onto?
I imagine that there are four groups of people in NY 1)Yanks fans 2) Mets fans 3) transplants who have their own teams elsewhere in country and 4) people who are apathetic about baseball or (the opposite) people who have moved beyond fandom and really appreciate baseball as a sport and don’t root for any particular team. Where is a new team going to be plucking new fans from? Just think it sounds good in the air as a way to neutralize the Yankees but in practice it won’t be effective.
“The big four: Posada, Jeter, Pettitte, Rivera — all homegrown.”
True. But the Yankees didn’t have to worry about them walking once they reached free agency, now did they.
How do you really feel about the Yankee’s money, Joe? Quit holding back.
One thing that needs to happen in discussions like this is that we need to stop lumping the Yankees and Red Sox into the same category when it comes to payroll.
The Red Sox are nowhere near the Yankees when it comes to total expenditures on player salaries. Depending on the year (and which source you use) the Sox have annually ranked from 2nd to 5th in total team payroll, dating back to 2003. They are usually lumped in with the Mets, Dodgers, Cubs, and (recently) the Tigers – all with very similar payrolls to Boston.
Boston’s annual payroll has ranged from 57M less than New York’s to 91M less than New York’s. The story is not “New York and Boston.” It’s “New York”, then “Boston, the Mets, the Dodgers, the Cubs, and 1-2 other teams”, then “everyone else.
“It’s hypocrisy. And as long as teams like the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates (small market team? then tell me how the Steelers/Penguins are championship calibur teams these past few years?) stop shipping all their talent to other ball clubs because they won’t commit any money to these players, though they get a new stadium?”
Mike, the Steelers and Penguins are good year to year precisely because they can compete financially with the other teams in the league. Both organizations are well run and take advantage of the even playing field by out maneuvering their opponents and making sound draft decisions. Football and hockey both have salary caps.
The other difference obviously is the sport. One of two excellent players in hockey can be enough to turn around a franchise, and the Penguins have simply been lucky to be in the position to draft Mario Lemiux and Sidney Crosby over their franchise history. Pair them with other good players (Jagr, Malkin) and you have a good team. Baseball doesn’t revolve around single players like hockey does (look at the Royals and Greinke… best pitcher in the league yet still a bad team). Football I would argue depends largely on coaching. Cowher and Tomlin have done an excellent job of building the team through the draft, trades and free agency. Belichick is the reason the Pats have been so good for so long, not the market size or the team budget… same can be said for the guys running the Steelers.
The Pirates on the other hand fundamentally can’t compete because they can’t afford to go after really good players. The reason the Pirates traded so many starters this year is because they can’t afford to buy good players. The only way they can get better is to trade whoever they have to get prospects, in hopes that those players develop into good players on the cheap. The Pirates are out immediately out of the market for any of the top free agents in the league from year to year and get stuck with the crapshoot of building through the amateur draft.
Yankees fans don’t understand that strategy because the Yankees will never, ever have to use it. The Yankees have gotten better by 1) buying expensive players in the free agent market, 2) drafting players who drop in the amateur draft because they are asking for too much money.
The Pirates can’t afford to do either of those things. Do you realize that Sabathia, Burnett, and Teixera (3 players of the Yankees 25 man roster) earned roughly the same amount of money as the ENTIRE Pittsburgh roster this year?
To say that since the Steelers and Penguins are good, the Pirates should be too is a ridiculous claim. The leagues and sports are not even close to analogous, which is the WHOLE POINT.
“8: onthemark said at 1:09 pm on November 5th, 2009:
Our society is not built on what one can buy. We have historically prided ourselves on what we can make. The decline of this American empire is reflected in the gold of the Yankees 2009 WS rings”
This is a completely false statement. Steinbrenner bought the Yankees for 10 Million dollars and turned them into a value of over 1.3 BILLION dollars , which is the American Dream, take something put your heart into it and make it the best you can
Is it the fault of the Tiger’s huge payroll that the Royals are God-awful? OR is it the fault of an owner with Steinbrenner-type money that won’t spend it and a management/coaching team that has no clue what it’s doing?
I’m a Royals fan, NOT a Yankees fan…but I hate seeing non-Yankees fans blaming their own teams’ woes on the free-spending of a team that isn’t even in their own division.
Royals fans hated the Yankees for a long time for a GREAT reason…because of the big time playoff games from a few decades ago. This was a heated rivalry. And it was awesome.
Since that time, the Royals have faded into obscurity and the Yankees have been back to being great for a while. Is it REALLY the fault of the Yankees that the Royals have been awful for about as long as the Y’s have been good? I don’t think baseball is in trouble or compromised just because my favorite team is crappy and has a low payroll, and one of my least-favorite teams is awesome with a big payroll. I just have a problem with the Royals for sucking so bad.
And if a competitor to my employer called today and offered me a ton more money to go work for their much more successful company in New York, I would jump on it in a heartbeat. Drop the greedy players bit.
I wrote something longer that got lost somewhere in the interwebs, so here is a condensed version:
Why are we complaining about the Yankees spending a fortune to be competitive and win the title? Shouldn’t we be complaining about the Mets and Cubs, who spend a fortune and fail?
Why aren’t we complaining about perennially awful teams like the Pirates and Royals, who make no legitimate efforts to be competitive?
And elsewhere in the world–namely Europe, with soccer–people don’t complain as much about the richest teams getting all the titles (Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain; Chelsea, Man. Utd, Arsenal in England, etc) because the leagues are set up in a way that every team is fighting for something in the end, be it the title, access to the Champions League, access to the UEFA Cup (whatever it’s called now), or just a chance to remain in the top flight of soccer. And in the end, there are no flukes, because the league title does not have playoffs. To spice things up and give a better shot to underdogs, Cup tournaments are played entirely in a playoff format, giving underdogs a better shot at a national title.
Finally, Red Sox fans complaining about payroll, please shut it until you’re not outspending the Blue Jays by 51.5%, the Orioles by 82.6%, and the Rays by 93.8%. The Red Sox are part of this “problem.”
@ russ
couple of questions:
are you claiming that the yankees found out some secret to winning in the 1930’s and have passed it down through generations of yankee owners and GMs? Otherwise tradition really doesn’t have any say in this conversation since Joe was talking about today. He would admit that payroll did not help the Yankees win any championships in 1930. But it did help (not the only reason) in 2009.
Your homegrown 4 make more combined money than some TEAMs, this is the point Joe is making. Same with the fact that many teams had the homegrown talent to trade for A-Rod, but they did not have the money to actually have him play for them if they did trade for him. You should talk about Melky Cabrera or Gardner or Hughes or Joba when talking about homegrown players since they are playing for the minimum. And the four biggest reasons you won the world series as well. So maybe those minimum salary players are the reason.
“Yankees fans don’t understand that strategy because the Yankees will never, ever have to use it. The Yankees have gotten better by 1) buying expensive players in the free agent market, 2) drafting players who drop in the amateur draft because they are asking for too much money.”
WRONG.
C – Posada, homegrown cheap international signing
1B – Tex, expensive FA
2B – Cano, homegrown cheap international signing
3B – Rodriguez, via trade with Texas PAYING THE YANKEES in the deal*
SS – Jeter, homegrown
LF – Damon, mid-level FA.
CF – Melky/Gardner, homegrown and cheap
RF – Excellent swindle from the White Sox
SP – Sabathia, Burnett, Pettitte (yeah I’ll count him) – all $ signings
The rest of the P – homegrown.
Please compare this list with other teams. See what happens.
*The guy traded for Rodriguez, Alfonso Soriano, was scouted in the Japanese minor leagues and signed for bupkis.
Even as a Yankee fan basking in the glow of last night’s win, I loved this article.
One thing missing from your A-E loop, though, was the fact that, despite all of the complaining about the situation, there isn’t a viable solution, which leads to a lot of people to just accept the status quo. Also, too many people fault the Yankees for taking advantage of a system that is weighted in their favor. It’s unfair that the Yankees CAN spend so much money, but it’s not bad that they do (for them); every fan wants his or her owner to spend money to win.
I think I feel about this the way Mr. Pink feels about tipping: “I’m very sorry [the Twins can't afford to keep Santana or Mauer]. That’s (screwed) up, but it ain’t my fault….If you show me a piece of paper that says [the league should be more equitable], I’ll sign it. Put it to a vote and I’ll vote for it. But what I won’t do is play ball.”
It’s unrealistic and unfair to expect the Yankees to NOT take advantage of the inequities tipped in their favor. In the 1970s, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar left the Bucks for LA because he said Milwaukee wasn’t a big enough city for him. Did fans expect L.A. to limit the culture in its city so it could stop attracting fans?
Because of their financial situation, due to the market they are in and not there marketing as Mike #28 would like you to believe. The Yankees have 4 distinct advantages that other teams may have just one MAYBE two (boston, LA…) of those same advantages. Some teams have none, but the Yankees clearly have all 4 and they are:
1. They can go out and fill holes by signing the best free agents on the market every year.
2. They can absorb bad contracts or injuries to high priced players.
3. They can afford to assume risk with draft player who are asking for huge signing bonuses. Also they can sign foreign players who are highly sought after.
4. They can keep their stars and fans favorites by signing them to huge contracts.
#4 is what irritates me the most. Yankees fans will tell you that they team is not only free agents it is home grown Yankee talent. Weren’t CC, ARod, Tex, AJ, Damon someone else home grown talent at one time and then they became to expensive.
I will admit I am a Twins fan. If we were able to keep Johan, Joe Mauer, Torii, Justin M. and Jason Bartlett together while adding 1 big time pitcher and 1 impact hitter every year it would be great, but that is not the reality of the Twins or for most teams. Not only do the Yankees have money but they get to keep the Heros of the team together while they are still superstars, which in my mind is what makes the Yankees history and legacy persist into this day and age for the supporters of that team. I have a hard time believing Derek Jeter or Mo will ever play for another team. They will end their careers as marginal player and high priced icons for the bombers. Probably working for the team as coaches, PR gig or consultants making obscene money, when their monuments are erected. They day that a superstar/ face of the franchise retires with your team will be few and far between for the rest of us. However we can always cheer for them and relive the momories when they come to play our young and developing and scrappy hometown nine. Then we can hear everyone talk about the professionalism, legacy and history of the storied NYY.
@75: What you are missing is that the Yankees, unlike a great many teams, can resign their own free agents to lucrative deals that keep them in New York instead of being traded for a group of 4 prospects that might or might not pan out.
Do you honestly think that if the Mariners had developed Jeter and Posada that they would still be in Seattle today?
I think mentioning the Pirates and Royals (and, perhaps, the Orioles or Nationals) in THIS discussion in missing the point. There’s no set of rules or revenue sharing agreements that could make the Pirates or Royals competitive under their current management.
By all means, complain about the Yankees’ advantage. But the Royals’ record for the last decade is not proof of it, no more than the Lions’ record is proof that the NFL’s revenue sharing agreements destine certain teams to fail there, too.
The Royals “can’t compete” because they are stupid, not because they are poor.
Ok, don’t compare the Yankees to a small market team like the Royals, or Pirates, because you know, New Yorkers are better than those people and fill the stadium, etc.
So let’s compare the Yankees to a team that sells out its stadium every game, that has a large geographical following, and that, by all accounts, does things the right way.
So let’s compare the Yankees to the Cardinals. Why, if we are saying that the Yankees’ larger stream of revenue is due to them doing things the right way, do they have more than the Cardinals? Please explain.
It all comes down to a very, very large local TV/radio market, that no other team can hope to match and the Yankees getting to, for the most part, keep all that money.
Another bitter, rambling idiot
2009 WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS..END OF STORY..THEY WERE EXPECTED TO WIN AND THAT IS WHAT THEY DID. YOU ARE PAID TO PERFORM I BET IF THEY OFFERED YOU $48 MILLION TO CLOSE DEALS OR WIN A CASE YOU WOULD NOT TURN AWAY THE MONEY..MONEY MAKES MONEY AND THE YANKEES THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE PROVIDED BASEBALL ITS SURVIVAL IM SURE THE OTHER TEAMS DONT MIND THAT REVENUE SHARING CUT THEIR TEAM RECEIVES EVERY TIME THE YANKEES INVADE THEIR BALLPARK TEAMS SHOULD LOOK AT THEIR MANAGEMENTS LACK OF VISION OR FORESIGHT TO UNDERSTAND ITS MORE THAN A GAME ITS BUSINESS I GUESS IN NY .500 BALL IS NOT A CREDO LIKE OTHER TEAMS SO ALL YOU OTHER TEAMS GET OUT THEIR OPENING DAY AND TRY TO BEAT THE BIG BAD WOLF WITH CAPITAL FUNDING INSTEAD OF STICKS AND STONES IN YOUR LOCAL FISH WRAPPER.
I’m not a Yankees fan, but I have no problem with them spending all that money. It’s funny that most Americans are against socialism (or at least they used to be), but they want it in their sports leagues.
If the Royals put a better product on the field, they could charge higher prices, draw more fans, get more money for their tv/radio rights, etc. They’ll obviously never get to the Yankees’ revenue level, but they could get to a level that allows them to compete year in & year out.
“Finally, Red Sox fans complaining about payroll, please shut it until you’re not outspending the Blue Jays by 51.5%, the Orioles by 82.6%, and the Rays by 93.8%. The Red Sox are part of this “problem.””
Wrong. The Red Sox just happen to finally have owners who are able (and willing) to go toe to toe, as far as they can, with the Yankees. The Yankees are the problem the new Red Sox ownership just decided it was time to start giving them competition.
http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/2000/05/most-lucrative-contracts.html
It’s a fun page. There, you’ll see that the Yankees have the highest paid reliever, the highest paid catcher, the highest paid first baseman, the third highest paid second baseman, the highest paid shortstop, the highest paid No. 1 starter in Sabathia, and the highest paid No. 2 in Burnett.
Of course, Yankee fans would have you believe they get the best players because people want to play for them because of their history. As if every last one of those guys (other than Cano, who is still under control) wouldn’t be a Detroit Tiger or Seattle Mariner right now if the Yankees didn’t offer more money.
#82: Capslock off, there, pal. We get it. You’re awesome because your team won the World Series. Now, please be so kind as to let us deconstruct baseball for you.
Baseball equally shares internet revenue, doesn’t it?
That’s the hope for the future, because these TV contracts are going to drop a ton in value in about 10 years and be replaced by internet revenue.
Most fans will be watching the games via the internet in a decade, through a device attached to the TV the way a cable box is now. MLB as a whole will get the money from that and divide it equally between all the teams.
But the next decade or so is going to be brutal though, because the Yankees new stadium is going to help them a lot financially, and they’ll keep signing free agents, like Joe Mauer. It’s going to take a long time before the YES network revenue drops enough to make much difference.
PS, a lot of the Yankees “home grown” players were international free agents that they outbid other teams for. Mariano Rivera, Cano, even the above-mentioned Alfonso Soriano weren’t drafted, they were signed as free agents, and the Yankees outbid all other teams for them. That’s part of their advantage that people don’t talk about much.
PPS, the obscene Yankee payroll numbers that Joe listed are actually too low, because they don’t include luxury tax payments, which the Yankees pay tens of millions each year based on their bloated salaries. The amount they pay for their players compared to the other teams is even higher.
To Nate @ 24 and 70:
The notion that the Pirates fundamentally cannot compete because they cannot go after good players is without basis in reality.
They cannot compete with the Yankees, it is true. They also probably cannot compete with the Red Sox, Mets, Phillies, Dodgers, Angels, Mariners and a few others. Fortunately for them, the Pirates don’t have to compete with any of those teams in order to contend for the playoffs. They merely have to beat the St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago Cubs, the Houston Astros, the Cincinnati Reds and the Milwaukee Brewers. That’s it. Finish with a better record than those 5 teams and they’re in the playoffs.
It cannot seriously be contended that the Pirates cannot compete with those 5 teams. The Cubs and Astros play in much bigger markets than Pittsburgh but neither, obviously, has ever been any type of model of success year after year. Although St. Louis is virtually no bigger than Pittsburgh, the Cardinals are also a bigger market I suppose, owing to their popularity throughout the midwest. They’re clearly the closes thing to a powerhouse that the Pirates have to deal with but they’re hardly insurmountable. Milwaukee and Cincinnati have essentially no financial advantages over Pittsburgh.
It’s arguably the easiest division in baseball in which to compete (possibly the AL Central is even easier). The Pirates have no excuses.
Yankees fans with the bitter responses – we’re not asking you to feel bad about the title. It was earned, it’s the current system. We’re wanting a better system, where one team doesn’t have a GIANT advantage over the rest. Might this be better for baseball as a a whole?
I just get sick watching a team operate on a complete different playing field than even the other privledged ones.
For the most part, great points all around in Joe’s article as well as in the comments. The wounds of this season are fresh, so criticism is ok. But really, it’s time for solutions, not complaining.
I’m not going to re-tread what’s been stated here over and over again, but one thing that kills the argument for a more equitable platform is the idea that the small-market owners would really have to buy into it.
For fans of the Twins, my heart truly goes out to you. However, part of me would seethe if I knew the owner of my team was at one time one of the richest men in America and refused to operate his team at any level below a profit. In other words, yeah, an equitable system would be great, but do the owners of teams like the Twins and Marlins even care? What proof do we have that men like the late Carl Pohlad wouldn’t just rather have their extra $30M while watching large market teams kill each other over free agents; content with being what they are: a well-run middle class team praying for some good luck.
“Yankees fans with the bitter responses – we’re not asking you to feel bad about the title. It was earned, it’s the current system. We’re wanting a better system, where one team doesn’t have a GIANT advantage over the rest. Might this be better for baseball as a a whole?
I just get sick watching a team operate on a complete different playing field than even the other privledged ones.”
Again, I’m a big Royals fan, and I insist that equal spending will not give the Royals any kind of advantage as long as idiots run and coach the team. It’s one thing if you can only afford dregs (that’s not the Royals problem)…it’s ANOTHER thing when you WANT Jose Guillen, Mike Jacobs and Yuni Betancourt on your team.
Branch Rickey said, “Luck is the residue of design.” Bud Selig has taken this literally. Let eight teams into the playoffs. Maybe a second-tier, small market team will get in among the financial giants — especially the Yankees. Then, it’s a crapshoot. Anyone can win a five or seven-game series. So we get a “World Series Champion” who is not the best team of anything.
You get the Marlins as a two-time World Series Champion, without ever winning anything longer than a seven-game series.
@83 “It’s funny that most Americans are against socialism (or at least they used to be), but they want it in their sports leagues.”
Most Americans are actually not against socialism, as Medicare and Social Security have proven. They’ve just been brainwashed by those who benefit from monopoly capitalism into believing that they do.
I think the most salient point in Joe’s post is the bit about the Yankees being a notch (well, several notches) above even the big-market teams like the Red Sox, Mets, Dodgers, Cubs, Phillies, et. al. I liked Dan’s four points – it’s true, no other team in the league has ALL of those advantages simultaneously. It’s tremendously powerful.
The thing that I keep coming back to about the ‘09 Yanks is that they signed Texeira AND Sabathia. The Red Sox or Mets probably could’ve signed one. But ONLY the Yankees have the money to sign both. Nobody else in baseball could have done that, plain and simple.
Not that I blame Yankees’ management. I’d do the same thing if I were them. And the way that some teams’ owners hoard revenue sharing money is shameful. Still, finding a way to bring the Yankees closer to the other big market teams, at the very least, would be good for the game.
Oh, and ALM: say things all in caps. It makes people listen to you.
I am pleased to see all the Yankee hating here. This is a very rapid accumulation of comments, and nearly all are Yank haters, just arguing about how much they should be hated. Very good. However, a true Yankee hater (such as myself) would not need a high payroll to hate the Yanks. No sir. I have hated them long before it was cool and I will hate them long after. High payroll, high success? I hate them. Low payroll, low success (1980s) I hated them then too. Steinbrenner family? I hated them before that. These are all fair reasons to hate, but really, you should hate the Yankees beyond reason. You are all a bunch of amateurs.
First of all, I’m not a Yankees fan. Secondly, the Yankees are great for baseball; I think the Yankees spending tons of money is also good for baseball. This is because the Yankees actually spend the money they make. The Steinbrenners, I believe, make less money from the Yankees each year than Jeffrey Loria does from the Marlins. It is good for baseball fans to have owners that are committed to winning and are willing to spend their revenues to accomplish that, and the presence of the Yankees forces other owners to do the same.
On another note, it hardly covers the difference, but keep in mind that at least a portion of that extra money that the Yankees spend is due to the cost of living in New York, which is considerably higher than pretty much anywhere else in the country. Regardless of what the job is, someone working in New York is going to be making more than someone doing the same job in Kansas City.
I won’t castigate JoePo because I think he’s a wonderful writer and an even more insightful thinker — but this post is short on the latter. There are no solutions posed, only hand-wringing and sanctimonious finger-pointing. Granted, baseball has a vested interest in keeping the competition well, competitive — they’ll lose fans if Hope doesn’t spring eternal each Spring. But blaming the Yankees as a convenient scapegoat is absurd. They’re maximizing their output given the parameters of their industry — just as every single one of us does, day in and day out. The poster who mentioned Sports Illustrated made me laugh out loud — why does SI get to poach all the good writers from Kansas City, after all? How is that “fair”?
Wow, some really great stuff here. My two cents (and when I started writing comments were in the 60s, so my apologies to anyone in comments 65-95 who addressed these points):
#20: Great post, and I’m with you completely. Yankee fan by birth, and I would be fine with a situation that leveled the playing field better. I’ll even say that 2009 does not feel nearly as good as the 1977-78 or 1996-2000 teams. I’d much rather win a fair fight — or at least one that was a bit less unfair, because hey, we all do prefer winning to losing.
#24: Also a great post, one of the best explanations I’ve seen of the “no hope” problem so many baseball cities have. I live in Baltimore now, and I really feel for the despondent / indifferent O’s fans here, who at one time not long ago were among the best in the sport. And #60, you should read 24’s post again, because you’re missing his point. In the NFL, some teams stay good, and other teams stay crappy, because of their management, not their market size. All fans want is to have a chance to succeed if their team is run well. And by succeed, I don’t mean one lucky year (i.e. Tampa Bay 2008), but that you can get good, stay good, and especially I think, develop long-term relationships with your stars because your team can afford to keep them and still compete (e.g. Brett, Yount, Ripken, Murray, Gwynn, Puckett, just to name a handful).
Baseball stayed relatively level in the 1975-1995 period (and maybe we will look back on that as a golden age, in which there was both player fluidity and a somewhat level playing field in terms of revenue), because the teams had not yet figured out how to really max out their revenue potential. Or maybe the prosperity of the 1982-2000 period created new opportunities for the big market teams to generate more revenue than they had ever dreamed of (i.e. mega-premium seating and local cable tv contracts). Regardless, what’s happened since then is that teams like the Yankees have streaked away in the amount of money they get from their 1) local TV revenues; 2) stadium gate / luxury boxes.
And that’s the nub of the problem baseball has compared especially to the NFL: its revenue is primarily local, not national (i.e. the NFL’s network TV contract). And I don’t see how you can get around that. A quick example. My favorite relatively cheap seat in any stadium is the front of the upper deck, behind home plate. At Camden Yards, that seat is $20 ($30 for the Yankees and Sox games), and I can get that seat for most games pretty easily. At Yankee Stadium that seat is $150, and is still hard to get. As a fan in Baltimore, do I really have the right to expect a major league product for a minor league price? Doesn’t a fan in New York (or Boston) have the right to demand a premium product for the premium price? As another commenter rightly pointed out, prices of any product are determined not by the cost of production, but solely by the consumer’s willingness to pay. If there’s enough income in Boston to pay the Fenway prices, why should the Sox owners charge less for those seats?
But let’s say there was a push that 50 percent of all revenue (including local TV, tickets, etc) be put into a common salary pool. That’s reasonable, and may help level the field a bit. But taking the revenue streams of the big-market teams will diminish the value of those franchises. And how can the owners of not just the Yankees, but the Red Sox, Phillies, Angels, Dodgers, and several others stand for that, especially those owners who bought their teams in good faith based on the system that already existed. And why should the small-market owners get a windfall, when they bought into a system knowing that they were buying teams at a small-market discount?
And then of course there’s the legitimate issue that the player’s union won’t stand for capping salaries either. Personally, I’d be fine with breaking the union, but we’ve seen going all the way back to the mid-70s that there will always be some arbitrator, judge, or other political functionary who would not permit the owners to do that, even if they did have the will to try — see e.g. the collusion ruling in 1987, and the failed use of replacements in 1995. The reality is that the players, backed by political power and influence, have had the dominant role in the sport for at least 20 years now, and that is another huge reason why the gap in spending between top and bottom has become a chasm. Even if owners at the top were willing to act for the good of all the team owners and limit salaries, as they tried in the mid-80s, they know that they will be slapped down with huge legal penalties. You can guarantee that if salaries depress this winter, more and more the agents will be making cases again for “collusion.”
So this is all a moot discussion, I’m afraid, because the alliance of the big market teams and the players’ union won’t be broken anytime in the foreseeable future. And I do fear that in 30-40 years, major league baseball will be a dying spectator sport, because so many of this generation of kids for reasons of both geography (no hope for their local team) and culture (it’s too slow for their temperaments) don’t buy into it at all.
So I would go back to the very reasonable question posed by #20: what solutions are there that we can actually get by the big market owners and the players’ union? I don’t see any, at least not until the sport begins to suffer some kind of catastrophic decline (i.e. small market teams simply folding from lack of support, tv ratings collapsing to nothing), and we’re nowhere near that yet.
Perfect world, I’d say the Costas “cap AND floor” salary model would be great. But for the reasons outlined above, I don’t see how it can happen given the economic/revenue structure of baseball.
Apologies for the length of this post, and thanks to anyone who read it to the end.
Two solutions to ponder:
1) No longer share gate receipts (I think the road team gets 30%), in return all local TV/radio money goes into common pool and gets divided 30 ways. That way, the successful/well-run franchises get rewarded for putting fannies in the seats, but we take out the inherent unfairness that some teams have with TV/radio contracts that absolutely dwarf other teams.
2) OK, this is the crazy solution, courtesy of a (past) crazy owner. In the words of Charles O. Finley, make ‘em all free agents. One reason that FAs every year get so much money is that only a limited amount of them end up on the market every year, driving the price up for those players. But that wouldn’t happen if every year, every player was a FA. Salaries would drop like a rock. And how could the union complain if the owners said, we are going to allow you to get a new contract every year?
What’s the greatest fight in history? Anyone? Anyone?
Right. It’s David v Goliath — still getting regular mentions thousands of years later.
OK. That may or may not have really happened. So something from more recent times? My favourite is the Battle of Britain. “The Few” and all that.
And if you don’t think sport is a metaphor for warfare, then you don’t really understand sport.
In both of the above cases, the little guy won. He was also the good guy . . . and not only because the winners get to write history. Genuine good guys.
Which is how any sports fan will view his team. The good guys. Then to really get engaged in a contest, that fan has to see the opposition as the bad guys.
In the Yankees, baseball has the perfect villain. It’s obviously a stretch to suggest the NY logo morphs into a swastika but Steinbrenner’s hired hand ARod at the plate staring down the pitcher could be Ryker’s gunslinger Jack Wilson standing on the boardwalk staring down Shane.
You want to take away the Yankees’ advantages? Do that and you’ll remove the greatest asset baseball has, a team everyone loves to hate.
Diminish the Yankees, diminish the passion.
Wait, where’s Joseph Heller on that poll?
Dude, thats like the craziest thing I ever seen!
RT
http://www.private-web.se.tc
[...] His latest blog post gets at exactly the feelings I (and many others) harbor about the latest World Series winners. Of course I hate the Yankees—I think it’s actually built into my DNA somehow. But Joe explains why we shouldn’t buy the Yankee fans’ argument that spending the most money in the game doesn’t guarantee championships—why we should be a lot more outraged by their payroll than I already am. It’s definitely worth a read, especially on the day after the Evil Empire has cashed in yet again. [...]
Is it me, or did the postgame media (mostly non-yankee fans) seem to be deeply and honestly content that the universe had been restored to order (a la hank).
that the bulimia-yankeeosa (the nausea of watching the yanks win another world series by overspending in a subsidized monopoly) is a national right that we have not been able to savor in a long time.
Wow..those are amazing numbers!
also, aside from making them all free agents, it might help to open up the market, particularly the ny market.
Just looked at the World Series history. The Yankess have won 27 of them and lost 13. That means that in the 105-year history of the World Series, the Yankees have appeared in 40 of them. They didn’t appear in the first 17 championships, so in the last 88 WS they have appeared in 40 or them. 40 of 88. What a system!
Can the Yankees fans please never mention the time before FAs? Because when they couldn’t sign them on the market, the Yankees just used their still-large-market payroll to sign indie league’s players n abundance and victimize small-market losing teams and take anything of value.
Not a Yankee fan (Angels fan actually).
But having the Yankees in the playoffs more than any other team helps everybody. Witness the huge WS ratings this year, and the small market teams are going to love that revenue check.
Fact of the matter is 27 out of 30 teams have a reasonable chance to put together a playoff squad, but TB, BAL and TOR have to be perfect or they are toast.
Malcom Gladwell summed up the problem concisely a few years ago in an interview with Rob Neyer. (The last sentence):
“What, exactly, is supposed to sustain a fan in, say, Kansas City? Minnesota and Montreal used to be great baseball towns. But the fans there were destroyed by the idiocy of a business that puts the interests of its employees (players) ahead of the interests of its customers.”
There are a lot of factors that affect success: money, smart front office, luck. I don’t mind when teams get an advantage via the latter two, even if it lasts a long time.
A Yankee defender angrily asked why weren’t people complaining during the great Braves’ run of playoff appearances. Well, they didn’t have top payrolls, but were smart & lucky to get 3 future hall of fame pitchers and a few good hitters. They were still playing by the same rules as other teams.
I’m an aging, championship-starved Cub fan, and part of me is relieved that they’ve finally started spending like a big-market team. So far the big payroll hasn’t brought playoff wins, and has made disappointing seasons like 2009 feel sort of bitter. I’d rather my team be smart — but with enough money to keep good players.
Anyway, my biggest reason for wanting payroll parity is fairness to Tampa Bay, Toronto and Baltimore. If I cheered for one of those AL east teams, I’d probably become just give up on MLB.
Baseball is a lot like poker. There is skill involved, and long run, the better players win or are profitable, but short term any idiot with 2 cards can win a hand, so there is a huge luck factor short term that evens out for the long term.
also, although yankee-hating is inevitable and essentially american, i’m not convinced that their relative over-investment in players is.
not only did the late 90’s correspond with new labor agreements, it also corresponded with a campaign to invest city funds in an expensive new stadium.
the stadium is now up and running.
we’ve all seen what happens to these other teams post-stadium drive, and i believe it’s a mistake to just assume that the new york yankees FO is not interested in that.
sure, it’s possible they are different, but it’s also possible they are largely the same.
What I think would be a very interesting bit of information to bring to this topic are the comparative revenues of the teams in the league (with revenue sharing added) and perhaps also how much money the owner of each team is worth. I’ve heard yankee revenue dwarfs other big market teams just as their payroll does, but steinbrener is no where near the richest of owners; when the owners of the twins say they can’t afford torri hunter/santana, I’m simply not sure I believe it.
Thanks Joe,
Your post is basically what I and others have been arguing today over at our blog. I wish I would’ve read it earlier in the day.
Great Job!
Why is THIS not your SI column?
and while i’m at it…
it’s also a mistake to drink the steinbrenner kool-aid that these (relatively) expensive teams are a gift to new yorkers, and yankees fans.
I think the beginning of this post said it perfectly, “it’s hot in phoenix”. Yes the Yankees can spend 10’s of millions more then other teams, yes they can and do win more then any other team, yes they bought that, so what! What is so unfair about that? What would we do about it, should we make the Yankees give some of their money to other teams? How about first you pay for the poor neighbourhood kid’s college bill so that he can buy the same education your kid got. Don’t like that? Ok, how about we have a salary cap, but first let’s put a salary cap in the workplace. For a country that that cringes any time someone says socialism, we sure a a bunch of commies when to comes to sports.
OK, I ran some quick-and-dirty calculations using USAToday’s MLB salary database. Even looking at only 1996-2009, when the Evil Empire’s Dark Age of the Sith apparently began and Yankees had the #1 payroll all but one season, standardized payroll correlates to team quality (using either wins or normalized run differential) with a coefficient of less than 0.50. In other words, LESS THAN HALF of the rationale for team quality is tied to payroll — and that’s with Yankee teams having some payrolls more than three standard deviations above average. So let’s look at the numbers and not play the “this just sounds right” game, shall we?
good point James.
losing can be very profitable, and losing money can make the team a tax shelter.
i just don’t think that all these monopolistic measures suggested here would make baseball more entertaining or enjoyable.
Come on! quit complaining. It’s been nine years since we won our last world series. We win once, and NOW everyone moans
Baseball: America’s Pastime.
Capitalism is just as prevalent in baseball as it is in the rest of the United States. Every team is run like a business. Other teams are in large markets but none match the success of the Yankees. Just as was said regarding an NFL team thriving on good management, the Yankees thrive on a good business model. Fans of other teams should be upset with their team’s owners, not the Yankees. Any team can spend, and if they cannot, find an owner that is willing to invest in the team. The basis of the Yankees business model is that, every dollar they spend on players is an investment, and that it will bring positive returns. Good scouting + player development + positive attitude + good managing top to bottom. Any team with that recipe will have just as good a shot at winning as another.
The Yankees were quite satisfied to sign one big free agent a year back in the late ’90s, early ’00s. For example, after 1998 they signed “only” Roger Clemens. He had just come off a Cy Young award and the Yankees had just won the WS after winning 114 regular season games, so it seemed excessive. But it was just one marquee free agent. After 1999, they didn’t really sign anybody of note, although they picked up former 20-game winner Denny Neagle as well as David Justice mid-season. After ‘00, they signed the top free agent pitcher available, Mike Mussina, but that was about it. After ‘01 they picked up former MVP Jason Giambi for a gazillion dollars, but again that was the only major superstud they signed. But it was here where the Yanks went from big spenders to outrageous spenders. They officially became the Evil Empire by signing Cuban sensation Jose Contreras. They also signed Japanese superstar Hideki Matsui. Then they signed promising young Tigers pitcher Jeff Weaver. That was three big pickups in a single offseason. They must have liked the taste of it because after ‘03 they signed ARod, Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, Jon Lieber, Javy Vazquez, Tom Gordon, and Paul Quantrill. For some reason, they went from generally picking up one superstar per offseason to signing multiple superstars per offseason, and it started prior to ‘03. The sad thing is the overspending continued, but was progressively less splashy in the ensuing years: Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright in ‘05. Johnny Damon and Bobby Abreu in ‘06. Andy Pettitte in ‘07. And NOBODY in ‘08.
Of course the Yankees missed the playoffs in ‘08, which resulted in the offseason splurge prior to this season. Considering they won the WS this season, and missed the playoffs after their quiet ‘07-’08 offseason, I would predict the spending will continue unabated. Look out MLB!
Another in the closet, jealous Red Sox fan.
The solution to the “problem” is something that you folks supporting small market teams do not want to hear:
Contraction
If you eliminated the uncompetitive teams the level of talent would increase to the point where all teams would field a reasonably competent team. Sure the Yankees would still get the Arods but nobody would have to field a Yuni.
Maybe instead of eliminating the teams completely, you create a second league and implement relegation (like Euro soccer).
Good screed, Joe. Thanks.
To me, there are two things in baseball that just don’t go together. The first thing is the payroll and revenue disparities which the Yankees wealthier and more successful than their competition. The second thing is the anti-trust exemption which allows the MLB owners to exclude new teams and existing franchises from moving into high-revenue territory. The anti-trust exemption locks in the Yankees revenue advantage, which perpetuates their on-the-field dominance.
Other sports (NFL, NBA) love the exemption because it puts money in their pockets. They are, and remain, the only game in town in their respective sports. They counter the anti-competitive tendencies of revenue disparity through a combination of salary caps and luxury taxes, with generally acceptable results.
In European football you have a generally open system. The money you choose to spend on your team is really up to you, and you get to play your way into the top division. Nobody is locked in up there, unless they’re willing to spend the money to make themselves good enough on the field every year. And a team can start up on someone else’s turf–there is no “turf” to speak of, except for the overwhelming regional loyalties which tie a team to the fans of a particular area and prevent them from becoming fans of another team.
Baseball has to change. The Yankees are a joke. The Phillies are the Non-Yankee Champs of ‘09, and that is the trophy which, increasingly, matters the most.
1. George Steinbrenner made an investment predicated on a set of bylaws when he purchased the Yankees. He paid three times as much as much as any other team was worth at the time. His front office has been very good at innovating and exploiting the revenue opportunities. You can’t rewrite the rules now because you don’t like how it turned out. That’s scary in a capitalistic society. T
2. The Steinbrenner family put the money on the field. It’s insane to spend an extra $80 million a year to give your team and your fans the best chance at a world championship. Their lack of greed is astounding and we Yankees fans are very lucky to have ownership that cares that much about our team and winning.
3. This argument always goes back to small market teams. Get rid of the small market teams then. Kansas City can root for the Cardinals…Oakland for the Giants…Padres for the Angels and so on. There are too many teams in traditional triple a markets. Go back to triple a and leave the big leagues to the 16-24 markets than can support it.
Does anyone anywhere appreciate a good “dynasty” anymore? As a Yankee fan, I love seeing them win, of course. I could care less for any other sports team in the country, so when it comes down to the NBA finals or the Super Bowl, I always love seeing the team that won last year try to repeat. Do people really enjoy sports that have essentially a revolving door of Champions? If they do, why not just schedule each baseball team their World Series Championship once every 30 years and then we can all feel warm and fuzzy inside knowing everything is “fair”.
Don’t call baseball a sport. It is a game. Any activity where a 200lb out of shape man that gets winded after running 80′ is an asset is a game. E.g. bowling. I’m not trying to detract from the spectacle. Everyone is wired to be entertained differently and entitled to that. You have to understand though, this game you’ve held up to this lofty status is a business, pure and simple. It exists to make money first. People invest in it for profit. If a team has the wherewithal to better itself and still make record profits, why shouldn’t they? If the MLB commission decides that having one dominant team is hurting their overall business with said practice by decreasing overall interest in the game, it will regulate that team’s adverse effect to better its business. Yes, there business is driven by entertaining the masses but business is good the way it is. Don’t expect some passionate plea appealing to a sense of nobility to change a thing. If you don’t like it and you want it to change, stop watching it. Get other people to stop watching. Stop buying their product. Then they might change their minds.
stopped reading after “point D”
@ 129: Baseball is as much a sport as any. Its physical exertion may take place in extremely short bursts, but calling it a “game” and not a “sport” because 95% of baseball is played between the ears is just evidence that thats the place where you are lacking.
I also like your example of a “200lb out of shape man that gets winded after running 80 feet”. First of all, the bases are 90 feet. Second of all, 90% of players in the 4 major sports weigh well more than 200lbs, and third, there are positions in other sports where the whole POINT of those positions is to be large (Center in basketball, linemen in football.) No one will tell me it takes less physical skill to hit a baseball (something only the greatest ever can do 3/10 times), than it does to stand opposed to another guy and push him, or put a ball in a hoop thats 3 feet above your head.
I think an important point that Joe is making is not so much about the relative fairness of the Yankees salary, but more about the cloying bullshit about the Yankees “coming together” or “winning one for the Boss.” Which is ridiculous.
It would be nice to hear Derek Jeter say, “Well, we’ve got four or five of the highest paid players in the history of professional sports on the field and several others that signed contracts that could put colonies on the Moon. That’s pretty much how and why we won it all.” If one of these guys shows a little candor, a lot of the complaints would go away.
I appreciate that the Steinbrenner family has put the operating profits of the team back into payroll. That’s great, but let’s not make them out to be saints — the value of the franchise has risen exponentially; so it is not as if this is some sort of non-profit enterprise.
Also, to all those who say teams like the Twins need to do the same — because they already do (or at least they claim they do, they haven’t shown me the books to prove it). The Twins payroll was about $70 million this year, which could well be what operating profits were. It will go up next year with the new stadium, and the Twins say they will raise payroll accordingly (somewhere in the $90-100 million range). Better, but not in the same range as the Yankees. Yes, they can afford Mauer and Morneau, but they can’t take Kei Igawa fliers, either.
I’m not angry with the Yankees; they play within the rules. But please don’t tell me it’s simply a matter of small- and mid-market owners pumping operating profits back into payroll. That won’t help.
Posnanski hits it on the head! I always get asked “Hey Mr. Free Market, how can you complain about the Yankees, it’s the free market you love so much?”. BECAUSE IT’S NOT A FREE MARKET!!! The Yankees have been granted a semi-monopoly position in a gigantic market. The Mets share that market and they suck, so that’s supposed to prove that money doesn’t matter and make me feel better? My Twins, even if they were to wring every penny’s worth of revenue out of their operations wouldn’t even come close to the revenue streams that the Yankees can command, all because of the Yanks’ ability to collect TV revenue. Watch next year- the Twins in their new park will draw the same number of fans, give or take, as the Yankees, but won’t bring in anywhere near the cash- and there is NOTHING the Twins can do to change that fact! And until MLB recognizes that TWO teams create the product I see no hope. We are moving toward a super league of perhaps 8 or 9 teams (BOS, LAD, LAA, CHC, CHW, NYY, NYM, PHI, and perhaps STL, which I know doesn’t exactly fit but for historical reasons belongs) And- the Yankees will dominate the super league, too. The rest of us get the scraps. I doubt in the absence of change I’ll ever see another Twins’ WS win.
And while I at my venomous peak- anyone remember how the Yankees uses to game the system in the 50’s when they had their own Major League minor league team in Kansas City?
Casey, agreed. The reason the Yankees won is because they are the most talented team in baseball and played well in the playoffs. End of story.
@ 127’s 2nd point is spot on. The Pohlad’s could pour tons and tons of money into the Twins … they don’t. Jeffrey Lauria already pockets revenue sharing and MLBAM money.
I’m truly sorry that other billionaire owners pocket not only a ton of profit but the free money they are given instead of reinvesting it on the field. Some teams are just blessed with dedicated ownership
Glen L.: what evidence do you have that the Pohlads don’t pour all of the Twins’ profits back into payroll? What evidence do you have that the Yankees pour more than the operating profits into payroll?
I get the disgust; I really do. Even though I’m a Yankee fan, and only became a fan in 2005, I get what riles people up.
BUT, and this is important, I’m willing to cave on 2002-2009. The spending was insane. Reckless. Disturbing. Outrageous. But previous to that, despite their history, the Yankees were more or less like any other team in the FA years. In 1998, the watershed year of the Yankees, the Orioles had a higher payroll. It’s really only become a serious problem since 2002, and the Yanks have only won one championship since then. People act as if the Yanks have been buying championships for the last 20 years, when it really hasn’t been that way.
I do agree that there’s too much inequity in the system. But a salary cap just hurts the players and helps the owners. Cap and floor forces smaller revenue teams to operate at a loss frequently and invest more money in mediocre players just to make floor. Moving more teams into New York sounds good, but is very insulting to fans wherever the team is currently residing and won’t realistically peel off fans from Yankees or Mets fanbases until a generation later (if even). I mean, when you move a team from KC or Cincy or Minnesota to New York, what you’re really saying is, “You’re not important/big enough to have a MLB team.” And while I know that mocking New Yorkers’ intelligence is always en vogue, I don’t think they’re going to immediately dump their fan allegiance and pick up a new team just because MLB says so. It means that the relocated team is going to have to have a huge advantage with the primary investment, and possibly get extra money from revenue sharing or in FA in order to create a team that can compete with two New York behemoths.
And then there’s the danger of creating a disincentive to reinvest in the team. If everyone is going to have the same amount of revenue, then what’s the point in trying to make a better on-field product? You’re never going to get that money back, so you might as well put only as much as necessary to meet floor and pocket any additional revenue. It’s a worse version of today, where some teams make more in revenue sharing than they pay out in salary.
The Yankees right now are maximizing their advantages and exploiting their opportunities. They are in the biggest market, but understand that New York is an incredibly diverse city and that there are always lots of entertainment opportunities. If the Yanks don’t field a good team, people will go to CitiField or Broadway or movies or Coney Island or any other multitude of entertainment venues (as they did in the late 80’s/early 90’s, when Yankees had almost no interest). They are doing what any intelligent organization would do in their situation (like the Sox are doing with NE and Fenway). What needs to happen in a well-thought out, reasonable system that allows for intelligent organizations to get back the effort they put in, penalizes bad organizations, and allows for more teams to have a shot in-season and off-season.
Let the whining begin!
PhilM @97: You wrote: “why does SI get to poach all the good writers from Kansas City, after all? How is that “fair”?”
You’re comparing apples and oranges. SI would LOVE to be the only sports publication in the country. They would love a monopoly and they don’t want competition. The Yankees, meanwhile, really wouldn’t do so well if they were the only team in the country. Thus, a viable MLB requires competition between teams. If the balance of competition becomes too top heavy, fan interest will subside in major parts of the country, leaving baseball more like hockey – where in some regions and in Canada it’s popular but nationwide it is not. So far, baseball doesn’t have that problem. But there has to be a balance so that the league becomes non-competitive on a wide basis. The Yanks are coming dangerously close to tipping that balance.
K.B.-YF What you say makes some sense- and there’s no point in even talking about moving other teams into NY or New England – it’s not going to happen. (I’d vote for expansion if it were possible. I’d've even moved the Expos to Worcester!
But… first of all there’s lots to do everywhere- I grew up in St. Paul, lived in Chicago and New York and there’s no shortage of things to do in those various locals- even here in Western MA there’s plenty to occupy one’s time. A crappy team won’t draw no matter where- but the important thing is the local TV money- that’s where the big teams have all the advantage, and it’s an advantage that can’t be solved short of expansion, and it’s an advantage that a full ball park doesn’t fix either. I’m not a big fan of the salary cap either, and I’m sure I haven’t sussed out the unintended consequeces of a salary floor, but the current system just SUCKS- and… memo to you Yankee fans- I love NY, used to live and work there but I just can’t stand comments like ” if you don’t like it you should just contract” It’s that “NY is the center of the universe and everyone else can go pound sand” attitude that offends my tender midwestern sensibilities. BTW even at 16 teams there will be perennial also-rans.
ganderson — whatever do you mean? The St. Louis Browns were a juggernaut.
The comments in #127 are terrifyingly ignorant and foolish. As is this common idea among Yankee and Red Sox fans that “small market” owners are at fault for not throwing their own money into a black hole in the name of winning, as though that has anything at all in common with what the Yankees and Red Sox do.
That’s all I have to say about this. That and that Poz hit the absolutely perfect note with this one. As he usually does, but especially with this one.
How many GIs in WW II ?were accused of being spies for saying the Brownies won the pennant
I hate baseball’s inflated salaries and lack of a salary cap.
However, the good players are seeking out the higher payday. Our society doesn’t reward people who take less money to play for a team like the Washington Senators. It rewards people who win at all costs.
Disgusting, but true. I got a bit sick to the stomach when I heard the Yankees’ payroll numbers last night, and thought of all the schools that could bankroll. Instead we’re closing schools down as the recession destroys our educational system.
Really you should be angry that there are more people condensed in a single city (New York) than anywhere else in America who are willing to give money to support the Yankees.
Because that’s what it comes down to. Let’s remove the Yankees from baseball for argument’s sake. You could reprint this column replacing “Yankees” with “Red Sox” and still make the same point. Then hypothetically remove the Red Sox from baseball, etc. etc. etc. It’s a slippery slope.
So what you’re really angry at is the fact that one team is able to spend more money than other teams, essentially due to the population density. Without so many people in NY, would there be a lucrative TV contract? Would sales be so high for merchandise and tickets? Of course not. Then where would the money come from? Steinbrenner (or any other owner) could spend out of pocket, but these are businessmen and not fans. Fans spend money to support the team, owners spend money to make more money. So your argument is flawed in that regards.
Like someone else mentioned there’s the fact that baseball ALLOWS teams to spend more than each other. And in that sense, baseball is a reflection of capitalism. In the real world nobody is telling companies or countries to “play fair”.
So the only way to really fix this problem is regulate how organizations spend their money. And therefore the only blame can be shone on those who are limiting this change: namely, the MLB commissioner’s office, owners, and player’s association. If you want change you have to go through one of those parties to get it. But here’s the rub: none of those parties want change.
Do you think owners want their teams to “play fair” or make more money? Owners will only care if their team wins the World Series if all other things are equal. But everything else won’t be equal. Only the lowest tier teams will benefit from this. Everyone else will be hurt financially.
Think of the commissioner’s office. What do they have to gain? Not much, really. First off their is bias as I’m assuming they’re employed and paid by the owners. So what’s good for the owners is good for the commissioner’s office. These are the guys that just want everything to stay status quo. They want to pick up their paychecks, slap on their corporate grins, and go about their relatively cushy jobs keeping their bosses happy.
Finally there’s the player’s association. Who are also paid by the owners. Is it in their best interest to have a revenue-sharing or salary cap rule in place? Frankly I’m not sure. A salary cap might hurt because it would mean less total dollars being paid out by all the owners to all the players. Revenue sharing would not in theory have this side effect. On the other hand, the owner’s are probably whispering in player’s ears, “if you have a breakout year and really impress us, you’ll get signed to a $70-100 million contract”. That’s a hard possibility to vote against.
@127, 128
Two points. 127 says “This argument always goes back to small market teams. Get rid of the small market teams then. Kansas City can root for the Cardinals… Oakland for the Giants… Padres for the Angels and so on. There are too many teams in traditional triple a markets. Go back to triple a and leave the big leagues to the 16-24 markets than can support it.
First off, if the issue is not that “the teams can’t support it.” The issue is that the owner doesn’t spend enough. You say that KC fans can root for the Cardinals. That would be like asking the Mets to contract and force their fans to root for the Phillies or Yankees. The Royals have won a world series. That town used to be crazy for the Royals (George Brett ringing any bells?). They were actually a force in the AL. Then David Glass took control of the team in the mid-90s and ran it into the ground. It’s not like they don’t like the team, it’s that their owner hasn’t invested in them enough to stay competitive. A short list of home grown stars that the Royals could not afford to keep in the past 15 years: Johnny Damon, Carlos Beltran, Jermaine Dye, David Cone, Kevin Appier. That’s all on the owner. But don’t blame it on the “fans who can’t support it.”
128: “Does anyone anywhere appreciate a good “dynasty” anymore? … Do people really enjoy sports that have essentially a revolving door of Champions? If they do, why not just schedule each baseball team their World Series Championship once every 30 years and then we can all feel warm and fuzzy inside knowing everything is “fair”.”
The issue isn’t that we want some revolving door where every team becomes a champion once every 30 years. That would defeat the purpose of playing the damn game. I’d be fine if someone like the Minnesota Twins won the World Series every year because at least we would know they were winning while playing with the same limitations as almost all the other teams.
Wait, scratch that. I mean, well, as a Tigers fan, I would only be “fine” with it in theory and not in practice. But you get my drift: Pick a team that has the same limitations as everyone else when it comes to monetary spending. Then you know they at least earned it because they played the best, not because they spent the most on the most expensive guys. (See: the San Antonio Spurs).
I think there are lots of reasons why baseball is so much less predictable– one of which is that the pitcher changes from one night to the next, which means the team looks much different when the #1 pitches as opposed to when the #4 or #5 pitches. Also, in most other sports, the team has some control over who takes charge in a given moment. The quarterback can pass to his best running back, a basketball team can give the ball to their big star. In baseball, anyone could be up at bat in a big moment.
Hooray for football season!
The Yankees are the team I grew up with, so I love them, as I would love the Indians had I grown up in Cleveland. They have ton of money. They win alot and it’s fantastic. Sorry to the rest of you! If I lived in Pittsburgh now I wouldn’t watch either.
I’d watch if I lived in Philly however.
I am a Yankee fan and I loved this post? Why? Because the only better thing than being loved is being hated; nothing is worse than indifference. The Yankees will always be relevant because large amounts of people care about them one way or the other. As a Yankee fan, it’s like having the best of both worlds: you get to enjoy your team’s accomplishment and be amused by the hate fueled angst of others.
With all that psycho babble aside, I think the biggest issue is whether the Yankees financial advantage (by the way, the fact that they have such a financial advantage over other large market teams is an accomplishment) is good or bad for baseball. I think the evidence is overwhelming that baseball is best when there are dominant teams…and for much of baseball history that team has been the Yankees. The Yankees’ current advantages are no greater now than in earlier times in history. Since the Babe, baseball has been the Yankees versus the field, and that arrangement has always seemed to work well. Now, that doesn’t mean MLB hasn’t tried to empower the field. From rules prohibiting trades to pennant winners (tried and quickly abandoned) to the amateur draft to expanded playoffs, baseball has made it difficult for teams like the Yankees. That isn’t rigging the game (at least not more than sports like the NFL, which rig the schedules and allow many more playoff teams), but evening the playing field.
The most popular moments in the games history have revolved around the Yankees success. With MLB poised to soar past the NFL in terms of revenue, it would be hard to argue that the game isn’t thriving in the current environment that so many decry. That’s exactly why the owners will never really seek a change. They realize the Yankees are a cash cow and have no interest in turning the sport into a sea of mediocrity. With its 16-game schedule and gambling-driven interest, the NFL can thrive under such a structure, but not baseball. Other sports, however, like international soccer, realize that a standard of excellence is what allows a league to thrive.
So, while Mr. Posnanski and fans of teams like the Pirates (how do the Yankees keep the Pirates from making the playoffs anyway?) are not unreasonable for whining about the Yankees financial strength, the reality is their angst generates interest, regardless of how fervently they insist they will abandon the sport. The reality is they will be back next year hoping to have a team good enough to measure up to the Yankees (even the Champion Phillies considered the Yankees a measuring stick). And, if they do have a team up to the challenge, the reward is far greater than beating the random flavor of the month. As for the Yankees, their challenge is taking on the field. Winning once or twice isn’t enough…their mission is beat everyone, every time.
The Yankees do have a financial advantage…as a Yankee fan, I not only acknowledge this, but encourage others to complain, scoff, lament and angrily write long blog posts abou it. The passion is good for baseball and fuels the Yankees’ own.
Check out this post along these lines, but I go a step farther than Joe, and say that the Yankees do on a team-scale with payroll what players like Bonds and others did on an individual-scale with steroids.
They stack the deck, they change probabilities of winning, and they taint the game (both in terms of fairness and sanctity). What the Yankees do in the absence of a salary cap is what Bonds et al did in the absence of an HGH ban, and their wins (and baseball) is tainted by the Steinbrenner era the same way Bonds’ records (or A-Rod’s sometime soon, and baseball) are tainted by the steroids era.
Neither is/was clearly and uncostestedly illegal, but just what players/teams do to gain an advantage. And however much congressional leaders are doing to eliminate steroids, they should be doing the same amount (or more) to institute a salary cap.
http://twinsmvb.com/2009/10/salary-caps-yankees-and-baseball/
Maybe someone needs to start a website: http://www.stoptheyankees.com/
The Yankees are truly America’s team! Free market capitalism!!! The Rich get richer, The Poor whine about how unfair it is!
[...] Yankees won the World Series. Yawn. My sports-writing idol Joe Posnanski shares his thoughts on the Yankees. I agree with Posnanski. How else did the 2006 Cardinals win the World Series? That’s the [...]
Excellent article Joe, well said.
Bret Werner makes a great point at #152 about Bonds/steroids and the Yankees/Money.
The same Yankee fans that will scream that what Bonds did was horrible and a blot on the game will be the same people who won’t see a problem with their team spending $700 million dollars on 4 friggin players and they will find some bizarre way to justify it.
The real problem is the small-mid market teams that put up with this system.
What they should do: The Royals, Pirates, Marlins, Nationals, Reds, Mariners, Rangers, Twins, Giants, A’s, Padres, Rays, Orioles, Rockies, Astros, Blue Jays, and Indians, should all band together and lock out the game.
They should tell the big market teams, sorry you guys can go play some triple A teams if you want but we’re not playing until there is some kind of level playing surface in MLB.
NYY had a bigger payroll than BOS and STL combined.
how would this team do against NYY?
1B-Pujols
2B-Pedroia
SS-DeRosa, then Gonzalez for defense
3B-Youkilis
C-Martinez
LF-Bay
CF-Ellsbury
RF-Ludwick
DH-Holliday
Bench-Ortiz, Drew, Lowell, Molina, Ankiel
SP-Beckett, Lester, Carpenter, Wainwright
RP-Papelbon, Wagner, Bard, Franklin, Lohse, Okajima
I’m a Yankees fan; have been since I was a kid. I don’t disagree with you; actually I completely agree that the current system is completely ridiculous and there should be a salary cap.
What does piss me off is people hating/blaming the Yankees for it. The Yankees did not create the system. It’s the job of Yankees management to do whatever is best for their team within the rules, so they do it.
You obviously struck a nerve: 156 comments and counting. I completely agree with you, Joe. But it’s “sleight” of hand, not “slite.”
@Tampa Mike
“NY, LA, LA, Philly ,oh and two other teams who were creamed in the first round.”
One of those presumably small-market teams so uncompetitive as so not even merit being named was the St. Louis Cardinals, who won the Series in ‘06, have 10 Championships (2nd to the Yankees’ 27) and have a good case for NL team of the last decade.
#79 wrote: “I think mentioning the Pirates and Royals (and, perhaps, the Orioles or Nationals) in THIS discussion in missing the point. … The Royals “can’t compete” because they are stupid, not because they are poor.”
Actually, I think mentioning those teams is ENTIRELY the point. It shows so effectively why baseball is unlike all other major professional sports in America.
And I think he has it wrong, the Royals (and Pirates, Nationals, etc) lose because they are poorly run BUT ALSO because they are poor. In every other sport in America, teams win or lose based much more on how well they are run than how much money they have.
Let’s look at some examples (I’m a Pittsburgh sports fan so I used their teams, but it works no matter who you choose):
The Pittsburgh Steelers are good. They have been consistently good for a long time. The New York Yankees are good. They have also been consistently good for a long time
The Detroit Lions are bad. They have been consistently bad for a long time. The Pittsburgh Pirates are bad, also for a very long time.
Now, you can say that the Steelers and Yankees are well-run teams, and the Lions and Pirates are not well run teams. I would agree with you on both points.
But let’s also look at how money plays into the equation.
The Steelers outspent the Lions on team salary by $33 million last year ($128m-$95m). The top 5 highest paid players for the Steelers made $52 million in 2008 (a number that is actually inflated because of a $25 million signing bonus handed out to Roethlisberger that year). The top 5 highest paid for Detroit made $24 million – a $28 million difference.
(And remember, that’s actually one of the bigger disparities you can get in the NFL. Had I hand-picked the teams after looking at the salaries, I might have pointed out that the Patriots were 30th out of 32 teams in payroll while the Raiders were 1st in payroll.)
Now let’s look at baseball.
The Yankees outspent the Pirates by $183 million this year ($208m-$25m). The Yankees’ top 5 highest paid players earned $108 million. The Pirates’ top 5 highest paid earned $11 million.
In fact, the Yankees highest paid player, Alex Rodriguez made $33 million last year. That’s more than the Pirates spent on their entire 40 man roster.
I hope you can still look at numbers like these and find them staggering.
Small market, poor teams, sometimes lose because they are not well run, but they also do so because they are operating from a position of extreme financial disadvantage.
Think of it this way. If you could transplant the front office of say the Pittsburgh Steelers, or the New England Patriots, or Indianapolis Colts to places like Detroit, Kansas City or Oakland. Would those teams get better? Would they get to the point that they could be consistent contenders?
I think that you can reasonably answer those questions with a yes. Good front offices turn around bad programs.
However, if you transplanted the front office and coaching staff of the Yankees or Red Sox to Pittsburgh, Baltimore or Washington D.C. Would those teams be able to contend consistently?
I think the only answer to that question is a resounding no. They simply do not have the money to get enough of the kind of talent required to do so.
Some of the best run teams in baseball have been proving this for the past decade (see – Oakland As, Minnesota Twins, Cleveland Indians).
One final thought exercise and then I’ll leave this alone.
Imagine if the Yankees were forced for financial reasons to remove all of their players who make more money than the highest paid player in Pittsburgh.
Gone is the entire starting infield: A-Rod, Jeter, Cano, Teixeira, Posada. Take away Sabathia, Burnett and Pettite… or 100% of your starting playoff rotation. Get rid of Damon, Matsui and Swisher. And say goodbye to Mariano Rivera… he and Damaso Marte are gone too.
Now go out and try to win a World Series.
Sound difficult? Welcome to life as a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.
I am a Royals fan who hates the luxury tax and admits that a good portion of the reason for the Royal’s high level of suck is their own ineptitude.
I am a Yankee hater who does not blame them at all for taking whatever advantages that the current system allows them to have.
However, there is no doubt that the system is broken. I am not going to give them too much credit either.
There are some fantasy leagues where you draft players and they simulate a season fairly quickly. Let’s say you have 12 teams that normally draft at $260. Instead have one get $520, one $390, one $325, 5 get the $260, 3 at $195 and 2 at $130. (If you think you are smart give yourself a $130) Have several drafts an simulated seasons and see who wins the most often.
Not only do the Yankees outbid for whatever they need, but when they are close in bidding with someone else, they still have the advantage if the player wants a ring. Many of the “home grown” players listed were actually foreign players, which teams do not get to draft. The Yankees put in the highest monetary offers and constantly get their pick of the litter with these players as well.
Baseball is by definition, (according to the antitrust exemption) one entity. I would have complete revenue sharing with the exception of the turnstiles. Without the small market teams, there is no game, and with revenue sharing, the small market teams would become more marketable over time, bringing in a higher percentage of the revenue, which would be good for everyone.
I would have a salary cap and a salary floor. I would have a more structured signing bonus for the draft. I would raise the major league minimum salary for those on the 25 man roster. I would have a draft for foreign born players. I would lower the number of years of major league service required for free agency, and have higher minimum raises for those who are still bound to their original club. I would lower the number of years teams have an option to send major league players to the minors from 3 to 2.
The biggest thing that hurts the small market teams, and one that would have to be part of anything, would be doing away with the multi- year guaranteed contract.
The way things are structured now, one bad big contract can kill a small market team for a few years. If the Yankees make a Jose Guillen type mistake, they just cut him and consider that money gone. If the Royals do it they are crippled when he is scheduled to make 12 million and has become untradeable. So he stays, makes their team worse and keeps them from getting 3 or 4 other pieces that will help their team.
I am not trying to screw the player by doing this. If a player signs a 5 year deal, the first year is guaranteed when the contract is signed. If it is not working out in year 2, for instance, the team would have to either trade or waive the player by the trade deadline to get out of giving him any money in years 3-5. If a team traded for or picked up a player on waivers, they would get the remainder of year 2 courtesy of the original team, but year 3 would be guaranteed immediately. At the end of year 3, (the first full year with the new team) the player would have the option to declare for free agency. If he did not take the option he would still be under contract for years 4 and 5.
If the original team decided to cut the player at the end of year 2, they would have to do it by a certain date (two weeks after the end of the world series.) They would give the player the major league minimum for years 3-5 as a parting gift, (and it would count against their cap) and the player would be a free agent.If they waited beyond this date, year 3 would be guaranteed.
If a player got injured in year 2, and was unable to play the rest of the year, year 3 would be guaranteed immediately, and they would be bound by the same rules as above after that.
These would work for any years within the contract. I just used year 2 as an example.
The above rules would be good for the player and the teams.
I think the players union would like the DH in the NL as well. (I just heard any so called “purist” who made it to the end of this Novella suck in their breath)
Great bit from Rob Neyer of ESPN.com:
A friend recently sent me the number of franchises that have been champions in the past 10, 20, and 30 years in each of the four big team sports …
MLB: 8/14/19
NFL: 7/12/14
NBA: 5/ 7/ 8
NHL: 8/13/19
Maybe I haven’t been paying close enough attention, but has anyone been complaining about the lack of parity in the NFL or the NBA? If not, why not?
My much, much, longer rebuttal to the tired old “buying a championship” argument:
http://www.mepreport.com/2009/11/blind-hatred-makes-for-bad-rhetoric/
So far down on the comment list, I suppose few will read my post, but I think there’s one very important point to make about Joe’s post: his description of the circular logic of the fan is symptomatic of our entire culture. Let me repeat Joe’s absolutely dead on characerization of the condition:
A. Everyone knows the Yankees spend much more money than any other team to win games.
B. Because everyone knows it, people have been complaining about it for many years.
C. Because people have complained about it for many years, everybody is sick of hearing about it.
D. Because everyone is sick of hearing about it, nobody really listens.
E. Because nobody really listens, people don’t talk about the Yankees spending much more money than any other team to win games.
If you were to substitute just about any major issue facing Americans today – in global warming, education, guns, war, etc. – with the term Yankees, you would find a similar recursive loop.
The problem is that the obvious problem never gets solved and never will. All the violator- in this case the Yankees and their exorbitant, unfair, and unsportsmanlike payroll- has to do is remain consistent. It used to be that such constancy was foolish, a hobgobblin of little minds, but no more. If you wait it out, you win, because the public will surely tire of the issue, and in fact, complain whenever it is brought up. For example, Fox news- and I have no opinion on their poltical leanings – has learned to exploit this loop to perfection. They won’t allow themselves to be criticized for violating the gentlemanly rules of journalism, specifically objective news reporting. It used to be a sacred pact with home viewers that the media would not choose sides, but report the news in as an objective way as possible. At least, that was the ideal. And yet, like Yankee fans, Fox news has its devotees who will not listen to any criticism, on one hand. On the other, everyone’s sick of hearing about it. However, objectivity in journalism has just about died, which is not good for democracy. And yet, it’s accepted because one loyal group of devotees has chosen a particular side. No amount of reasoning will convince them otherwise that to give up their advantage is in the best interest of all. And, to Joe’s point, perhaps fairness in baseball has fallen off exactly in this way. The depressing part is that the problem is so obvious, so glaring, and yet we can be quite certain that absolutely nothing will ever be done about it.
@165
No, the problem isn’t so obvious or so glaring. MLB is thriving as a sport. It has never been more popular or more financially sound. With the growth of its internet properties, MLB is going to dwarf the NFL soon…that’s why the owners aren’t going to change the system, nor should they. MLB doesn’t have an obvious, glaring problems.
Your mention of global warming, education, guns, war, etc. and the FOX news as enemy of the people argument expose the emotion and passion of the issue. The position advanced by Pos and in many of the comments is one of clear partisanship fueled by hatred of the Yankees. That’s great for baseball! The more people who whine and complain translates into the more people who care.
The only compelling underlying logic behind all the hand wringing is that so many Yankee haters don’t want the Yankees to win. That makes for good fodder on things like blogs, but it really isn’t an intellectually sound position. So, to all the Yankee haters…keep that passion high…it helps to ensure MLB’s immense popularity and financial strength, which further fuels the dominance of the Yankees!
Now, when do the Yanks sign Holliday so I can enjoy the next round of this amusing debate!
According to Forbes magazine, the value of the Yankees and all of their holding is just over $1billion. The value of the Minnesota Twins is $150 million or about 15%. Two separate ownership groups, each making a very different kind of investment at the time of the purchase. Both investments made with a clear understanding of the rules and bylaws of baseball, their market, revenue and the competitive landscape.
So you idiots think its possible to institute revenue sharing in a way that would change the valuations of the investments these ownership groups made? That’s communism.
Small market fans, either shut up of their will be contraction which is the only real solution here. Every fan base would matriculate to the geographic center of their region, thus creating a bigger, more competitive market. This isn’t the NFL. It’s baseball. Before 1960, their were about 20 teams. That seems to be about the right number now.
There is a big difference between what’s good for baseball and what’s good for fans who hate the Yankees. Let’s do a quick rundown.
Is baseball enjoying its highest attendance levels? Check.
Is baseball’s cumulative ratings (not network ratings, but total eyeballs watching games on RSNs) among its highest levels? Check.
Is baseball’s revenue growth higher than ever? Check?
Has baseball’s revenue been growing faster than the NFL’s? Check.
OK…so exactly what is baseball’s problems?
Sorry to interupt with some facts…you can now put them aside and continue whining about how much you hate the Yankees.
Thank you, Joe, for speaking to this issue as well as you’ve spoken to so many others. Always a pleasure.
Gotta love how both sides cherry pick facts to support their views.
A couple of folks way up in the thread have the obvious and best solution: more sharing of the local TV revenue. You could split the gate more evenly as well but the best way it to take 50-70% of each teams TV revenue, throw it in a pot and split it 30 ways. That still gives the Yanks, BoSox, etc. a financial edge but not nearly to the extent it is today.
The salary caps/floors in the other leagues have nothing to do with parity and competition and everything to do with the fact they have weaker players’ unions.
JP@163: I think the reason there’s no crying in the other sports is because they allow so many more teams to make the post-season. Thus the appearance of parity though they’re crowning fewer different champs.
Regardless of payrolls, ownership or anything else, I’ll always hate the Cubs and Yankees.
I have not read the comments, and surely someone has said this I think the best solution to this problem is to add a third and maybe a 4th team to the area. Northern New Jersey and maybe Long Island or Brooklyn or Hartford. At one point NY hosted 3 of 16 MLB teams (18.75%), now it is 2/30 (6.67%). Adding 2 NY teams would be 4/32 (12.5%). Still the Yankees would have an advantage because they would likely tower over the other NY teams because of history, loyalty, cache, ownership, etc. But it would seriously cut into their TV and ticket value. It would be a huge boon to MLB teams splitting up the huge entry fee for such teams.
Too many comments already to read through all of them, so forgive me if this is repetitive.
First, congratulations to the Yankees. You put together a good team by smartly applying your assets, all within the current rules of the sport. That strategy worked and you had your first “successful” season (by your own definition) since 2000. Kudos.
Second, I glanced at enough comments above to know that some people are still sticking to the specious argument that the Yankees’ obvious competitive advantage isn’t fair game for criticism because of any number of reasons, ranging from “It’s communism to do anything about the system now”, to “Just spending the money is no guarantee of success”, to “Yankee-hating is good for baseball”.
Whatever. I don’t really care about any of those arguments, or whether the revenue can ever be balanced, or even if it should. And I don’t think Joe cares either, at least not based on this column.
I think all Joe is saying here is that the inequity exists, so stop ignoring it. The Yankees have an enormous competitive advantage. It is fact. This particular team may be gutty and gritty and whatnot. They’re front office might be really smart in how they applied their resources and built their team. Everyone involved might be likable and cuddly and all that. All of that could be true, and it still won’t eliminate the 800-pound gorilla in the room, which is that the foundation that the entire franchise is built upon is an overwhelming competitive advantage that simply can’t be denied….they bring in hundreds of millions of dollars more than the next closest team and there is no limitation on how much of it they can spend.
That’s it. It’s an obvious fact. Followers of the team might not care one whit about that, and I’m sure most don’t. I’m sure it doesn’t diminish the team’s accomplishments in their eyes. Fine, whatever. If they were my team I’d probably look at it that way too.
But the inequity IS there, and it’s of such a size that it really can’t be denied, at least not with any credibility. So spare us the “we came together, no one believed in us, we were the underdogs” spin on this or any of the other 26 championships you’ve won.
Here’s the problem: Good management can only get you so far in baseball. The Indians have one in Mark Shapiro…makes great trades to attain talent (Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore, Shin Soo Choo etc.), but only has a small window to compete for a championship. If anything happens (injury, player leaving for free agency) that window closes quickly. End of story. There is not a financial bandage to quickly fix those types of problems. The Indians simply cannot go out and buy another player or take on a huge salary to remedy a bump in the road. A GM cannot make any mistakes in a small market…the stars must align perfectly. When you are the Yankees, you can spend more to draft quality players with huge salary demands, you can buy your #1 and #2 starter, and you can trade minor league players for stars on other teams that are making a huge salary. A bump in the road isn’t even a pebble when you have such a huge advantage in financial resources.
On the one hand, you are absolutely right…. but the answer isn’t just create a cap or anything like that.
If you do that, the Yankees owners make more money than any other owner because they play in the biggest market and have the longest, most glorious history. Owners make more, pour less back into the system and everyone else is still miserable.
If there were really a free market, there would be 6 more team in the NY are based on population before their would be one in Milwaukee, Pittsburgh etc. They are going to make more money because you all these people have two choices to see live baseball- Yankees or the Mets. (Slightly simplified, but you get the idea.)
The other problem is that because of the market the Yankees do not have to offer Free Agents so much more than any other team, they could offer just a little bit more and still get them, but because the market is so large- they have the money to overpay. They can dicker over a few million with ARod as punishment for opting out, to save face. But really was Rodriguez going to go? If they wanted to, they could have paid him less- they just don’t have to. But its that overpaying him (and CC and AJ) that makes the separation between payrolls of the Yankees and the next teams so marked.
I am not trying to defend the Yankees- but its not as simple as capping their spending. The money will still be coming into the team.
“If the New England Patriots were allowed to spend $50 million more on players than any other team, they would go 15-1 or 16-0 every single year.”
Sounds like an A+ plan to me, here’s to a $150 mil payroll in the uncapped season!
So basically what many of you are saying is this:
Yankees spend more money than everyone, so take some of that money away and give it to small market teams. A good portion of those small market teams are already bound for failure due to management/organizational decisions, so they fail anyway. Maybe some use that money wisely and become playoff contenders more often. Now we have a handful of small market teams who still fail miserably, another handful who are closer but still cant compete year in year out for championships, and all so we can tear down the big bad Yankees for taking advantage of their market.
If the other owners in baseball wanted to change the system they would have done it already. The simple truth is that the current system generates LOTS of cash for the other owners and the bottom line is the the only one that matters.
The Yankees make more money than any other team. I would be furious if they did not commit their full resources to getting the best players they can afford.
If you’re going to find fault with the system point your finger at the owners who pocket the revenue sharing cash and don’t use it to improve the team. That’s the real travesty in baseball.
Joe – are you really suggesting that they Yankees shouldn’t try as hard as they can to win every year?
Are you really suggesting that the Yankees should purposely hold back just to be nice and give everyone a fair chance?
That’s an absurd suggestion, but that’s exactly what your column is advocating.
It seems like every year I watch the playoffs and World Series there are a half dozen or so ex-Royals playing.
The great joke is that, at least as of a few years ago, the Yankees could easily afford to spend lots more money.
Several years ago I posed the following question to the late, great Doug Pappas:
“Steinbrenner boosters constantly sing the refrain that Steinbrenner is so wonderful because he “puts his revenues back into the team instead of his pocket.” You may remember that this was a theme of the “defense” in the espn yank trial. Is this claim objectively true? When considering his total Yankee-related revenues (Yes network’s new deal with cablevision, etc), where does Steinbrenner rank among other owners in terms of putting revenues back into payroll?”
Here is Doug’s response:
“I THOUGHT I had dealt with this before, but apparently I haven’t.
The best industrywide data we have comes from the 2001 Blue Ribbon Panel Report supplement – http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/stories/2001-12-05-focus-expenses.htm . You could simply divide the “player compensation” column by the “total operating revenue” column, but that’s misleading. All the low-revenue clubs spend proportionately more, because there’s a bare minimum everyone has to spend just to field a team. (The Expos managed to spend over 100% of their gross revenues on players, if the chart is to be believed.)
One way to do it might be to subtract $30 million from both the player compensation and the total revenue column, THEN divide. Using that method, the Twins would be the cheapest team in the majors.
The Yankees — the 2001 version, at least, whose payroll-plus-benefits was $70 million less than it is now — would have ranked in the bottom half. They spent less than half their total revenues on players: less than the Red Sox, despite revenues $65 million higher.
Interesting issue, and one I’d love to explore further with more current information!
Doug”
what is it about men and balls, anyway?
better than raping and pillaging, i guess.
Great posts @ 161, 162, 165, and 167.
Nate @161 “A-Rod make more than the entire Pirates team” kind of sums it up.
I also like:
Yankees=The Entire Red Sox+Cardinals teams.
I remember when I was a kid, and the Pirates, Reds, Royals, and Orioles were among the most successful and best run organizations in baseball.
Now because of the way baseball is set up, it’s impossible for any of those teams to be consistently successful.
Maybe under a “Perfect Storm” one of them might be able to pull off a great season or two but as far as long term success, impossible.
I love how a Yankee fans only retort is “stop whining”.
There like the grammar school yard bully who steals everybody’s milk money.
People have made some very cogent arguments based on LOGIC and reason and the best response a Yankee fan can say is “stop whining”
Seriously, Yankee fans’ wacky logic can rationalize anything.
Lest we forget…
2009 World Series – Yankees payroll was 1.7 times greater than the Phillies.
2007 World Series – Red Sox payroll was 2.6 times greater than the Rockies
But somehow I must of missed Posanski’s blog on how unfair it was for the Red Sox payroll to steamroll over the small market Rockies.
Seems to me this is a political conversation, which is why it’s so uncomfortable. Proposed solutions, and any others you might come up with, have a socialist character. The very phrase “level the playing field” is a socialist sentiment. To that end, we already have policies aimed at leveling the playing field in education (ask Jonathan Kozol if they succeed, though). We have attempted revenue sharing with old people (social security) and are attempting to now level the playing field in health care. All of these policies generate enormous debate between the obvious opponents; social welfare programs go against the grain of pure capitalism. The argument from one side of the aisle–the side I happen to find myself on, should whoever is reading this comment give a rat’s ass where I stand–is that pure Capitalism taints baseball in much the same way it taints education. That, friends, is one touchy subject.
The best thing to do would be to share local t.v. revenue. Part of the problem is that local t.v. renenue agreements agreements were made back in the 50’s-60’s when it was a very small portion of a team’s total revenue.
This is what Bill James proposed in his Historical abstract:
1/2 of the local t.v. money stays with the team. the other 1/2 of the local t.v. money goes to a pool and is split evenly with the 30 teams.
I love how #167 says that any type of revenue sharing would be akin to Communisn.
So basically the NFL, the most successful sports league in the world is a communist enterprise.
Let’s also not forget that during the “underdog” Phillies run to the title in 2008, their payroll was 2.2 times greater than the payroll of the Rays.
Joe – can you send me the link to your blog article from last year bashing the Phillies for dwarfing the Rays payroll?
There is a reason that the NFL dwarfs MLB in terms of attendance and fan interest. Every team has a chance. Those that stink do so because of their own doing. MLB has taken ‘baseball towns’ such as Baltimore, KC, and Pittsburgh and driven their attendance into the ground. Fans that know they are going to lose, stay away. The entire sport would be so much better if there was parity. Attendance would be up across the league if every team had a chance.
Jack at #64 wrote (in part) “This is a really bad analogy, considering the fact that New York is the largest city, and metropolitan area, in the United States. Of COURSE more people are going to buy tickets, hats, watch games, etc.”
Yes, OF COURSE the Yankees’ popularity is driven by the fact that they are in the largest market and OF COURSE that gives them a massive advantage with which the Kansas Citys of the world cannot possibly compete. I agree completely. Yes, those regional differences are in some ways different than the differences between political candidates. Yes, that means the analogy is limited…But if you think these regional differences invalidate my point, then I believe you’re missing my point. Perhaps I have expressed it poorly. (Dan at #77 thought I was saying that the Yankees won because they were good at marketing, so obviously I could have been clearer.)
My argument, boiled down to two points: (1) Big-market teams like the Yankees and Red Sox have a huge advantage on the field because they have a lot of fans (and yes, this is driven primarily by geography)…and (2) it IS fair that the teams with the most fans are rewarded with the most playoff appearances and World Series wins.
Why? When the Yankees or Red Sox win the Series, many more fans are rewarded for being fans than when a small market team wins.
It is in no one’s interests to return to the days when the Yankees win the World Series most of the time, but it IS in the best interests of the game for the teams with the most fans to win more than those with the least fans.
If you want to argue that the balance has shifted too far in big market teams favor, go ahead–but the burden of proof will be on you, given that baseball is doing very well these days relative to the overall economic climate.
One note: There seems to be another Mike also posting comments, so please do not assume that everything posted here under that name is from me.
Joe, I’m one of your biggest fans and rarely disagree with anything you write. I am not a Yankee fan. But I really don’t get this post. Are you railing against the Yankees for spending the money they earn (as any team would/should do if they earned that much)? Or are you railing against the MLB’s self-made illusion of parity/competition/hope? I feel like this entry should just be summed up as either, “There should be a salary cap” or “Stop saying ‘hope on Opening Day.’” The end. I don’t understand how you (or any of these commentors) make this some kind of moral referendum on the Yankees’ joy of their championship. The Yankees make the most money, so they spent it. Why shouldn’t they? I don’t know what this argument is.
Not a whiner @183. They were talking about the payroll disparity in the postseason of 2007. Of course the Yankees in the 1st round had a payroll more than three times higher than Cleveland. This was mentioned often, along with the payroll disparity between Boston and Colorado. But the fact remains that of all playoff teams in ‘07, the Yanks outspent them all as follows:
Bos: 30%
Cle: 310%
LAA: 71%
ChC: 90%
AZ: 360%
Phi: 210%
Col: 349%
As you said, Boston outspent Colorado 2.6 to 1, but the Yankees outspent this bloated Red Sox team by a further 30%.
@191: So your argument is that its not about drastically outspending your opponent – its only about the team that spends the most?
Makes no sense. Your argument lives in a fantasy world where the Yankees spend $200 million and everyone else spends $20 million. But that’s not reality – check the numbers – most of the recent world series winners have drastically outspent their opponents. Its not just the Yankees “buying” a title – they just do it in a more obnoxious fashion.
Putting a Joe’s column into humor:
http://njfrogman.blogspot.com/2009/11/audio-opie-and-anthony-thank-god-rod.html
I read something somewhere a couple of years ago and it made sense. The Yankees’ advantage comes from being the big player in, by far, the biggest market in baseball. Perhaps the solution is to add more teams to the NY market. 6-8 teams might then bring the Yankees’ portion of the market to something similar to Atlanta or KC or some other team. Then their big advantages are gone. Right now, the Yankees are basically a money making machine because they have a market that is at least twice the size of any other team’s. Would they still prosper? Likely because they are well managed. But it is an interesting idea to kick around.
[...] made a point not to be in the area because you really don’t need to be around for another Yankees parade, check out my piece on NYC producer Falty DL here, and the rest of the issue is available [...]
Something that a lot of people are missing here:
No one’s saying that the goal is to have 10 different teams win a World Series every year. We like dynasties when we feel like they were built through guile or excellence. The Braves of the ’90’s were a model franchise in most ways, and so people didn’t complain about them winning 16 division titles in a row. Usain Bolt is so absurdly fast that he makes other world-class sprinters look slow by comparison, and people love him for it. But if it came out that he was doping, things would turn on him.
We don’t care if one team wins all the time, so long as it’s not because 1 team has 3 times as much money to spend as everyone else.
I wish there was an app that allowed me to just completely ignore anyone who ever used the word “communism” to describe … well, anything.
Baseball operates as a cartel. It is exempt from the antitrust laws envisioned by two Republican presidents — Roosevelt and Taft — thanks to a Supreme Court ruling in 1922. The free market has nothing to do with this.
Josh:
I have such an app. I call it common sense.
Not a whiner @192. My argument is that a team that spent 2.6 times more than the Rockies, which is outrageous in and of itself, were themselves outspent by the Yankees by $46.5 million. This amount was almost as much as the Rockies entire payroll (which was $54 million) in ‘07.
That’s the point Joe is trying to make. There are high payroll teams (Red Sox, Mets, Angels, etc) and they spend a lot more than the low payroll teams. That’s bad enough. But the Yankees payroll dwarfs even the high payroll teams by considerable margins.
“This is what Bill James proposed in his Historical abstract: 1/2 of the local t.v. money stays with the team. the other 1/2 of the local t.v. money goes to a pool and is split evenly with the 30 teams.”
Sorry, but no team has a defensible claim to another team’s local media revenue. For a smart guy like Bill James this is kind of a la-la-land suggestion.
Nothing will change until the “big-market” teams other than the Yankees realize that a salary cap is in their interests.
In 1994 you couldn’t get unity on a cap among a large majority of owners because so many bigger market clubs believed – reasonably at the time – that they were better off under no cap. That attitude may change when teams that play in major media markets and new-ish ballparks get tired of being outspent by $100m/yr.
@200
Of course, other teams have a claim to the Yankees television revenue! Do you think the television rights to the Yankees batting practice or inter-squad games would be as valuable? The Yankees put on a show that draws a large audience, and to put on that show they need the Minnesota Twins, Kansas City Royals, and every other team. They don’t have to share, but those teams don’t “have” to help the Yankees make money either.
Of course teams have a claim to others’ local media revenue. If the Yankees want to only televise intrasquad scrimmages, they can see what kind of ratings they get.
They NEED opponents.
Paul White @ 8:26 AM: “Whatever. I don’t really care about any of those arguments, or whether the revenue can ever be balanced, or even if it should. And I don’t think Joe cares either, at least not based on this column.
I think all Joe is saying here is that the inequity exists, so stop ignoring it. The Yankees have an enormous competitive advantage. It is fact.”
Well, yeah, but I’m not sure what the point of this statement is. Nobody (well, at the very least, no reasonable person) denies the fact that you’re citing.
The question, really, is whether that inequity is fair, and/or whether something should be done to curb the Yankees’ advantage. I submit that the Yankees’ advantage is not unfair and that it would actually be unfair for MLB to act to curb that advantage (any more than they already do through revenue sharing, luxury tax, etc.).
Joe Pos seems to be arguing that the Yankees have some innate advantage, but I think he’s letting his bias get the best of him in making that argument. The Yankees do not spend, and have, the most money simply because they wear the pinstriped uniforms and play in the Bronx and call themselves the Yankees. When George Steinbrenner bought the team in 1973 he (and his fellow investors) paid $10 million for it. In 1998, with the Yankees in the middle of a successful run, the Yankees had the second highest payroll in the game. In 1990, the Yanks had the 4th highest payroll (and were within $1 million of the five teams right behind them), and I assume the Yanks have been near the top of the payroll standings since the 70s… But their payroll advantage, until the 2000s, was certainly not as significant as it is today.
The point being… The Yankees do not have an advantage simply because they exist, but because they’ve BUILT that advantage over the last 15 years or so. There have been plenty of studies done (see: Horowitz – If You Play Well They Will Come—and Vice Versa: Bidirectional Causality in Major-League Baseball; and Noll: Attendance and Price Setting, among many others) to confirm for us something very intuitive and simple – if you build a winning team and provide a winning experience, fans will buy tickets to your games and watch your team on television and buy jerseys and hats and videos of your triumphs. Unfortunately for Yankees detractors, that rule holds true whether your team wears an interlocking NY on your hat or some other logo.
Now, none of this is to say the Yankees didn’t have SOME sort of advantage from the start. They DO play in NYC, they do have a lot of history… But they also had those things before the 2000s (and other teams exist in NY that do not enjoy such a financial advantage, whether they exist in sports without salary caps, like the Mets, or even in the salary capped sports – just look at history before the institution of those caps), and their payroll advantage, if it existed, didn’t grow to outsized proportions until the 2000s. What happened? They invested shrewdly and pressed their advantages. They built a winning product and never looked back, building a television network and a (ridiculous) new stadium on the back of that winning product. And, in the end, they built themselves a very nice financial advantage.
Unless you’re making an argument that the Yankees’ advantage is unfair, and/or that the MLB playing field would be more fair if MLB acted to curb the advantage(s) held by the Yankees, you’re just participating in partisan whining. Frankly, as much as I enjoy reading Joe Pos, I think this SI piece falls into that latter category (as does Paul White’s comment, excerpted above) .
Just be careful… The Yankees do have an advantage, that much must be stipulated by anyone who participates in this conversation… But that doesn’t necessarily mean that advantage is unfair or that the most fair and reasonable response is to that advantage is to act to curb it. You can argue that the Yankees’ advantage should be curbed by artificial means, but you should make that argument with the understanding that you’re explicitly handicapping one particular organization because that organization has made itself too successful.
I agree with Mondesi’s points about the Yankees having built their advantage through shrewd, and sometimes, ruthless management of the organization…that all said, I don’t know how guaranteed the Yankees’ future is. Remember, they outspent everyone throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, (granted, not by as much), and really had nothing to show for it. And now the core of players that helped the Yanks dominate the late 1990s and 2000s is getting old. Joe himself wrote this summer how players hit a wall at 33. Well, Jeter, Posada, Matsui, and Damon (although at least one of the latter two may be gone anyhow) are well past that age, and A-Rod is hitting it. Not to mention Rivera and Pettite, two very key pieces of this year’s championship team, who are fairly ancient by baseball standards-especially in the post-steroids era. I guess I’m just saying that if age finally catches up with the Yankes, they may need to do some rebuilding. Granted, having Sabathia and Teixiera will prevent them from falling too far, but I think there’s a chance we may have seen the last dominant Yankees team for awhile .
Josh in DC and Nate in VA (same person, I assume?)-
You’re overlooking the fact that other teams do profit from playing the Yankees. They have their own local media contracts, and they make more money on the gate when the Yankees are in town. It’s not like the Yankees are the only team that gets to broadcast and make money off of Yankees games. I’d even submit that the Yankees’ opponents see a bigger revenue bump from playing the Yankees than the Yankees do from playing their opponents. I’d assume there’s not much of a revenue bump for the Yankees when the Rangers come to town (nor higher ratings than usual on the local broadcast), but I’d bet there’s a bump in Arlington when the Yankees come to town (and higher ratings for the Rangers’ local broadcast when they play the Yankees). It’s not like the rest of baseball doesn’t make money off of the success of the Yankees (not to mention luxury tax, etc.).
Should all teams subsidize each other so that nobody is disadvantaged by being located in a state with a higher income tax, or by higher construction costs, property taxes, cost of living index increases, cost of service contracts, and all the other ways that some teams have advantages over other teams? If we’re going to penalize one team for making more money than others, are we also going to penalize teams that are able to do business at lower costs to themselves?
201, 202 – The clubs have a right to earn local media revenue within their own markets but they have no right to a share of their opponents local revenue. That’s a well-established principle across all leagues over many years.
If they had any such right it they would have taken advantage of it long ago.
I don’t understand the whole “well they play in a bigger market so they can afford it” argument.
I really don’t, you mean to tell me that the Metrodome wasn’t full during Minnesota’s one game playoff and then game 3 against New York?
I’m sure those ticket prices for those games were higher than a normal regular season game. Yet the place was packed.
Which is great, if they could get that on a regular basis. Nobody is busting through turnstiles to watch Minnesota take on the Royals!
It has to do with fan loyalty and revenue generated through those fans.
Your argument is so biased and flawed that I’m going to try to put this to rest right now.
The Royals’ 2009 payroll: 70.5 million
The Marlins’ 2009 payroll: 36.85 million
The Marlins won 87 games and the Royals won 65. Explain that disparity to me and I guarantee you, that you will all cite bad decisions by management and players under performing. That’s all you’ll attribute it to!
Which is the way it should be.
The 2009 Rockies spent 75 million.
The 2009 Reds spent 73 million.
Why were the Reds not a 90 win team like Colorado then??
Money has almost ZILCH to do with it. You see it happen all the time, a player takes a ‘hometown discount’ to stay with a team.
You make it seem like the Yankees drug all your favorite teams’ players whenever they roll into town.
Look at the attendance records for Royals games, then tell me what those numbers were when the Yankees and Red Sox came to town. They were way up.
We generate more revenue which means we have more money to put into the product. Like any business should/would. You need to be mad at your owners for signing the likes of Yuni. You need to be mad at your owners for trading players like Bay and McClouth. Mad for trading guys like Peavy. Trading guys like CC and Cliff Lee.
There’s nobody to blame but yourself. You mean to tell me Cleveland couldn’t afford it? Their payroll this year was $81 million. They finished tied for last with the Royals.
By your logic they should’ve won 15 or 20 more games because their payroll is higher.
Yes, the Yankees can afford to make a mistake or two in signing free agents and survive it. No, this does not give them an unfair advantage because YOU ALSO HAVE THE OPTION OF SIGNING FREE AGENTS. It’s not our fault you’re spending stupid amounts of money on players like Jacobs. That Gary Matthews Jr is making $10m a year on a team that, oh, made it to the ALCS despite that albatross… hmm, how’d that happen?
They spent EXTRA money to get AROUND that bad player. Like a smart and well managed team should to win, then there wouldn’t be this discussion.
Until you justify the Marlins having the lowest payroll in baseball (for most of that time) and having 2 championships in the past 20 years while the Royals haven’t done SHIT the argument that we’re buying championships does not compute.
The Rays got by the Red Sox last year with a far inferior payroll. How’d they do it as a lowly expansion team from just a few years ago? They know how to develop talent and they signed a lot of their key players to long term deals that aren’t breaking the bank, but will keep them around anyway.
Albert Pujols will be known as probably the greatest player who has ever lived. If he were on the Yankees this past season he would have been the 7th highest paid player on that team. Is their teams inflation really that high? Wow. I know in the article you talked about the $80 million dollar difference between the Boston Red Sox and the Yankees, but what about the $180 million dollars between the Yankees and the Pirates? The Pirates have NO chance of ever winning a World Series, or the N.L. Central for that matter with that kind of disadvantage.
I am from Kentucky, 5 states away from New York. All I’ve heard since Wednesday is how “we” won this year; and how “we” deserved it this year; and how “we” really came together. Give me a break. I understand that some have been Yankees fans for an eternity (congratulations to you, im jealous), but others who have joined up…how can you possibly take pride in that?
To all Yankees fans who have either never been to Yankees stadiums, or are not from anywhere close to New York, you are not a true fan of the game of baseball. Baseball is not about winning. Its about the up’s and down’s. That’s what baseball is. Not buying championships continuously.
My cardinals bought a NL division title this year for $140 million less than the Yankee’s championship and I can assure Yankees fans that I am more proud of that.
First, an admission: I’m a lifelong Yankees fan and I make no apologies. When I was a kid in the early 70’s the Yanks stunk. Then a convicted felon bought the team and 7 world championships later, one thing remains the same: when the Yanks win, people whine. I’ve actually reached the point that winning a WS isn’t as fun as simply beating YOUR team on the path to or for the title. That’s all that really matters to me now–watching the Yanks beat loser teams whose fans constantly whine and cry and toss about words such as competitiveness, parity, economics, and salary caps. These are the same teams, of course, who “earn” the prime picks for the best new talent but because of incompetence cannot translate the advantage to success.
As Joe mentioned, baseball by it’s very nature masks dominance. I make a stronger observation and say the game has inherent parity and it is the responsibility of all teams to take advantage of that. Only a fool would deny that capital outlay aids teams’ chances for success, but there is much more to it than that.
The fools gold solution is to institute a salary cap. As we see in the NFL (more reality TV than a sport) and in the NBA a salary cap does not promote parity. Rather it creates an illusion of parity and a source of hype for marketing. Another important illusion of parity in these sports is expanded playoffs as compared to baseball; both leagues send a higher percentage of their teams to playoffs than does baseball. Does anybody really believe the Jets can win the Superbore if they somehow stumble into a wild card slot? Probably not, but it does give the fans hope and serves the illusion.
Aside from not creating parity, the largest downside to a salary cap–assuming the player’s association would ever approve it–is a salary floor. For example, the NFL REQUIRES all teams to spend at least 87.6% of the cap or $112 million/team for 2009 on payroll. Using NFL numbers, MLB has 23 teams below $112 million; or let’s place an imaginary cap at $100 million. MLB has 16 teams below $86.7 million. This, of course, makes it clear why NFL owners can’t wait to ditch their present salary structure and why the majority of MLB teams should fear a salary cap–the players will never hand over any portion of team/league revenues back to the owners and many teams simply couldn’t afford the floor. As an aside, the 29th and 30th teams in payroll–the Pads and the Marlins–were able to field competitive teams in ‘09. With a tweak here and there, the Marlins are viable contenders for the ‘10 season. Competitive teams with tiny payrolls could NEVER happen in the NBA or NFL.
Success in MLB is entirely up to each team–draft well, keep a few key players for fan identification (I’d hate to see the Twinkies lose Joe Mauer or Justin Morneau), and constantly turn over the roster with cost controlled players from the farm; in a potentially positive development for fans, the seeds for this mentality were sown during the offseason last year.
What can MLB do to foster more hope and more competition in baseball? Most importantly, force perennially losing teams to either sell to new owners who understand and can exploit the present economy or at least force them to bring in a GM with the knowledge and authority to do the same. The Orioles suck not because the Yankees spend so much money, but because Peter Angelos is an ego-centric moron who has no idea how to run a team and cannot bring himself to let good baseball people run the team for him. Another consideration is to expand revenue sharing with the caveat that it be spent only and directly on player development/procurement…not in hiring some mid-level office manager who happens to be somebody’s son/daughter-in-law.
Let me repeat the most important fact in MLB: winning is the responsibility each team. If a team chooses and is committed to building a winner, they can. But even if you build the best team, there is no guarantee you’re going to win the WS. Sometimes you just have to give credit to the victor.
There’s much more to say, but I have a Phillies WS loss by the Yanks’ hands to celebrate.
Tigers 186 137 0.73655914
Mariners 189 117 0.619047619
White Sox 196 121 0.617346939
Blue Jays 172 97 0.563953488
Angels 212 119 0.561320755… Read More
Yankees 375 209 0.557333333
Braves 186 102 0.548387097
Mets 261 137 0.524904215
Cardinals 195 99 0.507692308
Red Sox 269 133 0.494423792
Cubs 239 118 0.493723849
Dodgers 241 118 0.489626556
Brewers 173 80 0.462427746
Phillies 216 98 0.453703704
Astros 194 88 0.453608247
Reds 171 74 0.432748538
Indians 181 78 0.430939227
Padres 174 73 0.41954023
Royals 143 58 0.405594406
Giants 196 76 0.387755102
Orioles 174 67 0.385057471
Rockies 178 68 0.382022472
Rangers 176 67 0.380681818
Diamondbacks 177 66 0.372881356
Twins 158 56 0.35443038
Pirates 144 48 0.333333333
A’s 160 47 0.29375
Nationals 184 54 0.293478261
Rays 160 43 0.26875
Marlins 139 21 0.151079137
First column is the team name, second column is revenue, third column is payroll, and fourth column is percentage of revenue taken up by payroll.
Numbers are from 2008.
Not included: Money given to lower tier teams via revenue sharing, and luxury tax dollars.
Just look at that. For all the crying about how poorer teams cannot compete, if……..lets take the Pirates for instance…..if the Pirates just spent at the PERCENTAGE that the Blue Jays (fourth on the list) spent, it would increase their payroll by $33 million. That could get them three all-star caliber players.
Another thing about that point too, is that if you had alot of these poor teams just spending at a higher rate, ultimately the Yankees and other high tier teams wouldn’t be able to spend so much. Either that, or player values would soar. One or the other. The amount of talent is finite……so its not like you could say, have the Pirates and Twins spend $33m more and just view those numbers in a vacuum. The players that they would be spending that money on would have to come from somewhere. This would result in one of two things: 1) They could retain their homegrown players more easily and do more to acquire free agents, both of which lessens the pool for the so-called “big market” teams to do so. 2) Richer teams would step their spending game up further, which would make player values soar.
I can’t pretend to know which of the two would happen, as I find them equally likely. I’m not sure if the bigger teams would want to pay even more luxury tax dollars — Which are omitted from the figures I posted at first. What is certain, to me, and highlighted by the chart, is that while there is some inequity in the system, its not nearly as bad as commentators and some fans would have you believe. A bigger part of the problem, to me, is that many owners are just plain cheap and they don’t want to win that badly. Which is why I’m thankful that my owner (Mike Ilitch, of the Tigers) apparently is going ALL OUT to win, even if his going all out hasn’t (as of yet) yielded a championship (or less prestigious and more impressive, a division title).
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
The wealthiest 1% controls a third of the net worth in this country. For the Yankees (wealthiest 3.3%), that would be like having a payroll of $1,000,000,000.
In 2009, the Yankees controlled a paltry 7.5% of the wealth in MLB.
It’s a good thing we have sports to divert us from what’s really important.
#200, sure teams share t.v. revenue, it’s called the NFL and it the most successfull most popular league in the U.S. How else could a team in Green Bay or Minnesota compete with the New York.
Those t.v. deals agreed upon back in the 50’s and 60’s were small when local t.v. was a small part of a teams resources.
part of the problem is the small market teams are cowards and don’t realize that the Big market teams are the problem. They really need to band together and tell the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Angels, Dodgers, Cubs and Phillies, sorry were not showing up to play anymore.
A salary cap won’t work in baseball without some sort of revenue sharing because the Yankees will just throw all that money into amateur scouting and hoard players in their minor league system. You could have minor league players earning more than major league players.
#209 – I’m sold. I now realize thanks to your help, that had the Yankees had a $39 million payroll, they still would have won due to great management. How silly to think the extra $170 million had anything to do with it.
Yankee fans are like a petulant child who gets caught doing something bad and then trys to worm their way around the thing they did to justify they’re behavior.
Seriously the steps the Yankee fans take to try and rationalize their team’s success is akin to Eric Cartman’s attempts to portray himself as a kind and generous person.
and about the only retort they have is don’t “whine”
The sad thing is that everyone (but the Yankee fans) are arguing that the system is bad. Nobody is faulting the Yankees for playing by the current rules.
212 – You’re conflating national revenue and local revenue.
Both the NFL and MLB share national revenue equally. Both have no sharing of local revenue. In the NFL local revenue is limited to pre-season TV and all radio rights.
I’m a Yankees fan, and not an owner or a player. As a consequence, I really don’t have the slightest interest in what’s fair for the players or owners. I’m pretty sure that they’re going to do just fine financially no matter what kind of system is instituted.
The only major sport that I’m aware of that allows for the same unrestrained spending as MLB is European Football (Soccer). The real issue with MLB is not that the same teams always win/do well, the issue is that it’s pretty dull for fans of the teams that don’t perennially succeed. After July, it’s not even worth watching the Orioles, they’re going nowhere. As some other poster said, in European Football, this is not a problem, because each team has something to play for: League Title, Champions League spots, Europa League Spots, or just to avoid relegation.
Baseball already has an entire Minor League system, so the best solution to the competitiveness problem might be to institute a relegation system.
It could work this way: the bottom 2 teams in each League would get sent down to the Minors each year. The top four Minor League teams (not completely sure how to determine that yet), get sent up to the Majors and get to partake in that Revenue Sharing money. That way, for the O’s and other cellar-dwellars, there’s a reason to care and a reason to re-invest some money in their teams. It’s worked pretty well for European Football, and it could work for MLB.
To Larry Smith Jr.: As I quoted the late baseball economist Doug Pappas in my earlier post (#179), you need to take one further step in your analysis. To get a more accurate picture of who is spending on payroll and who is pocketing revenue (assuming these revenue figure are remotely accurate – for example, is the YES network included in the Yank’s revenue? I assume not) , you need to ignore the Marlins, and then subtract $40 million (to reflect the minmum salary threshold) in each column before doing the division to get the percentage.
add truman capote!
The theory behind capitalism is investment encourages growth across the board, The “rising tides lift all boats” theory. When a venture capitalist pours a billion dollars into upstart company x, that company produces a new product, process, or service that improves the lives their consumers in a way that didn’t exist before.
But baseball is a zero-sum environment, for every win by one team, another team loses. When the Yankees invest a billion dollars into their team, every win their investment returns results in a loss for another team. There is no rising tide, the Yankees simply put all the water into their olympic sized swimming pool, while other teams divide what water is left and keeps it in plastic kiddie pools.
If you want a truly fair system, MLB offers the same generous base salary for everyone and pays the same bonuses for statistical performance. The total pay pool of money can be a set percentage of revenue.
John Q. at 12:05 PM:
“Yankee fans are like a petulant child who gets caught doing something bad and then trys to worm their way around the thing they did to justify they’re behavior.
Seriously the steps the Yankee fans take to try and rationalize their team’s success is akin to Eric Cartman’s attempts to portray himself as a kind and generous person.
and about the only retort they have is don’t ‘whine’”
That’s the second time you’ve made that comment in this thread… How about this, John Q… Who do you prefer, the commenter who makes a cogent and reasonable argument, or the respondent who instead of engaging the points made in that argument just accuses that commenter of being a petulent child? There are people on both sides of this argument (as there are with just about any argument) who are less than reasonable, but there have been a few well-reasoned comments here made by people who disagree with your opinion. Instead of painting your entire opposition as childish in order to discount those arguments by discounting the intelligence of the people making them, you should instead respond to the arguments. Raise the level of discourse instead of throwing around personal insults.
@217: you DO realize that those minor league teams are a part of the major league teams, right???
“But if the New York Yankees played the Kansas City Royals 100 times, and the Yankees were motivated, I suspect the Royals would still win 25 or 30 times. That’s baseball.”
- But if they were playing the Minnesota Twins, they’d win 95 times. Maybe a few less if the Twins let Guerrier finish the game, instead of turning it over to Nathan.
Mondesi and Mikey,
I think you’re missing the central point. The Yankees put on a valuable show. More valuable as whole than other teams do, but they still need the other teams to do it. The other teams do have a bargaining chip with the Yankees, if they choose to use it. They haven’t used it, they may never use it, but it does exist.
It’s also important to remember that baseball is not a free market, but a closed market cartel. Also it’s about men running around bases for money. There’s nothing “natural” or inherently just about anything in baseball.
And baseball has had have and have nots forever.You could read Burt Solomon’s book, “Where They Ain’t” to show you nothing new to see here. There have been times when teams like the Pirates and Royals moved into that 2nd tier(teams run well enough to compete for championships), but their current ownership prefers to pocket the Yanks’ revenue-sharing check rather than put that money into talent on the field. Oh, the poor, poor Royals-owned by the Glass family, who are desendants and shareholders in Ol’Sam Walton’s mom&pop outfit called Walmart.
As to all the payroll whiners-would you prefer the Steinbrenners put the money in their bank accounts rather than spend it on players? DOn’t bitch about them spending the money on the team unless you’re okay with them keeping the revenue . Steinbrenner was wise enough to buy a brand name team in disarray and over time max out his revenue by creating his own sports channel and pushing for a new stadium( the later which personally an NYC taxpayer I find myself being ambivalent).
So before anyone starts the socialist crap, don’t fault the man for investing wisely. If you’re dumb enough to buy the Pirates and dumber still to run them poorly don’t cry the Yankees should cut you a check like your a partner.
@222: The VAST majority of minor league teams are independently owned and operated. They DO have Player Development Contracts with teams in the majors, but I don’t see how that’s necessarily relevant to this discussion.
Coke and Pepsi are competitors. The Kansas City and the New York Yankees are not competitors, they are a lot more like Partners, or should be. The sell to their customers the same product, only in different cities. They are like a KFC in Tacoma and a KFC in Stillwater, different franchises of the same company, MLB.
I wrote a way longer post that vanished, so I’ll throw out the gists….
At one time, the Royals had the highest payroll in all of baseball. Ditto the Orioles. At the time, they had different owners. Owners who already had all the money they needed, and wanted baseball championships as well.
Their current owners, on the other hand, aren’t as passionate about winning championships. This can be seen in decisions to let quality home-grown players leave, and letting bad baseball people run your operations so that those players are replaced by dregs. These owners are the ones who should be reviled, not Steinbrenner. I think personally that Steinbrenner, Reinsdorff, Ilich, and Moreno are commendable owners for caring about the teams, and I hate that they all own teams I hate (except for the Angels…completely indifferent). And Glass, Angelos and the like are the real guilty parties in this whole “what’s bad for baseball” argument.
What Glass needs to do is make an investment…spend money to make money. Dig into the coffers and jack the payroll for a few, maybe 3 years. Sign at least one top free agent each of those years (and maybe get a GM who won’t goof it up). This shows the fanbase he cares, which increases attendance, TV viewers, merch sales, etc. Eventually (soonish) he gets his investment back, and hopefully the quality of play maintains fan interest and spending, which allows for greater payroll without the personal cost in the future.
Eventually, the Royals achieve what should be the ultimate goal, which the White Sox currently have in spades: to be the most hated team in the division. Who doesn’t think it’s good sports business to be hated? Hatred means interest…in addition to your own fans, you have fans in other towns who pay money (of which you get a cut) to see their team play against yours. Do you think the White Sox are the most hated team in the Central by accident? I’m not saying the Royals need to become a bunch of jerks…just make other teams’ fans think you care more than their owners, and beat the tar out of their teams a few times and your set.
I don’t hate George Steinbrenner. I think he’s doing it right. It’s David Glass that chaps my ass.
Oh, and whoever said “small market teams should refuse to play until everything is fair” is a complete jackass. For one thing, that’d be an owner decision, and why would a business owner suddenly stop doing business, and lose all that money? And another, talk about the best way to completely alienate, and risk forever losing, your fanbase. “We just can’t seem to outplay the Yankees the 7 times a year we play them, so we’re just gonna sit this season out and make Steinbrenner think about what he’s done.” Yeah, Royals fans will REALLY get behind that.
I’ve always said:
“If a salary cap is good for baseball, it’s good for America”
This country is expending a lot of energy over the fact that they Yankees spend a lot of money. But there’s little outrage over the banks spending bail out funds as bonuses.
That being said, I’m all in favor of some sort of salary cap/revenue sharing scheme.
Nate in VA @ 12:38 PM:
“I think you’re missing the central point. The Yankees put on a valuable show. More valuable as whole than other teams do, but they still need the other teams to do it. The other teams do have a bargaining chip with the Yankees, if they choose to use it. They haven’t used it, they may never use it, but it does exist.”
That’s a dangerous game for any team to be playing. If they do that, who’s to stop the Yankees, or any other team for that matter, from pulling that stunt whenever there’s a disagreement between the clubs? Also… Let’s be brutally honest here, this tactic would be much more effective when employed by the big-market teams than when employed by the small-market teams. The Royals not coming to town to play the Yankees is no different than any other team not coming to town, but if the Yankees or Red Sox decide to boycott games in Kansas City, the Royals would be in for much more pain. I understand the sentiment behind the idea, but the tactic is totally unrealistic and probably very ill-advised anyway.
So why don’t baseball teams do what soccer has done in England and attract Russian and Middle East businessmen to bankroll the club?
England has no salary cap and a top 4 that always win the championship between them and now there are 2 or 3 other teams joining them in contention because of money being invested.
Red Sox fans, for example, should protest and tell their owner to sell to a multi-billionaire and refuse to buy tickets for games if he doesn’t.
#213: I’m happy to help, but next time try reading the entire post instead of coming off as a disgruntled Mets/Phillies/Red Sox/whoever I don’t care fan.
#217: That’s an interesting idea. Motivate teams to be competitive or risk banishment to the minors–apply player level thinking to that of a team.
#218: YES is not part of Yankee revenue; a huge joke. Also, doesn’t MLB allow the Yankees to write off their public financed stadium payments against the luxury tax?
#220: Isn’t that what happens with capitalism/free market in general? Firms exploit their advantages and bury competitors with the ultimate result being monopolies or oligopolies? To me, this market reality is already working in baseball and if not for subsidies and other forms of economic intervention the sport would probably contract to 8 or so teams.
bornfattom23 at 12:50 pm:
“@222: The VAST majority of minor league teams are independently owned and operated. They DO have Player Development Contracts with teams in the majors, but I don’t see how that’s necessarily relevant to this discussion.”
Because your idea would lead to teams playing in the same league as their own minor league teams, which doesn’t make any sense on a number of levels that I think go without further explanation.
I do like the relegation idea, though, however (completely) unrealistic (like… 0% chance) it may be. I won’t bother re-writing the whole thing here, but I wrote a comment a while back over at riveraveblues.com about my idea. The main difference from your idea is that I keep the minor leagues separate from MLB and create 2 leagues within MLB, a superior league and a lower league to which the losing teams might be relegated. Check it out if you’re interested: http://riveraveblues.com/2009/09/no-additions-to-the-playoffs-please-17549/#comment-598018
@232 – yes, but let’s not get off track and keep the discussion to baseball. the economy as a whole is nowhere near as enclosed as major league baseball. in the economy, new wealth can be extracted from natural resources. but in baseball, there are only 162 possible wins to earned.
Mondesi,
I’m glad at least that you and I are on the same page with the relegation issue. I do agree with you that it’s a completely crazy idea that will never happen, and I’m not locked into the idea of it being tied to the minor league system (although if all the teams just let their PDCs expire, the levels of baseball would become completely independent in a flash). But we can dream, can’t we?
Yes, A-Rod was traded to the Yankees and it was a fair trade. But then the Yankees signed him as a free agent for huge money, so change that one to a big money free agen signing after all.
All OK with me, good management still rules, but money is key to sustaining sucesss. Would Jeter, Riveria, Posada or Pettite still be with just about any other team if they didn’t come up with the Yankees?
You’ve got to love The Washington Post’s headline on the day after Joe’s blog:
“Conviction, not cash, won title
Girardi’s decisions were instrumental in Yankees’ victory.”
Makes Joe’s point perfectly.
Financial resources do not assure success – see Cubs, Mets, etc. The Mets and Cubs and Mariners have been trying to pluck big money free agents for years to build contenders. There is the problem – the team already stinks, so what good does it do to plug a couple of overpaid stars into a weak team? However, if you have a good team with a solid base of talent, you can sustain that team for years to come. That is what the Red Sox are trying to do by developing and signing players like Youkilis, Pedroia and Lester. While the Yankees would still be a good team, do they really win without Jeter, Riveria (especially), Petit and Posada? So management still rules.
The real shame of baseball and the free-agent structure is the fact smaller market teams cannot sustain success even if they make all the right decisions for years. See 2007 Indians, late ’90’s A’s, Marlins, etc. Not much can be done about this, except maybe award more draft picks to teams losing players as compensation. More on that later.
Now, what can be done about this? In reality, not much.
First, I don’t believe there will be a salary cap in baseball in our lifetime. MLB made a huge error in the 70’s when they went to the courts to defend their version of slavery called the reserve clause. When they lost they had nothing to bargain with. If they had gone to the players to negotiate, we may have a salary cap or certainly a more equitable plan than now. The reason the owners could not get a cap later is because the players union had already been awarded free agency rights in the courts, the players argued a cap would infringe on that right, and they won. Judge Sonia Sotamayor ruled the MLB did not negotiate in good faith and she was correct; they were not offering anything the players did not enjoy already. Case closed.
MLB was able to get a very high “luxury” payroll tax (only the Yankees pay for the most part), simply because this moves some excess Yankee money back into the market, helping boost the ability of other teams to pay. Yes, many teams take these funds for profit and do not invest as much as they could or should in their product. MLB management will not impose a floor without a ceiling (cap), and the Players Union will not call for a floor, as it would set them up for a cap later down the road, perhaps.
I’m not sure what, if any leverage the owners have now, but the first thing they should try to do is remove money from the entry draft as much as possible. They slot teams to pick players based upon record, and they should make efforts to ensure these teams get a legitimate crack at picking and signing these players. When Scott Boras scares needy teams away from his clients, he perverts the system, and is allowed to get away with it. The NBA got the current players to agree to a rookie salary scale and the NFL will be asking for one. If the MLB owners can offer something tangible to the players, I’m fairly certain they will agree to shift more money to players that have actually proven they belong in the big league. Also, why all the crazy international free agent games? Why should a player from the Dominican, Cuba, Japan or Mars have any more access to the majors than some high school or college player in the US? Have a single and maybe a supplemental draft that requires all players wishing entry to the league to apply for the draft, whether they are 15 or 45. Then let teams trade draft picks or rights to players like all other sports. So if some Cuban star jumps off a boat he can go into the draft. Say Pittsburgh (good bet) has the pick, they can try to sign him or trade his rights to another team for consideration. This works in every other league, why not baseball?
So I say start at the bottom and work up. There will not be a salary cap, players will not have less free agency rights anytime soon and this plan will not affect the payroll inequities that, but it may help better distribute the talent at the pre-free agent level more fairly.
The other thing MLB could do is distribute the national media weighted to teams with lesser local media money. I’m not sure what formula would be used, but the basic premise is that teams with huge local media revenues like the Red Sox and Yankees, would get less MLB national media money because they are already enjoying that benefit from local resources. While this is a very Socialist and even a Communistic approach, it would help even the financial playing field among the teams. A fundamental difference between baseball and other major sports is the huge portion of revenues generated locally, mainly as a result of having 162 games over 6 months. The NFL basically scoops up billions in national media and some local also, and then distributes the money evenly. MLB does not get to do this, so they would have to divvy up the national pie unevenly.
Nothing proposed here will change the fact that the Yankees, due to their financial resources and managerial excellence will always be contenders, but possible solutions must be implemented to ensure more teams have a legitimate chance to achieve and possibly even sustain success.
Nate – I’m not trying to be snarky, but what is the leverage that you think the clubs have in trying to extracta share of local revenue from the Yankees? Is it simply refusing to show up for games?
The visiting club gets (I believe) 40% of the live gate, plus of course the right to sell media rights to the game within their own market. So the value of their participation is already acknowledged under terms that every club has agreed to. If they had a legal right to anything more, they’d exercise it.
I’m not a Yankee fan or apologist. Just think that the Bill James position is not rooted in reality. Why in the world would you ever hand over money to your competitors if you’re not legally obligated to do so?
At Arob and all the other NY/Yankee rationalizers & apologists.
Joe came to play today. This is EXACTLY what this sport needs. Writers that aren’t afraid to alienate a certain fan base because that fan base is too narcissistic & ego-driven to acknowledge that the current state of the game is unhealthy & not self-sustaining.
It’s too bad to hear people (like Arob) that are so wrapped up in their on version of history & perception that they can’t face facts. It’s part of the problem with our society as a whole. Basically those people have the following attitude and this may have been hit on before now but I’m simply unwilling to wade through the over 200 posts thus far.
Simply put, when they post comments like “sh_tty little town” and that “you don’t deserve to have a baseball team” what they are really saying (besides displaying the immaturity & crass behavior that has been embraced by this country as acceptable means of self-expression) is that they are better people than you. Much of this country (there are a lot of people west of Philly btw and we are Americans as well) feels that NY’ers are so arrogant and self-centered by their comments and general displays of self-promotion that they believe themselves to be better “people” than everyone else. This is what turns people into “Yankee haters.” This constant, ‘we’re better than you” attitude. Americans can accept that someone might be better than them at one thing or another. We can accept that NY is the baseball mecca of the world. But don’t tell us that ‘you’ are a better person than ‘me’. Americans won’t stand for it. Fans in Baltimore, Seattle, San Diego, KC, Milwaukee, Houston, Dallas, Oakland, etc. all have great fans that have followed the game for a long time. They all deserve to watch their teams compete on the same playing field that rewards intelligence and savvy moves.
There should be a salary cap for teams with unlimited resources and there should be a salary basement to prevent owners like David Glass from dumping payroll & diluting the talent pool at the major league level. People that say baseball should not be socialist are right. Having the Yanks give away their own money to teams with ownership like David Glass is not American. Follow the NFL plan. It’s not socialistic & it’s not parity driven. Its success is based on smart people doing their jobs and not who has the most money they can throw around.
Right on Joe. Now the rest of America awaits this article in SI.
There is one thing that can be done and which is a simple thing to actually do, though it may well be MUCH harder to implement and it is based on a couple simple facts:
1) No team could make money from selling tickets to a game unless they have an opponent.
2) No team could make money on a TV contract unless the team’s games they are showcasing actually has opponents to play.
That wasn’t hard was it? So why is it easy to mandate a sharing of actual ticket sales but not of TV deals?
Note I am NOT talking revenue sharing here – if a team doesn’t actually play the yankees, then they are not entitled to any share of the gate, whether TV or ticket sales.
If the cards play the Yanks 3 games in a given season, then they are entitled to a share of the gate AND a 3/162 share of the tv revenue (unless of course someone can devise a way to show exactly how much the actual 3 games earned via TV).
In a spirit of hyperbole, I have long told friends that if I owned a weak sister team who played the yanks, I’d try to get this done legally and if I could not manage it, I’d refuse to play the yankees and make sure it was known well in advance of any games.
If no one showed up to play, there would be NO revenue to use to buy teams.
Ironically, I believe that in some ways this could improve the Yanks chances – after all they would still be getting the most out of it and there’d be no more taxes or other punitive measures.
that is my $.02
238 writes “The other thing MLB could do is distribute the national media weighted to teams with lesser local media money.”
In effect this already happens. The national media revenue is shared equally even though the bigger teams contribute much more to the national programming mix.
FOX, TBS, and ESPN max out their Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox, and Dodgers appearances every year. The networks rarely if ever show the Royals, Pirates, Nats, etc. Yet all these teams share equally in those contracts. The national TV deals are a sweet deal for teams like the Royals who get an equal cut of the loot while giving up next to nothing from their local TV inventory.
Wow. Joaldo, great post. Clearly hit a nerve.
Wading through this comment stream is truly fascinating. I must say, the arguments that the league has too many teams does resonate.
Just as its not right that some Wall St. firms are deemed ‘too big to fail’ and thus bailed out by the taxpayers who have no stake in the matter, neither should small market teams that operate at a relative profit for their owners be dubbed “Too small to fail” and propagated by other teams.
You either create a tiered professional system like Soccer based on budget or you encourage ownership groups in certain geographic regions to combine their teams and energies. If all the Texas teams became one team, or California’s teams became one team, with statewide broadcasting etc… Could they compete with the Yanks? Would it be more exciting?
I don’t know. All I do know is I agree 1,000 percent with Joe’s sentiment that while its OK for the Yankees to win – congrats – it’s NOT okay for them to ignore their obvious competitive advantage with cliched rhetoric.
Mondesi – I’ll make my point again and I’m sure you’ll call it “whining” again, but I simply don’t see it that way.
I’m not complaining that the Yankees have an advantage. I’m not claiming that it’s unfair for them to have an advantage. I’m not blaming them for using their advantage. I specifically said I’m not interested in discussing methods of eliminating or lessening that advantage.
What I am saying is that the Yankees and their fans need to refrain from presenting themselves are being a product of anything other than that advantage. As Joe said, they’re not a plucky band of likable underdogs who ignored the doubters and pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and overcame odds to win one for their lovable ailing owner and blah blah blah. They’re a filthy rich team that through a lot of trial and error finally settled on the right players to spend their enormous payroll on. Embrace that, be proud of it. You have the advantage and you used it well, so why pose as something that you’re not?
Great post by Larry Smith Jr. @ 11:36 am
The Steinbrenner’s should not be scrutinized for putting money back into their business. They are making there consumers( Yankees fans) very happy and willing to fork over money to view their product. Instead maybe the problem lies with the greediness of some of the small market owners. Look at the bottom six teams on larry’s post above. How ridiculous is it that the owners for these teams blame the yankees, redsox, and cubs of the world for making it unfair for them to compete, when they are hording all their profits instead of reinvesting in their own product. If I were a Twins fan I would be absolutely fuming over the fact that my owner is so cheap. especially since he has more money to put into his team than even Steinbrenner. If he would spend a little more money instead of pocketing it than maybe he could have kept someone like Johan Santana, which would have helped alot in the playoffs. Maybe the small market teams should quit playing the blame game and learn how to run a successful business. You only get what you put in.
yankee fan demands not only that you give him a 40-yard head start in the race, but that you never mention it and pretend that the entire reason he won the race was that he’s a better runner than you.
Paul White –
“They’re a filthy rich team that through a lot of trial and error finally settled on the right players to spend their enormous payroll on.”
You’re wearing a Red Sox cap. You realize you’re describing your team too, right?
I knew it was all over when Bud Selig approved the Alex Rodriguez trade from Texas to the Yankees. There’s no way in hell I would have approved a shortstop trade to a team that already has a star shortstop. The fact that A-Fraud was moved to 3rd base doesn’t excuse this either. T
The 1994 strike and steroids destroyed baseball, period.
Paul White at 1:40 pm:
“I’m not complaining that the Yankees have an advantage. I’m not claiming that it’s unfair for them to have an advantage. I’m not blaming them for using their advantage. I specifically said I’m not interested in discussing methods of eliminating or lessening that advantage.
What I am saying is that the Yankees and their fans need to refrain from presenting themselves are being a product of anything other than that advantage.”
Ok. Then, in the same spirit, I’d say that people who share your opinion need to acknowledge that not all Yankees fans present their team as not being a product, to whatever extent, of their financial advantage. In doing so you’re setting up a straw-man. Are there unreasonable Yankees fans who deny that the Yankees’ financial advantage matters to the product on the field? Of course. But there are unreasonable fans of every team, so I think picking on those Yankees fans evidences a little bit of selection bias and evidences a commenter with an agenda.
If you want to discuss why they have that advantage, whether it’s fair for them to have that advantage, whether MLB should do something to curb that advantage… I think those and any number of other topics are interesting and worth discussing. But if you just want to point out that they have that advantage for the sake of pointing it out… Then, to use less inflammatory rhetoric than “whining,” all you’re doing is bemoaning a situation you don’t like while not addressing any substantive issues about that situation. That hardly seems productive and really just looks like someone airing their personal grievances and trying to discount the value of the victory of a team they don’t like. And that’s what brings to mind the dreaded “w” word.
Addressing the narrow question of whether a segment of fans are being unreasonable in their fandom is rather myopic. The implication of your critique is that all Yankees fans share those unreasonable opinions and that’s just an appeal to emotion. Again… There are smart people everywhere, and there are stupid people everywhere. Don’t paint all Yankees fans as being unreasonable just so you can set up a straw-man and then knock it down.
As to whether the Yankees themselves need to stop presenting themselves as a product of anything other than financial advantage, I strongly disagree. First of all, the Yankees as an organization are in the business of winning baseball games and making money. They’d hurt that latter goal by saying “hey, we just win because we have more money than everyone else.” It’s completely unreasonable to expect the Yankees to not celebrate their victories the victories of a good baseball team, a smart management team, and grit/effort/guttiness/[insert cliche here]. And as far as the players themselves are concerned, do you expect them to celebrate their victory by saying ‘thanks for celebrating our victory but our team is the richest team, so this really isn’t such a big deal?’ Of course they’re proud of their accomplishments and are celebrating those accomplishments, as they should and as they have earned the right to do.
And, finally… Look, of course the Yankees have a financial advantage, any reasonable observer would stipulate the truth of that assertion. But, just as you don’t like people who deny that their financial advantage plays a role in their on-field success, you’re making the same mistake as those people if you assert that the Yankees ONLY win because of their financial advantage. The games are still played on the field, and the players and coaches still deserve credit when they prevail. Don’t totally discount a team’s success, and don’t begrudge a fanbase the right to celebrate their team’s victory, just because they have a financial advantage.
Paul White at 1:40 pm:
“They’re a filthy rich team that through a lot of trial and error finally settled on the right players to spend their enormous payroll on. Embrace that, be proud of it. You have the advantage and you used it well, so why pose as something that you’re not?”
I did nothing of the sort. Since you’re responding to me in particular, I just thought I’d point that out. I’m aware the Yankees enjoy a financial advantage, I don’t deny that fact. I’m not failing to acknowledge the truth, nor am I posing as something I’m not. Again… Be careful not to create those straw-men.
Ben, I think you’ve missed a huge point.
it’s not just competition on the field but in acquiring players. Yankees take all the best players from the other 31 teams.
I don’t make excuses for the Yankees – they do have a tremendous competitive advantage.
But you can’t fault them for following the rules and spending money.
Plain and simple – other baseball owners are very content to pocket the Yankees revenue sharing money and not rock the boat.
I have no sympathy for fans in Pittsburgh or Kansas City when your owners perpetually pocket money that could otherwise be spent on players. Those owners are content with finishing poorly and still making a tidy profit each year. Fans of those teams are putting up with it so they deserve what they get. You go to games and shake your pom poms, but your owners don’t reciprocate. Stop going to games and stop buying their merchandise and they’ll get the message.
Ya know, I am actually a huge Red Sox fan, and it doesnt bother me at all that the yanks spend so much on their team. They play within the rules (which are stupid, but they are rules) and they provide a “Goliath” for every other teams David.
If anything, this will finally take some of the hate off of the Red Sox that has been out there since ‘04, and place it back on the Yankees, where it should have been the whole time.
What is amusing to me, though, is the amount of money the Yankees spent in the period between their last championships. I’d be willing to venture that it was close to, if not more, than the amount the Red Sox spent in between their title gap of 1918-2004.
““They’re a filthy rich team that through a lot of trial and error finally settled on the right players to spend their enormous payroll on.”
You’re wearing a Red Sox cap. You realize you’re describing your team too, right?”
Yup, never claimed otherwise. And also never pretended that my team won because of how plucky they were.
So, the Yankees are just doing the best they can within the structure of the current system of rules they’re given and everyone should appreciate that. Is that what I’m hearing? I’m guessing all those folks are also supportive of the PED users that flourished before testing……right? Same philosophy isn’t it?
Isn’t there a difference between winning the WS and clinching the playoffs? Since the Yankees outspend other teams, they pretty much ensure themselves a playoffs spot. However, a team still has to win 3 playoff series to win the WS. Let’s say a dominant baseball team wins 65% of the time (and I’m sure that percentage is less against winning percentage teams that make it to the post-season). Doesn’t that mean there’s only a 27.5% chance that the dominant team will win all three of its playoff series? This is consistent with the Yankees’ record over the last 9 seasons: they made it to the playoffs 8/9 years but only won it all once. Of course the Yankees are not the only team to have consistently bought their way into the postseason. So while I understand the frustration with seeing some teams make it into the playoffs year after year, I don’t agree with the singling out of the Yankees. If anything, I thought this WS was more competitive and had more drama than any of the previous 5.
“I did nothing of the sort. Since you’re responding to me in particular, I just thought I’d point that out. I’m aware the Yankees enjoy a financial advantage, I don’t deny that fact. I’m not failing to acknowledge the truth, nor am I posing as something I’m not. Again… Be careful not to create those straw-men.”
I was responding to you because you cited me as one of the anti-Yankee whiners, not because you failed to acknowledge their competitive advantage. My comment that you quote was directed at Yankee fans in general, far too many of whom have cited reasons for this team’s success that are just silly.
Joe, you’ve hit a huge nerve here with the baseball faithful.
I’d love to get a podcast going about this! Obviously you have my email address and if you’re willing, I’d love to have this discussion with you.
Basically you socialists want to buy the Royals or the Pirates and use that as entry into an equity stake in the Yankees.And you ignore that the Glasses and McClatchys of MLB don’t want anything to change because they get the cache of owning an MLB team and get a fat check form the Yankees while not being required to run a team with a minimum salary. If any of the bottom feeders reallyw anted to do that, they would have bought or tried to buy the Yankees ratehr than buy a bottom feeder on the cheap. Why should Steinbrenner be required to share his interest in YES? He merely improved on an idea that already had been done by the Braves and the Cubs.
Don’t see anyone saying they want a salary cap for movie performers,musical artists or themselves.
Note that the NBA, NFL and NBA have varying caps and based on championships are less competitive than MLB. And while many wax poetic anout thw wonders of NCAA basketball and football no one seems the least bit upset that few teams outside the top 20 when the season begins have a shot, and it’s the same teams at the end year after year.
@7 Greg T “My question is, why do the other owners put up with this? Why does the players union?”
Money, of course. A salary cap will depress player salaries, as team budgets are forced downwards. I’m not even sure that small market teams would support it, as they may be making more cash from luxury tax payments (and I assume that a salary cap would probably have a minimum level that would force some of them to spend more).
Thus, the player’s union has no reason to agree to a cap, and team owners may have a financial reason to resist one as well. I think it’s telling that the one major sport without a salary cap is the one that traditionally has had the strongest union.
Here’s a thought for the Yankee knockers.
Every four years, at the Olympic Games, the United States becomes the Yankees.
Gold medals to the USA in the long jump, the 4 x 100m relay, the 200m, the 100m, half the swimming events and then the greatest slam dunk of all, the basketball.
Americans at home will be jumping for joy as television shows another success, children gathered around their father’s knee as he explains the triumphs won for their country by brave boys in far off lands, maybe wiping a teary eye as the Star Spangled Banner blares out once more, friends will be phoning friends saying “Did you see THAT!”
But from the rest of the world: “Meh, whaddaya expect. Population of 300 million to pick from, world’s richest economy by a street, all those college programmes; no one’s kidding us. Probably on steroids, too.”
So three years from now, when the London Games are rolling, and you’re pumping your fist and chanting U S A U S A, spraying Budweiser across the room . . . the rest of the world will be looking at you like the rest of America today looks at New York.
Paul White at 2:58 PM:
“My comment that you quote was directed at Yankee fans in general, far too many of whom have cited reasons for this team’s success that are just silly.”
I’d just like to point out that you started your first comment in this thread by saying the following:
“Too many comments already to read through all of them…”
If you’d respond to things people actually said instead of just things you’ve assumed they said, nobody would have reason to accuse you of generalizing or setting up straw-men or any of that other fun stuff.
You don’t like that some people deny that the Yankees enjoy a financial advantage, and go on to assert that they only win because of that advantage… You complain about (without responding to a particular comment, by the way) people who are making a blanket statement that denies aspects of reality, and in response you make a blanket statement that denies aspects of reality. You’re doing the same thing you’re complaining about, you’re just on the other side of the aisle. Look, you’re right, thinking the Yankees don’t enjoy a financial advantage is unreasonable. But so is thinking that they only win because of that advantage, or that every Yankees fan denies reality.
Paul White at 2:58 PM:
“I was responding to you because you cited me as one of the anti-Yankee whiners…”
You’re kind of doing the straw-man thing here, again. I didn’t generalize and cite you as one of the “anti-Yankee whiners,” I used the word “whining” in reaction to you bringing up the financial issue while not being interested in talking about any of the substantive issues involved. I never once responded to a hypothetical group of fans, I responded to Joe’s article and to your comment. Your comments portray an interest in pointing out that the Yankees have a financial advantage (in order to discount the value of their accomplishments) and complaining about how Yankees fans (your generalized view of those fans) view their team. If your point is just to say ‘the Yankees won because they spend the most money and Yankees fans are unreasonable,’ then, I’m sorry to use a word that you find insulting, but that sounds an awful lot like whining to me.
#246
Well done.
Ohh–I’m so tired of the league minimum argument. What happens when there’s minimum? It just raises the floor, giving the Mark Teahans (whom I like, but come on, really? for a .270 hitting 10 homer corner outfielder or third baseman???) of the world $7 million instead of a paltry $5 million, and the big guns just slide up the scale.
Without a max, and without revenue sharing, the minimum just raises player salaries even more without changing the roster of a single team. And I pay less and less attention…..
Where were all you baseball purists in 2007 when the Red Sox outspent their world series opponents, the Rockies, to the tune of 143 million to 54 million?
Just admit you have an anti-Yankee bias and then we can all move on. Otherwise you would have been killing the Red Sox the same way you kill the Yankees.
Since we are talking about payroll and money etc. Let’s not forget this. Yankees and all other teams are corporations. They are out to make money. Yankees is no different than Microsoft, Google, Intel. They got money, they hire the best to make more money. What’s wrong with that? I don’t really know what’s all the fuss is about hating Yankees because they spend the most money. We should hate Madof for stealing money, but hate a successful entity for making and spending too much money? That’s a loser’s mentality.
@265 – not6 sure where you were in 2007 (perhaps too busy being angry at whoever was responsible for the Yankees doing poorly that year?) but that was the year that baseball fans (at least non Sawx or Yanks fans) largely did indeed decide that there was little difference between the yankee approach and the sawx approach.
To me, Sawx fans reached the pinnacle of bad fandom as well – equally as bad as yankee fans who somehow believe they deserve a WS every year.
@266 I am sure there are people who hate the yankees for spending money legally to improve their team just as I am sure much of that particular kind of hate is mere jealousy.
However, most of the discussion here isn’t hatred of the yankees but rather extreme dislike of the system that exists which allows them the financial advantage they currently have.
As I said earlier, TY revenue should be shared the same way as the gate is shared: same ratio, only with teams who actually played each other etc. Until it is, the advantage enjoyed by big market, big dollar teams is unfair, no matter what spin anyone puts on it.
@ 267: So far you’re the only one to admit the Yankees and Red Sox are two sides of the same coin.
The Yankees are just more obnoxious about their spending. But the Red Sox still bury almost every other team in baseball in terms of payroll.
Do you think I should take on Jose Canseco now that everyone will forget I am a cheater?
@268, the financial advantage they currently have is because they are managed successfully. It’s a free market system, there is no guarantee Yankees will always be successful, just ask the Knicks. But no one is complaining the Knicks have the highest payroll because they are not winning . Why aren’t people discussing this using Knicks as an example? So whenever an entity becomes successful y you want to change the system?
May I ask why so many people are blaming fans for owners? I’ve seen several comments which basically say “why should we feel bad for the FANS of team X when their owner is greedy with revenue money?”
The fans suffer for that. They don’t choose the owner and they don’t have the power to get rid of him.
Also, @267: I’m a Red Sox fan, and, yes, we have a huge payroll compared to many other teams. We’re in the top five every year, and have been since Henry took over. The point is, if people complain about the Sox, they should be MORE discomfited with the amount the Yankees spend, because even with the huge payroll, the Sox are far lesser in that aspect than the Yanks.
But, yes, I will not attribute any Red Sox victory to any special trait. We have a very generous owner and a good base of players signed with that owner’s money.
My comment was directed at 269, actually. Sorry.
@267, not all Yankees fans believe they deserve to win a WS every year. You are basing your opinion on some obnoxious Yankees fans. There are lot of classy, baseball knowledgeable fans just like their team is.
@274 Yes, there are a large amount of intelligent, rational Yankees fans. But the team is what causes the offended reactions: they clearly state that any year without a WS is a failure. That kind of cockiness is off-putting.
@272, I don’t know about that. Don’t forget Red Sox paid 51 million just to talk to Dice-K. They even out did the Yankees on that one. Of course that’s not reflected on payroll. The most hypocritical thing from Red Sox is to complain about money spending. This is like Donald Trump complaining about how poor he is because Bill Gates is hundred times what he is worth. Give me a break.
@275, it’s not cockiness, it’s their desire. Great athletes like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan will tell you the same thing, not winning the Champion is a failure. That’s their measure themselves.
@276 I have not actually complained about Yankee spending, just pointed some things out.
And even with Daisuke’s ridiculous posting fee–which I have always been opposed to–the Sox still have a decently smaller payroll thank the Yankees.
I like your analogy; which is why as a Sox fan I’m not complaining about the Yankees monetary advantage. I just feel for the teams that get less from their owners.
Mondesi @262 – I’ll respond to one your points here, then I’m done.
“…“Too many comments already to read through all of them…”
If you’d respond to things people actually said instead of just things you’ve assumed they said, nobody would have reason to accuse you of generalizing or setting up straw-men or any of that other fun stuff…”
You do realize, I hope, that Joe’s site, nice as it is, doesn’t comprise the totality of words written or spoken about the Yankees’ most recent championship, right? You can’t turn on a radio or television or open a sports-related web page without seeing or hearing something about ring #27, so reading every single word of all 170-odd comments that predated mine on this post was not exactly a prerequisite to getting a good sense of the discussion about this team. And, presuming you’ve been exposed to that same coverage I have, then you have to admit (and I believe you already have) that some of that discussion from the Yankees and their fans involves lame platitudes about grittiness and whatnot that completely ignore the reality of the financial situation. That’s my only point here, no matter how many others you keep trying to attribute to me.
Now you go have yourself a great weekend. Hope you enjoyed the victory parade.
[...] Posnanski on the frustration of the Yankees, a topic that leads people like me to only half -jokingly propose they be forced to eat other [...]
Joe, first off, love the site, love both your books, love your work at the Star and SI, etc. However, and this isn’t just directed at Joe, but pointing out to most Yankees fans that the Yankees spend an obscene amount of money is like pointing out to a fan of professional wrestling over the age of 13 that wrestling is fake. We are already aware of this and we accept it.
When the Yankees failed to win the World Series from 2001-2008 (so, so long… I’m just kidding Mets/Cubs/most other fans!) the first thing people bring up, be they sports writers, analysts, and, yes, fans of the Yankees, is … how can a team with those stars and that payroll NOT win the World Series?! Any story on the Yankees, especially in New York, made sure to point out over the past eight years that the Yankees managed to spend all that money without winning the World Series. Mike Lupica lived for this.
Yes, the Yanks have a ridiculous advantage over other teams, but they and their fanbase go into every season with the ridiculous belief that a season that ends without a World Series is a failure. I’m sure other fans and other teams say this, but the Yankees and most of their fans really believe this.
So, bringing up the Yanks payroll is not going to shock a Yankees fan. You’re also not going to hear a Yankees fan blame anyone else besides the Yankees when they don’t win the World Series. Phillies lose to the Yankees, Phillies fans can (and do) say, “Well, what do you expect, they spend $200 million on their team! And A-Rod took steroids!” If the Yankees had lost to the Phillies, Yankees fans would have said, “What the hell are the Yankees spending $200 million on? They can’t even beat the Phillies!”
Again, if Major League Baseball wants to change the rules, so be it. But until they do, don’t expect Yankees fans to be upset that the Yankees spend a ton of money. Yankees fans will be upset that the Yanks spend a ton of money if they don’t win No. 28 next season. They’ll wonder what the hell they spent $200 million on.
Wow Joe, you outdid yourself this time! This must be a record for # of comments! I almost could not find the all too wordy one I wrote last night. (#162- there it is)
If all these comments show anything, they show that most fans believe there is a problem, and it is something they think about and feel very strongly about.
Anything that inspires this kind of passionate response is something baseball should address. I know that if their were more economic parity, like the NFL, there would still be perenially bad and good teams. There would, however not be a crutch for a do nothing owner or a poor management team to hide behind or blame their ineptitude on. There would also be nothing to keep a team that is always smart (and always close) now from becoming a power-because they do it better.
I have no doubt that the Yankees would still be one of the power teams even under a more equitable system. I have no doubt that they would still be a pull for free agents because of their history and other factors. I have no doubt that they would still try and have the best coaches and scouts.
The recent top NFL teams, whether I like them or not, have earned my respect because they have taken a system where everyone has an equal chance and quite simply done a better job.
I do not blame the Yankees for using what the system gives them, but let’s get real-there are alot of people who are not even involved in baseball that know enough to G.M. this team to a World Championship under the current system.
No team in sport more lavishly rewards the commitment made by its fans than the New York Yankees.
Isn’t that what every sports fan deserves?
The promise that in exchange for your loyalty, financially and otherwise, they will in-turn exhaust every possible resource in the pursuit of a championship.
How can you criticize a business, which is what every sport team is, for successfully operating within the parameters of its industry to provide the best possible product it can to its patrons? It is the same reason why Sports Illustrated hired you.
Should Senator John McCain be mad at President Barack Obama because he used his sizable financial advantage to accrue more votes than him in the 2008 Presidential election? I would argue that this is the American system.
I will concede that there are very strong arguments for both campaign and baseball financial reform. But this brings me to what I believe is truly the biggest crime against baseball and its fans: owners and teams that do not exhaust every resource they have in the yearly pursuit of a championship.
The most glaring example of this was probably the late Carl Pohlad who was worth $3.6 billion when he died this year. That is over double the $1.5 billion the Yankees are worth in 2009. Why then was the Twins payroll only $56.9 million in 2008?
Let us also not forget that in 2001, according to the Minneapolois-St.Paul Star Tribune, he wanted to sell his team back to baseball so they could eliminate it!
Until something is done to eliminate this behavior from the sport the Yankees should not be required to put a single dime towards any other team’s pursuit of a championship.
It can be argued that the Yankees are not the most popular team in baseball. They were second to the Dodgers this year in overall attendance and second to the Cubs in road game attendance. However, I truly believe no other team has created more baseball fans than the Yankees.
I would argue that what makes the Yankees the greatest franchise in baseball is not their 27-World Championships or the fact that they make and spend more money than any other team in baseball but the fact that they so fervently honor the unwritten contract they have with their fans.
Bask in the glory Yankees fans, your team EARNED it.
Like many others I have not read through every single comment here so I apologize if this has already been addressed. The New Yankee Stadium was not publicly financed. Yes, the parking garages and other external features were paid for by taxpayers, and the team’s luxury tax is lessened, and there are other tax breaks, but the Yankee organization paid over $1 billion of the cost. Those above who refer to the stadium as “publicly-financed” with no qualifications are wrong.
I also want to point out that I’m aware Joe warned us Yankees fans not to read the post if we didn’t want to read about payroll, but I ignored the warning due to my enjoyment of Joe’s writing, which includes this post.
Also, I don’t think some commenters realize that a salary cap is something that will have to be negotiated with the players for the next CBA. It’s not something that the owners can agree to in a smoke-filled room and unilaterally enforce. In other words, it’s not happening.
Why do people have a problem with Champion Yankees talking about how the group came together, got along well, and used the combination of talent and chemistry to succeed in winning the World Series? If Championships were as academic as everyone makes it out to be, why havent the Yankees won since 2000? With how much variance exists in baseball in general, and that variance exaggerated drastically in the playoffs, theres as much a chemistry component as there is a pure talent and “who’s the best team on paper” component.
With that in mind, EVERY team is an underdog at the start of every year. There are many teams you know wont compete, but even if the league were cut in half (to 15) and the Yankees were assumed to have twice as good a shot at winning a World Series as any of the 15 remaining, that still makes them a 1 in 7.5 shot at winning, assuming they play up to their potential and the teams they face dont play over their heads. The rest of the teams have somewhat worse or far worse odds than that. Its not easy to win a championship, no matter who you are.
It may be so simple to every Yankee hater as to break down everything into payroll advantages, but theres a reason they dont just field the team and award the championship to the Yankees on opening day.
This is brilliant and funny both.
Our capitalist/political system is rigged, too, though occasionally the better choice gets elected. Most of us either don’t understand that 1% have 95% of the wealth — or figure there’s nothing to do about it except try to choose a better beer.
hey joe, i just have to say, as a twins fan who has sat here and read about your indefensible man crush on gardy, and more so, as a twins fan who was referred to your site by a YANKEES fan, i have to say i’m upset that you took the cheap way out.
let’s deal with the fact the yanks finally learned how to spend their money, good for them (as a midwesterner who attends school in nyc i can say the city “deserves” it just as much as anywhere else), now let’s look forward to catchers and pitchers in feb…let a team, a city, people, enjoy a championship
Unfortunately for fans, the Yankees ARE good for baseball. Reporters have said that executives claim they want the Yankees to win it all every season since it raises the water level for everyone.
Plus, you all saw the ratings of this World Series.
PS- Where was this hate when the $150mil payroll Sox took on the $50mil payroll of the Rockies?
As a Yankee fan since 1976, I have to take a lot of exception with the thing that are being presented as fact here. First of all, the Yankees are a Billion dollar sports franchise, who’s usually used by Free Agents to get more money from other teams and also have to overpay in order to attract and/or retain those valuable free agents. Second of all, both dynasties(’70’s and ’90’s) where built by great baseball men(Gabe Paul/Gene Michael) before the explosion of payrolls. As a matter of fact the core four(Jeter, Rivera, Posada, Pettite), were developed by the organization created by Gene Michael when Steinbrenner was suspended. Finally, I love George Steinbrenner, as an owner of my team I wish he would buy the Knicks. All we have to do is look at the fact that the two years that he owned the Nets they made the finals twice, and they haven’t been back since. He’s the best owner in sports and all of you wished that he owned your teams. Red Sox fans have nothing to say. Your history says enough…:-)
@ stpat #240
How can you rationalize that the “game is unhealthy and not self-sustaining.” Baseball is healthier than ever when the Yankees are successful (the owners have figured this out, its about time you do). The world series ratings, overall attendance and even the amount of responses to this post are clear evidence of that. The truth is, that the biggest threat to health of the game is teams that are uncompetitive. When teams are fielded with a 30 million dollar payroll they are saying loud and clear “We dont care about our fans, and we are not trying to win.”
For the record I don’t think I am better than anyone…especially fans of small-market teams. Part of the reason that i love this blog is because it gives me perspective of the fans of those teams. I have great respect for your loyalty, and the truth is i dont know if i could watch teams like the Royals/Pirates every night (i like to think that as a baseball fan that i would, but truthfully i dont know).
Joe – You were right, “people don’t talk about the Yankees spending much more money than any other team to win games”
Sincerely,
Post #292
Um, I’d like to throw out there for all the Royals or Pirates or Orioles fans: this was exactly the same system in the 80’s and 90’s. Nothing has changed except that the Yankees are using all of the cards in their deck and doing it wisely.
It’s just frustrating to read about how the “system is broken” and “it’s unfair” when it was the same system that allowed such big-market behemoths as the Twins, Blue Jays, Pirates, Padres, Reds and Royals to make and win the World Series. It’s just that the Yanks had spent their money horribly and hadn’t figured a way to exploit the benefits of their market.
K.B.-YF,
How is the system the same as it was in the 80’s early 90’s????? The Royals had the bigest payroll in baseball in 1990 for God sakes.
what are you talking about? Did the Yankees have the YES network in 1985?
Did the Yankees outspend their nearest team by $70 million dollars back in 1992?
Did the Yankees have a $200 million dollar payroll in 1988?
The Yankees can do 4 things that no Major league team can, and about a dozen can do 1, some teams can do 2, no team can do all 4:
1-They can go and sign and fill holes by signing the best free agents available.
2-They can absorb players from other teams with big free agent contracts.
3-they can afford to assume risk like signing Kei Igawa for $50 million and just shake it off when it doesn’t work out.
4-The can keep all of their homegrown stars.
It drives me nuts when people mention the “cheap” Marlins’ two World Series titles.
While it is true that the 2003 Marlins’ payroll was 25th in MLB, people seem to have forgotten the truth about the 1997 team, which was a collection of highly-paid free agents. The Marlins’ 1997 payroll ranked 5th in MLB, and it was just a few hundred thousand away from ranking 4th.
Those two Marlins championship teams could not have been any different from each other. Everyone remembers the “David” from 2003 (and the low payrolls ever since) and absentmindedly projects that onto the “Goliath” of 1997.
#292,
The games not healthy? Last year was one of the lowest rated games in WS history. The main reason ratings were up this year was because the Yankees and the NY market were involved.
People go to Royals games now because they have memories of George Brett and company back in the 70’s and 80’s. What memories does a 25 year old Royal fan have? Why would you even care about baseball if you were a young person in Kansas City?
Why would you care about baseball if you were a young person in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cincinatti, and Toronto??
Great Posts:
#240 STPat, #246Fred C. Dobbs, #244Paul White.
Paul White said it best, what gets fans of other teams upset and turns them into Yankee haters is the notion that:
“they’re there a plucky band of likable underdogs who ignored the doubters and pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and overcame odds to win one for their lovable ailing owner and blah blah blah. They’re a filthy rich team that through a lot of trial and error finally settled on the right players to spend their enormous payroll on. Embrace that, be proud of it. ”
and a basic attitude that spending $700 million dollars on 4 players had nothing to do with it.
Also, I live in the New York area and when the Yankees win it just brings out the Douchebaggery in a lot of people. It turns Regular douchebags into Super-Douchebags.
People get more obnoxious, arrogant and just become downright A-holes when the Yankees win.
People who a month before couldn’t tell the difference between Mickey Mouse and Mickey Rivers suddenly become “life long fans”.
I’m sorry, if you’re a Pirates (or Reds) fan you have to blame their front office for their inability to compete in the NL Central. Just based on the past few years, the Cards, Cubs and Astros have done well out of that division and, while I know the Cubs are now a big spender, I don’t think the Cards and Astros are (I could be wrong) to such a degree that those two teams couldn’t compete. You can’t blame the Yanks for that.
Also, not only did the Rays go to the World Series in 2008, they beat both the Red Sox and the Yanks for the AL East last year. And, had they not traded Edwin Jackson for (I think) Matt Joyce for no particular reason and signed Pat Burrel as a free agent (instead of, say, Bobby Abreu, who’s a much better player and was much cheaper) they could have won the AL East again. I think they were picked by Baseball Prospectus to finish in first or second this year before the season started, and even with those bad moves, they were in the hunt for the majority of the season. Their offense started the season red-hot but their rotation didn’t produce, and they expected too much out of their bullpen, which didn’t meet expectations.
Excuse me, Joe, but weren’t YOU the guy who penned a lengthy love letter to Theo Epstein a few weeks back? You know, Theo Epstein, the guy with the SECOND highest payroll in baseball? The guy who built the Red Sox into champions by doing EXACTLY what you detest the Yankees for doing?
Why does the Yankees alleged theft of C.C. Sabathia from a poorer team rankle you more than Epstein’s theft of Josh Beckett? Why dodn’t you slam the Red Sox for filling their lineups with guys like Manny Ramirez, rather than with homegrown talent?
If you hate the Yankees, you should hate Theo. Why don’t you?
Also, this “underdog” thing has been brought up a few times in these comments, and I think people are mistaking a comment A-Rod made about himself with something that was inspiration for the Yankees’ entire 2009 playoff run. I never heard anyone outside of A-Rod refer to anyone involved with the Yankees as an “underdog” this season.
I know A-Rod will get destroyed for that since he’s the best player on a team of All-Stars, but I think his meaning for that was that, coming off of the fact that he admitted taking steroids (or not tic-tacs) and that he missed the first 1 1/2 months of the season, that he didn’t expect to perform to his usual standards this year.
I know a lot of people made fun of him for the fact that he said he thought of Bo Jackson when he heard he had a hip injury, and it might have been a calculated statement (this is A-Rod), but it’s possible, since he’s been healthy for the majority of his career and he’s a bit of a drama queen, that the reality of hip surgery caused him to think he might not ever be the dominant player he was before needing surgery. Yes, it was probably melodramatic, but for A-Rod, that might have been what he needed to get back on the field and prove he was just as good as he was before the steroid admission and surgery.
Was it over-the-top? Probably, but athletes sometimes make things up to motivate them all the time, and this might have been what A-Rod needed to do for himself.
Again, I know there was a bit of “Let’s do this for the Boss” in the postseason this year, but I have never heard the Yankees refer to themselves as an underdog since they went down 2-0 in 1996.
I have a question – the Mets are also located in NY. Why are they not able to replicate/copy the Yankee model? who stops them?
Or is it that 90% of NewYorkers are Yankees fans who dont give a crap to the Mets and hence their TV deal sux etc?
I must admit it’s gotten to be furiously annoying hearing people constantly lump my Red Sox in with the Yank$ as “those big-spending teams.” Finally, an article that clearly explains why this is NOT TRUE.
And yet you still have people on here commenting “Boston’s just as much of a problem, blah blah…” this article shows why that is not true, so please stop saying it?
301-
The Mets stink because even with many of the same advantages(new stadium, own tv channel, biggest market, rabid fan base) the Yankees have they are as poorly run as the Yanks were in the 1980s. They almost didn’t sign their top draft pick in June because they wanted to argue over pennies. And the cheapness of the Coupons, uh, Wilpons has accelerated since the Madoff mess.
284-
As a taxpayer, you must have missed NYC issuing bonds to pay for road improvements and various other tax concessions to build othe New Yankee and New Shea(I’m not calling it anything to do with some slug bank). Note NYC is in the irresponsible habit of issuing new bonds to pay off old ones, so it’s debt that will likely saddle future NY residents. Realty taxes have been rising at an 18.5% clip for to that last several years at a time Wall Street has been bleeding jobs, which has cut tax revenues dramatically. Also the City gave the Yanks Macombs Dam Park or the new Stadium with the promise that sometime in the future the old Stadium field with become a park called “Heritage Field”(the drawings posted at the demo sight of the old Stadium look pretty cool, and the idea is that little league, high school and college teams will play on the same field as the old Stadium). It’s still a net loss in parkland. The MTA also kicked in a Metro North station. If all that isn’t “publicly financed” don’t know what is.
Astorian — did you read the article? Just curious. It’s all about how the Yankee$ are way above everyone in payroll to the point it’s getting ridiculous. Your comment says we should hate Theo for doing the same thing. I’m confused because the article says clearly that this is not true. Please help me understand your corroded logic.
The Yankees can increase their payroll by 25 million this offseason, and if they lose in the first round or finish third again the vast majority of articles and discussions will be about how hilarious it is that they spent so much money for nothing. We know that.
And that’s why so many people are tired of hearing about this issue. Why should I bother taking the hand-wringing seriously when barely any of the hand-wringers themselves seem to take this issue seriously?
Ever since the 94′ strike Baseball has returned to the 50’s as far as fairness goes. Back then, the Yankees won the WS almost every year and KC (most notably) was basically their farm club. We’ve come full circle folks, it will take a decade for baseball to right itself, if ever. Guess what? I’m not going to hang around waiting for this to happen. Goodbye Baseball – I win!
@ 299 astorian: You call Josh Beckett a theft? Try looking at who was given up for him, and who is the Marlins’, and indeed the NL’s, darling right now? Hanley Ramirez for Josh Beckett? No way that’s theft.
Plus, that deal wasn’t made by Epstein. He was “retired” at the time.
@ 297. The added level of douche-baggery happens in any city with any sport. A very good friend of mine lived in Colorado when the Broncos were successful in the late 90s, and he told me before they won their Super Bowls, hed rarely see a Bronco Jersey or bumper sticker, yet after they won everyone and their mother was a “life-long fan”. Thats just one example, but we see every city rally around a successful team. 95% of fans have no clue whats going on, then go “oh thats nice, I should go see a game” when they find out their team made the playoffs. True, knowledgeble, life-long fans are few and far between, regardless of the city.
Every championship team says the same thing about “believing” and not listening to the naysayers. Even the Bulls, after winning four or five titles, were still saying this stuff. It’s part of the script just like the champagne and the Disney World thing.
Sorry, chowderheads, but the Red Sox are not gritty little underdogs. They ARE the Yankees.
To be sure, over the past several years, Theo Epstein has done a great job of beating the Yankees at their own game.
I DON’T fault him for that. I even give him credit. The object is to win championships, and he’s DONE that. It just so happens that he’s done it the same way Steinbrenner did: by spending a ton of money on free agents and/or picking up guys who were about to become free agents.
Nothing illegal or immoral about that. That’s the way the game is played these days, for better or for worse.
Red Sox fans suffered for decades, and got used to posing as plucky David vs. the evil Goliath. They CAN’T do that with a straight face any more.
So, why don’t the Red Sox get the same kind of grief the Yankees do? In part, because the Red Sox has a lot of sabremetricians and stat gurus. A lot of guys who post here WANT to believe that the Red Sox have thrived because Bill James is one of their consultants. They WANT to believe the Sox have won by being smarter than everybody else, rather than by being richer than (almost) everybody else.
311 comments!!!! Holy cow! Methinks you’ve struck a nerve (though I could care less). Let’s see if this can grow to 500.
WOW. What a post and thread.
The baseball business model (salary arbitration, free agency and no payroll cap) is obviously deeply flawed from a team competition standpoint. The flaw is somewhat mitigated by the element of random chance in short playoff series (resulting in the Yankees not winning the World Series for 9 years, even though they made the playoffs all but one year and were the best team in about five of those years).
The NFL business model (payroll floors and caps) is obviously the best from the team competition standpoint. Each team has the same chance of developing a good team.
THE CAUSE OF BASEBALL’S FLAWED MODEL IS THE UNION SUCCESS IN NEGOTIATIONS (or, viewed another way, the owners incompetance in negotiations). It is a classic case of the union winning in negotiations. In 1994, the owners took a strike and had the opportunity under the law to impose a payroll cap. Incredibly, the owners mishandled the negotiations so badly that the law prohibited them implementing the payroll cap.
I think we now are stuck with the flawed business model, effectively dividing strong baseball fans into Yankee fans and “hate the Yankees” fans.
As a Royals fan, I’m grateful we are in the AL Central where the business model has not at this point precluded the possibility of fair competition.
For the poor fans of the Orioles, Jays and Rays, I wouldn’t mind randomly shaking up the divsisions once every four years. It might be fun.
I don’t think it’s fair to Joe’s other posts that this post has so many comments. There really needs to be some kind of comment cap.
MLB = Capitalism
NFL = Socialism
The MLB is a perfect microcosm of our society’s capitalistic system, complete with real life haves and have nots. The NFL looks more like socialism where income and revenue are more evenly distributed and a draft exists that actually lets the worst team pick the best player, not the most signable .
Yeah, too bad those socialists in the NFL are so unpopular and not making any money.
Given that Wall Street execs are back to big bonus’s and working on wonderful new financial intstruments to game the system, looks like capitalism is working great…in NY.
Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Goldman-Sachs.
here’s what i don’t understand about this salary cap/payroll nonsense:
a salary cap would only help the yankees. it would lessen and not increase the competition between mlb teams. look at basketball and football. as joe has pointed out in previous articles, there is less and not more competition in those leagues (same teams win and contend every year).
in order to increase competition within the league, the owners need both the incentive and the means to produce better products, and to compete with each other. In NFL and NBA, owners don’t have either. See Howard Schultz’ problems with the Sonics–he wanted to make his product more competitive, but quickly learned that that was not possible in the NBA.
In the last 15 years, the Yankees have drastically increased their own fan base and revenue. They could not have done this without investing in the team–in players and in other areas of the business. My guess is that the Yankees will need less investment anyways from this point forward because now they are profiting from that investment.
So, now it is at this point in the game that you want to limit investment for the other teams? If I were Hal, this is exactly what I would be pushing for.
Imagine if we had salary caps elsewhere in the entertainment industry… ALL we’d see is Reality TV, and Reality film, or cheap and ultra-exploitative docs. But no indie film maker will tell you that a salary cap is going to increase the quailty of film and tv for the consumer.
ALso, you limit the amount teams can invest in players but you don’t limit the amount teams can invest in other areas–well, where is the competition goign to go? You’re going to be watching a lot of amateur baseball in big expensive stadiums serving overpriced food. It helps mlb transform itself into chucky cheese.
The socialist/capitalist analogy is not valid because we are talking about sports competition on the field of play, not competition for financial profits. Baseball fans could not care less how much profits teams make.
New York, it is insanity to think that a salary cap would help the Yankees.
I think a salary cap would benefit the Yankees.
Why?
Well, look at all the Lebron hysteria that’s already been going for what, 2 years now?
New York offers more endorsement deals than a place like Cleveland and Kansas City and Minnesota.
Even with a cap in place, big market cities (and everyone’s already said that NY is the uber market) are still going to attract the more prevalent and lucrative players.
Look at the state of the Knicks, until this year they were OVER the salary cap and had to pay a luxury tax (hey like the Yankees do) but nobody complained because they were a crap team.
Yet… the Lakers are OVER the salary cap and nobody has been screaming that they have an unfair advantage. Or that they were gifted Pau Gasol in probably the worst trade of the 21st century. In all sports.
The salary cap wouldn’t be a reasonable deterrent; nor fix the problem.
The biggest problem with baseball isn’t so much what the Yankees spend, but rather how little some of the other teams spend. Even worse, you don’t ever hear the Marlins, Pirates, Royals, Reds, Indians, A’s, etc. ever complain about not being able to compete. I suspect the reason is because these cheap teams are laughing all the way to the bank. Why do the Indians want to boost their payroll an additional 75 million dollars and come up empty as far as a World Series is concerned? They don’t. The Yankees, as Joe says, are their own argument. And, baseball doesn’t care and won’t care for the foreseeable future. The real dummies in all of this are the Angels, Red Sox, Dodgers, Cardinals, Mets, Phillies, and Cubs who think they can spend 125 million dollars and win. They may as well slash their payroll by half, make more money, and just let the Yankees have their way.
[...] • Do you want to know what I think about the Yankees winning the World Series? I don’t even have the strength to rant about how shameful it is. Instead, I’ll just tell you that Joe Posnanski wrote a great blog post about the Yankees payroll this week. Read it and weep, you mentally-underdeveloped Yankee “fans.” [story] [...]
it is interesting that despite the general obsession with player salaries, baseball fans tend not to care how much owners make… I don’t see how that’s in our best interest.
the problems i think with the capitalist/socialist issue here stem from the general confusion between socialism and monopoly capitalism. free markets aren’t free. and these issues are more than analogies, as mlb has practices that are both capitalist and (at times) socialist. like any actor in this world.
I wouldn’t care who spent what if it was an open system. The true flaw in MLB is the monopolies teams have on markets.
Anyone should be able to pay an entry fee, field a team, and play ball. Anyone.
If this were the case the Yankees would have to compete with about 5 other teams in NYC alone. If we are going to let anyone spend anything then we should also let anyone compete.
[...] A cogent explanation of why the Yankees suck. They distort the whole of baseball around them. They alone can make blockbuster deals that can turn into catastrophes without damaging the team’s ability at all. Everyone else can try to sign superstars, and if they don’t work out, the team is crippled for years. [...]
#301 Sox Fan:
I was born in the New York area in 60’s and have been following baseball since 1973, so I’ll give you a short history of the two teams since 1962:
Mets: 1962-1967, Teams left halfway decent players unprotected in the ‘61 expansion draft with the Angels, they didn’t make the same mistake in ‘62 and gave the Mets broken down has-been players, Mets are terrible, make huge mistake of not taking Reggie Jackson in ‘66 draft (because he was black and he had a white girlfriend)
Yankees: 1962-1964, last gasp of the Yankee empire, 1936-1964. still most popular team until 1969.
Yankees: 1965-1972, Yankees can no longer dominate because of Amateur draft, also they suffer as their team gets old and they refrain from signing Black/Latino players. Also, mismanaged by CBS ownersip.
Mets: 1968-1976, Seaver, Koos, Ryan, Agee, Mcgraw, Harrelson, Grote & company, Mets most popular team in NY area, win 1 WS, should have won two, Berra decides to pitch Seaver on short rest in ‘73 up 3-2. Hodges dies in ‘72, Leaves huge void. Can’t dominate finacially because of Reserve clause, amatuer draft, also make terrible decisions trading Ryan, Singleton, Otis, for next to nothing, letting Whitey Herzog go to Texas.
Yankees 1973-75, George era, gets suspended from baseball, convicted of a felony, makes shady trades with Cleveland to get Nettles, Chamblis, and Tidrow, threatens to move Yankees to Jersey if he doesn’t get new stadium, plays at Shea, gets Catfish, Gabe Pual makes some great trades, Can’t dominate in pre-free agency world.
Mets 1977-1983: Disco Mets, total chaos after Payson died, left ownership void, never take advantage of early days of free agency. lose NY area to Yankees. 1980-1983, Wilpon/Doubleday, takes years before they can start to turn the team around, Foster trade/signing backfires, Traded the franchise in 77, got him back and then left him unprotected so they could protect Brent Gaff. Hernandez trade, Strawberry.
Yankees 1976-1983: Dominate baseball, 2 WS, 4 Pennats, 5 Divisions, most popular in NY area, first to embrace free agency, then makes several dumb signings, Martin fired 3 times, revolving managers, Bronx Zoo, Chaos, George punches Marshmellow salesman.
Mets: 1984-1990: Strawberry/Gooden/Johnson era: Mets take over NY area, Gooden amazing, overworked, cocaine, WS, Carter, Dykstra, El Sid, Darling, HoJo, 30-30, Cone, no wild-card, Sciocia, collusion, Jefferies, Juan Samuel,
Yankees: 1984-1992: The Donnie Baseball years, Yanks still popular, Rickey, Winfield, George shoots himself in the foot by agreeing with collusion, passes on Morris, Raines, Parrish, etc. on free agency. Howard Spira, George Suspended, Dent, Green, Stump Merrill, Kevin Maas, Mel Hall, Yankees not very good.
Mets 1991-1993: The Coleman years: more chaos, moves backfire, Bonilla, Saberhagen, worst team money could buy, Torborg, Things get worse, more chaos, Firecrackers, bleach,
Yankees 1992-1995, The Buck Years: Steinbrenner back, Boggs, Key, Williams, O’neil, Mattingly resurfaces, wild card, Yankees take back New York for good, good moves, tough loss to Mariners.
Mets 1994-1996: The Green Years, macho b.s. manager sets the team back another few years, ruins Generation K, Fonzie, Franco, B. Jones, Gilkey, Hudley hits 40 HR??
Yankees 1996-1998: The Torre/Tim Raines years, Jeter, Williams, O’neil, Pettite, Cone, Tino, Mariano, Strawberry, Doc, Yankees most likeable teams, even Mets fans start rooting for the Yanks in post-season, ‘98 all time team, the Yankees take back NY big time.
Mets 1997-2002: The Bobby V. years, A flakey guy but good manager, Piazza, Leiter, Olerud, Fonzie, WC, WS, Mets make inroads but can’t really take back NY from the Yankee Empire, Hampton leaves for Denver school system, more chaos in 2002, Valentine fired.
Yankees 1999-2003: Yankees Orgy 1: Yankees trade/sign hated rival Clemmens after winning 125 games in 1998, The Yankees Douchebaggery really starts to show it’s head, ticket price increase, yearly increase in payroll disparity, YES network, Giambi, Godzilla, Mussina, The Yankees win 2 WS but should have won in 01 & 03 as well, Mariano throws the ball away in 01 and total lackluster performance in 03, Graddy Little asleep at the wheel, Aaron f-ing Boone.
Mets: 2002-2004: The Art Howe-Steve Phillips hangover experience, Alomar falls apart overnight, Vaughn weights 270 pounds, Burnitz can’t hit anymore, Glavine can’t pitch anymore, trade Kasmir for nothing, Mets start to pay the price on an over the hill catcher making $16 million a year.
Yankees 2004-2008, The A-Rod/Pavano years: Yankees atempt to continue Orgy with A-Rod fall flat, Reverse Curse, complete incompetence in Igawa, Pavano, Jared Wright, Karsay, Kevin Brown signings, 1/2 of the 2000 WS team appears on Mitchell Steroid Report, Yanks should easily dominate baseball with plus $50-80 million each year but don’t. Still popular in New York, A-Rod vilified even with 2 MVP awards, Beloved Yankee Stadium closed.
Mets 2005-2008: The Randolph years: Wright, Reyes, Beltran, Delgado, 1 game away from WS, divsion title, making inroads against the Yanks in NY, There’s a buzz a Shea unseen in years, 3rd worst collapse in baseball history leave ungly taste, causes Wright to lose possible MVP, Randolph firing handled by Curly, Moe and Shemp.
Mets 2008-present the Manuel years, Santana, Farwell Shea, collapse 2, total disaster E.R. 2009.
Yankees 2009-The C.C./Tex years (Orgy 2), Only the Yankees could spend $420 million in off season and act like it’s no big deal, They already have$300 Million from A-Rods 2008 contract, $2,000 dollar single game seats, a $1.5 Billion dollar publicly financed stadium while surrounding area reminds people of a third world country. Not since the Gilded age has such wealth been surrounded by such poverty. Yankess net worth similar to GDP of small Latin American country, Yankees “underdogs” win title for convicted felon twice suspended suddenly made sympathetic Billionaire owner.
Sox Fan #301
Also, since the Yankees are the more estblished team, 60 years 20 W.S. titles before the Mets even played a game, the have a built in fan base sometimes 5 or 6 generations deep. The Mets make inroads but never really swing the fanbase in the opposite direction.
The Mets do things like try to appeal to the Latin American population in NY and then there’s a backlash by their White/European origin fans.
The one thing that really helped the Yankees was that they were able to get out of their Sportschannel contract back in the late 80’s and sign a huge contract with MSG that was so much bigger than anyone in baseball. I think sometime in the early 90’s the Yankees were getting something like $40 million a year from MSG while the Mets were getting $1 million from sportchannel.
I think the Mets weren’t able to get out of their sports channel contract until 1998.
[...] Joe Posnanski: I can only assume that after reading my inspiring post, Joe had to leap into the fray and back me up. Sickening numbers. [...]
Ouch. I’m a Yankee fan by birth. This is my team and it will be through thick and thin. You decide to write this article this soon after a World Series win? I feel betrayed. I expect the analysis and insight you so often provide, not sour grapes. I’m one of these New Yorkers the comments are painting as buffoons and bandwagon fans, and I can’t help but feel some clarification is necessary from you. Your post, and the subsequent comments, show such disdain for NY and it’s baseball team, that you are simply alienating a very large portion of your readership. My best friend is a Twins fan and we can have constructive conversation on the subject of payroll without making NY out to be some “evil empire” filled with “phony” fans. We’re proud of our city, proud of our teams, and, most importantly, secure enough with the fact that baseball is just a game, not something worth 800 words of vindictive prose. Like I said Joe, I truly admire your writing and all the work you do between SI and this wonderful blog, I just can’t help but feel hurt. I feel that I’ve been personally attacked for being born in a city and falling in love with a team. I had no say in where I was born, it was NY, and I am a Yankee fan. Likewise for most baseball fans around the country, I’m sure. I guess my real point is this: what are you complaining about? Is it the system? If so, lay off my team and my city, there is no fault in running a business to make money. We break no laws, now lay off my team, my city, and its fans. I’ll be taking a break from the blog for a while, but I hope I’ll return to the same quality work you’ve been doing for years and years. And yes, believe it or not, I even bought The Machine.
I’ve got a number of brilliant things to say on this subject; absolutely stunning, all of them.
But it would be a waste of time and effort. The battle lines are set and defended with an immoveability not seen since the Western Front of 1916.
Nobody’s changing their position on this one. Nobody’s going to be swayed, no matter how forceful the argument.
So I’ll just pose this: If God led Teixeira to New York, in the face of some concerted praying in Baltimore, can The Almighty be added to the Yankees’ fanbase? Are those flowing robes he’s generally depicted in topped by a navy blue cap?
C’mon God. The Orioles are already suffering under Angelos. What’s next? A plague of boils?
Joe,
Boo Hoo. You are a Royals homer tooting the calvary for your team. What no one fails to research and publish is how much money the owners have and what they are willing to spend on their product. Baseball hasn’t changed much.
The owners with cash can afford to keep its players (See Boston’s owner selling Babe Ruth to the YANKEES) and buy better ones. The Redsox, you know the big market team you referenced in your article. Yes, they too had to sellout because they couldn’t compete financially. Hmmmmm, aren’t they a Major market? What’s the deal Joe? Its because the owner didn’t have the cash to keep Babe Ruth. Not because the market was small.
It comes down to you writing an article to David Glass and telling him to open up his pocketbook and field a competitive product. Yes, you know the David Glass that was the CEO of WALMART. I really feel sorry for his $75M investment that is now worth over $200 since he bought the franchise. And all the money that goes into his pocket when the Yankees pay the lux tax. That’s what you should be blogging and writing about instead of crying about fairness in baseball. Get on the owners. You know, the way the radio stations had to do in Kansas City to force some change in the Chiefs organization. It wasn’t you soft journalists that’s for sure. You guys are too worried about getting invited to press conferences and lobbing softball questions instead of holding your teams and OWNERS accountable for a competitive product.
You are weak Joe and even weaker now that you have your cushy SI job. Thank God for Whitlock or there would be no voice of challenge at all in the KC media. Stop whining and get to writing and force your owner in KC to cash in some of the billions he has in Wal Mart stock. He can afford to spend at least another $75M to field a competitive product.
The answer is not in complaining about market fairness, it lies in getting your owner to stand behind his investment. Oh, thats right…he’s milking his investment like a cow everytime the Yankees have to write that check.
You should at least call for him to invest what he paid for the team($75M) plus what he gets in Lux tax every year. Maybe then you can afford to make better decisions than Juan Gonzalez or Jose Guillen. Give me a break. Those guys were so washed up that an old lady on the plaze could see that. And now you whine about equity. Start with good decision making regarding talent once your owner decides to invest in his product and not just keep putting money in his pocket.
Of course, with your cushy job now at SI you will continue to be sure and not challenge the status quo.
After over 300 posts, I think the verdict is in.
1. MLB competitive balance is a farce.
2. Yanks (& other big markets) have expertly capitalized on the inequities of the sport.
3. The sport is healthy financially speaking.
4. Despite the financial health & attendance numbers (acknowledging the 300+ posts here as well), increasing numbers of fans every year are without “hope” come Spring Training.
5. Despite trying to fix things with a ’salary cap’ penalty that gets divided up between the lower payroll team, the TALENT gap between the small & mid market teams and the big market teams is as great as it’s ever been.
6. Many small market owners have given up & are not putting enough of their revenues into their own teams & are trying to ‘not lose money’ instead of win games.
7. The owners are incapable of fixing the system because of their own greed and lack of unity which will be necessary to reject player’s union strong arming.
8. Bud Selig is a puppet of the owners and ineffective in curbing the inevitable fan disenfranchisement.
9. MLB is too greedy to contract & therefore may resort to moving franchises to other cities (like NBA/NHL) as a band aid solution thereby alienating longtime fans in some cities.
10. No hope for reform anytime soon due to owner greed, cherry-picking attendance & TV ratings, big market complacency and the most powerful union in the world.
Personally, I hope the Yanks win the next 4 or 5 years straight. Perhaps then, when fans become so bored with the pre-determined outcome, and attendance & ratings fall, then the owners & players will get off their collective asses and fix this mess.
It’s hard to imagine the MLB being any more mismanaged than it already is. They have had almost every form of institutionalized cheating that can be imagined. Owners colluding, players inhaling steroids and other drugs, the Commish allowing one team to buy the best players; the players union using dirty tactics to steal more money and defending the indefensible drug cheats.
Eventually, all these despicable acts of greed will catch up with baseball. It’s not immune to failure. A couple of more whacks to the economy will deplete the fan base. Even more deplorable tv ratings; especially during the post season will be a final nail in the coffin.
Remember, ABC and NBC used to broadcast the world series. Now they won’t touch it with a ten foot pole.
The only saving grace for MLB is that it’s a game that’s part of the American culture. Once Americans realize the’res more to life than spending a small fortune to watch a corrupt game, the great American pastime will be on a long, long, downward spiral.
Joe, you’re normally a good writer, i’ll give you that…. i’m disabled, was born that way and cant walk….. you can. Do you advocate giving up your legs? The answer is thats life… who says that Kansas City even deserves a major league team, and Lawrence, Kansas does not?
your entire post is nothing more than the whiny rantings of a toddler. until you can tell me that you will willingly take on the burdens of the most challenged of us, then you really have no right to complain. None.
you do this every so often, i’ve read 2 or 3 of these columns over the years from you and i have to ask….. will your inner child ever grow up? it is my one complaint with you as a writer… I know you have a debt to Kansas City but your pandering and small town bias ignores realities of life…get over it. Maybe if they gave the Royals franchise to Brooklyn, to make up for the Dodgers, you’d feel better?
@astorian
“Sorry, chowderheads, but the Red Sox are not gritty little underdogs. They ARE the Yankees.”
Joe’s post seems to show pretty clearly that the Yankees are on another level when it comes to spending. The Red Sox certainly aren’t gritty underdogs, but I am wondering what proof you have to contradict Joe’s article and say the Red Sox ARE the Yankees.
stpat good post.
bill, good post.
you’re asking to do what nascar has done, restrictor plate racing. it made the competition ‘fair’ to everyone right?
tell me why all the same big name drivers are still winning races then? why the same NBA teams are at the top when teams like the Bucks/Grizz/Clippers are still at the bottom? why Oakland still can’t win, why the Lions still can’t even field a competitive team?
it has NOTHING to do with salary cap. people need to realize this.
@bill neftleberg #331
I’m not sure where in the article Joe said that the Yankees should not use their advantages. But if 97% of the population did not have legs, you could say that the other 3% were using cheat mode, right? And if the 3% attributed their success in the 100m dash to being gritty underdogs instead of the fact that they had legs, Joe would probably also have a problem with that.
As one of the above posters pointed out, you can’t really expect the Yankees to come out and say they won because of a huge payroll, that wouldn’t be good business. But fans saying they won because of grit and determination, that is annoying.
Great post as always Joe! I have always said that it is more difficult to win a championship as the GM in fantasy baseball than as the GM of the Yankees.
Joe, do me this one favor. Next time you come across a Yankee fan who shrugs off the payroll difference. Ask him if he plays fantasy baseball. If he does, ask him if he would play in a league where ONE guy had 3-5 times as much as everyone else to spend. I refuse to watch any world series with the Yankees in it.
To Mike in post 333:
Seriously?! No really, you ACTUALLY believe that? NOTHING to do with payroll? I will grant that you still have to make good baseball choices. But, it sure is a lot easier to do that when you have a bottomless pocketbook.
Unfortunately for Jeff in KC, he’s the only one not watching the WS when the Yankees are in it.
To Russ at post 63:
Your argument about the Yankees home grown talent is absurd. The ONLY reason the Yankees still have ANY of that homegrown talent is because they have the money to keep them. You honestly think that if any other team would of drafted Jeter, Posada or any other Yankee farm team they could afford them? You only prove Joe’s point.
Jimmy,
Maybe, I doubt it. I don’t really care either way.
This is one of those carefully chosen arguments that is motivated by something that has nothing to do with the cause of the problem. The players union creates the problem by refusing to sit at any table where a salary cap is going to be discussed. Not the Yankees. Not the Steinbrenners. The result is that the team with the most revenue (yet hardly the richest team in comparison to other owners groups) wins and that team winning is what you have a problem with. Baseball is looking at a multi-year player’s strike if they want to institute a pay cap, which I think everyone can agree will help the sport over time (just as it has most recently with hockey, though the New York Rangers hardly enjoyed the same success while outspending the rest of the league by comparable margins). You think the Steinbrenners wouldn’t mind cutting the payroll to a league cap of $60 million and still enjoy the revenue of playing in the biggest media market in the world? They would love to, as would every other owners group. Any argument that blames the Yankees for this without mentioning the players union fails completely to gain a basic understanding of the problem.
Peter #340,
A salary cap by itself wouldn’t solve the problem you need to have some sort of shared t.v. revenue stream like the NFL has.
If it’s just a salary cap then a team like the Yankees would just hoard all the Amateur talent and stockpile them in the minor league levels. The Yankees conceivably would have minor league players making more money than major league players.
@288 No matter what you think about our political or economic systems, they are set up so that anyone can take advantage. MLB saying that TV revenue belongs just to the home team is not fair.
I’ll say it again: I don’t care how good your team is or how many fans you have, without an opponent you will eventually be unable to sell tickets or TV rights. Period.
Therefore it would seem more fair to share in both the ticket and the TV gate.
Once that is done, then if any team spends more and wins, so be it – the others had their chance to do likewise and failed.
I’ll say it again, what right does Kansas city have to a baseball team, the fact is they dont.
you all cry and say how unfair it is, but box seats at yankee stadium Average over $350 apiece at field level.
NY fans pay for the privelege of a good team.
David Glass banks a profit before the first pitch is thrown of the season, The fans who are whining never look at the rafter in their own eye, before finding fault with someone else.
if royals fans are willing to buy 3.5 million tickets every year at an average cost of $350
a seat and parking of $20 a game, and another $100 in concessions then yes you have a valid complaint
So i say again What right do these cities, have to a team?
NONE
its funny how they cry foul without looking at their own complicity
Cardinal Mike, Why should you leech off other teams, there will be other teams, just not as many. You seem to think you have an inalienable right to a team…. says who?
Thats the problem with your entire argument, if you cant support a team, then you shouldnt have one….period
is St Louis, anymore deserving than Brooklyn ?
Really? What right does Kansas City have to a baseball team? That’s just nonsense…
Consider the following:
New York City population – 8.3 million
Kansas City population – 450,000
It’s a lot easier to find 50 people willing to pay $350 to go to a baseball game in a city of 8 million than in one of 450,000. Does that mean Royals fans aren’t real fans?
Paul F.
You’re just taking NYC into account. If you total The Metro New York area, New Jersey, Long Island, Conneticut you have about 19,000,000 people.
The Kasas City Metro area is about 2,000,000 people.
The New York Metro area really should have 3 teams. The Dodgers should have moved to Long Island and the Giants should have moved to New Jersey and then LA and San Fran should have gotten 2 expansion teams.
As it is the Royals should move to New Jersey and play in the A.L. East. but baseball is exempt from anti-trust violations so the Yankees and Mets would never allow it.
No, but who says you have to live in Kansas City, your whole argument is based on the fact that you seem to think have a right to something when you dont. Why should you be permitted two seeing eyes, when there are those blind since birth? Why do those of us in the USA have 3 meals a day when there are millions facing starvation every day? We are no more entitled than anyone else in this world…
I put myself through college working 70 hr weeks despite my disability and put in 20 years at the IRS dealing with issues most of my contemporaries never had to face… Was that fair?
Its your sense of entitlement thats “nonsense” as you put it. Paul, grow up and face the world you live in… What you and Joe refuse to recognize is that Life itself is chock full of inequity. There are benefits to living in Kansas City that a New York Yankee fan in the Bronx does without, Are you to import The rats and the muggers to Kansas City as well, when you level the financial disparity ?
The only thing thats nonsense is the thought that these teams are somehow more deserving than anyone else.
I say let the Royals move to New York, the economic forces would decide which teams would survive in the long run, you’d end up with 4 teams in the tri state area and about 14 fewer teams overall around the country.
Two 8 team leagues, and a more competitive sport, and best of all the Whiny crybabies like Joe Posnanski would have only themselves to blame.
There’s essentially 7 factions in major league baseball:
1-The Yankees
2-Large Big-Market Teams
3-Big Market Teams
4-Large Mid-Market Teams
5-Small Mid-Market Teams
6-Small Market Teams
7-The Players Association.
The conflict is often portrayed as a simple Teams vs. Players, Big market-small market, but it’s more complicated than that. The Yankees are an entity to themselves, kind of like what the Cosmos were in the old NASL.
Group 1: Yankees
Group 2: Large Big Market Teams: Mets, Dodgers, Angels,
Group 3: Big Market Teams: Phillies, Red Sox, Cubs, Braves, Nationals
Group 4: Large Mid-Market Teams: Giants, Blue Jays, White Sox, Astros, Tigers, Rangers, Reds,
Group 5: Small Mid-Market Teams: Mariners, A’s, Cardinals, Rays, Orioles, Indians, Marlins, Diamondbacks.
Group 6: Small Market Teams: Rockies, Royals, Brewers, Pirates, Twins, Padres,
Here’s a tally for W.S appearances since the since the strike of 1994-1995:
Group 1: 7 times 5 wins, 1 team
Group 2: 2 times 1 win, 3 teams
Group 3: 7 times, 4 wins, 4 teams (Nationals only appeared in 2005)
Group 4: 4 times 1 win, 7 teams
Group 5: 8 times 4 wins, 8 teams,
Group 6: 2 times 0 wins, 6 teams
Group 6 has virtually no shot at winning a WS. let alone getting to one. It would literally have to be a perfect storm of events for that to happen.
Group 5 is one of the smartest run groups in baseball, Teams can win but they usually can’t keep their team together for long. The Cardinals are often portrayed as a bigger market then they really are. The Mariners should have made at least one WS, Orioles, Rays are in a tough spot with Yanks and Red Sox.
Group 4 likes to portray itself as a small market group but they have more finacial advantages than groups 5-6. They haven’t been well run teams. The Blue Jays are in a tough spot being in the N.L. East but the rest of teams should do better being in the west or central.
Group 3: the Cubs are a joke, and the fans don’t care, Hard to believe they still play the underdog card, the Phillies and Red Sox are among the best run organizations in baseball. Time for the Nationals to stop acting like they’re still in Montreal.
Group 2: Mets and Dodgers are among the worst run franchises in baseball during the last 15 odd years, they should have more than just 1??? WS appearance since ‘95. Angels are good but they should be better, there in a huge market in a 4 team division and they’ve only made it to the WS once.
Group 1: Yankees are the Empire.
They can sign virtually any free agent they want, they can absorb huge contracts, they can assume huge risk, they can make huge contract mistakes, they can absorb injuries, and they can keep their stars.
Paul Neftleberg,
While you are correct, there are inequities in life, sports leagues aren’t real life and are dependent on some sort of fairness in competition otherwise you turn your League into the world wrestling federation or the Harlem Globetrotters.
Essentially as someone pointed out, the Yankees are starting with a 40 yard headstart running a 400 yard dash. But what really gets people upset is when the Yankees try to portray themselves as scrappy overachievers while trying to turn their meanspirited owner into a sympathetic figure.
When you think about it, the Yankees were extremely incompetent during 2004-2008, They had a 60 million dollar head start each year and didn’t make it to the W.S. once. If not for A-rod’s MVP seasons of 05 & 07 they wouldn’t even made the playoffs those years.
But you’re already seeing it, young people don’t care about baseball anymore and the inequity in the sport is a reason.
We should have another team in the NY metro area. That would be great. And you know what, it wouldn’t do anything to dethrone the dominance of the Yankees b/c NYC is a baseball town and (your city) is not. It will only, as some have alluded to, further enhance the NE dominance of baseball.
Boston can enter this discussion too b/c together, we’re the only region of the country that hasn’t completely fallen for the NFL.
No matter what you do to try and dilute our product, it won’t matter. If A-Rod has a blister on his butt we’d demand you interrupt a Giants / Jets Super Bowl with the update.
We’re a baseball town. You’re not. Sorry about that…
Maybe if KC/Pitt/TB would spend some of that luxury tax $ you could work on that…
The Royals were a great organization until the single most devastating event to ruin MLB happened, the 94′ strike. After that, even a great organization like the Royals was almost assuredly doomed to fail.
Nowadays, people cheer steroid cheaters like A-Fraud and Manny Ramirez. Is this twisted sister or what? The good guys definitely lost. Lost big time.
Come on Joe, there’s some serious question in this debate. you pointed out that the nature of the game (especially the post seasons) is small sampled enough so that no matter how a team spend, they’re still more likely to not win it all than vice versa.
Most of the truly uncompetitive teams have a lot more problems going for them then simply the small payroll. One of the Yankees most unsuccessful era also came in George Steinbrenner’s reign, despite him always been a free spender. while it’s most successful era came before the big money really became that noticeable.
With that said, I would not say that this isn’t a problem, but one that should be addressed in other ways.
I think that
A. add / move two more team to the NY / New England region. add to the AL.
B. realign back to two division
C. 4 wild card , 4 round playoff ( division winner skip past a round)
D. balanced schedule.
If anything, the team that have been thoroughly hosed in the last 15 years have been the Blue Jays and to a lesser extend the Rays and O’s. They have all came up with pretty solid team at some point, but out of the 3 they made it playoff twice since the wildcard era started. It’s hard to say they’re always terribly managed.
John Q @ 348:
No matter where you classify them in the long run, it’s worth noting that when the Indians made the Series, they were #7 (‘95) and #3 (‘97) in payroll. The Padres were #10 in 1998. The Marlins were #5 in 1997. The Diamondbacks were #8 in 2001. Etc. These triumphs were aided by the type of spending sprees that are no longer sustainable as the gulf continues to grow between the larger markets and the rest. So while you may classify these teams near the bottom now, their prior successes were nothing at all like the small payroll anomalies seen with Florida in 2003 or Tampa Bay in 2008.
#328 boohoo royals, that is an interesting comment.
i didn’t know glass was the former CEO of Walmart, but i am so not surprised! how easily we all buy the notion that the players union wants to screw the customers (fans) while the owners always have our best interests in mind!
and the fact that the vast majority of sports writers represent the interests of owners/management over the players speaks itself to the kind of power these supposedly helpless owners have. just the fact that the first solution proposed to ALL fan problems is ALWAYS the salary cap… that in itself tells you that sports writers as a whole usually represent the view of ownership. because there are so many other actions that need to be taken by owners to provide a better product.
…but i still think that subconsciously we are all, in some way, comforted by the spectacle (/specter) of monopoly capitalism working again… and that there is a certain amount of collective relief expressed in this “yankees suck/salary cap now” conversation. it’s the first time we’ve seen the yanks win since sept. 11 2001, and on some level maybe we’ve all been waiting to go back to complaining as usual.
11: Arob said at 1:13 pm on November 5th, 2009:
What a joke.
Joe – you were right about one thing, I shouldn’t have read your post. But really you’re too good for this:
“E. Because nobody really listens, people don’t talk about the Yankees spending much more money than any other team to win games.”
If you were a Yankee fan, you would know how ridiculous this is. Find me an article about the Yankees 27th Championship without a mention of their payroll.
——————————–
The same was true when the Rays were in the series last year. Everyone mentioned their payroll. It goes both ways.
It does warm my heart a bit to know Yankees fans can’t get away from the payroll thing and enjoy the victory.
well, it warms my heart to know that if you actually pay for the best professional talent, for players who work hard and are the best at what they do, then you can win. i can’t think of many other companies teaching that lesson right now. it’s more like–you’re good, you’re experienced, you produce a solid professional product: you’re fired because we are not interested in that. we just want to sell garbage to the masses. that’s WHY i’m a yankee fan. we pay for our players. who can honestly enjoy celebrating a company who says, “wahoo! we win with only trainees and cheap temporary labor! america!”
“The Yankees’ financial advantage is a product of the fact that they are in the largest city and have the best TV contract, as Mr. Posnanski writes–but another way of stating the source of the Yankees’ advantage is that they have by far the most fans.”
You Yankee fans keep saying this – but the Red Sox outdraw the Yankees on the road.
@356: Classic error of not reading between the lines. The Red Sox have a greater total road attendance, but that’s because Yankee Stadium holds 50,000 and Fenway only holds 37,000.
That’s 13,000 more for the Red Sox and 13,000 less for the Yankees every time a game is played between them.
Do your homework next time.
The fact is that Yankee fans arrogantly believe the World Series is their birthright. After 27, no one can deny that they are the greatest franchise in professional sports. But don’t act like you’re the best fans in the world.
A Yankee fan admitted earlier that while they hoped they would still be enough of a baseball fan to follow a team as bad as the Royals, they were unsure that they could. My point is simply this. Many, many Yanks fans are NOT true baseball fans. They are Yankee fans and fans of anything NY, but not true baseball fans. True baseball fans would first admit that the system is so rigged to a pre-determined outcome that it calls into question the result, hence the passionate response from many baseball fans throughout the country following this particular WS. And please spare us the “we haven’t won the WS since 2000″ nonsense. The Yanks payroll has ensured their presence in the playoffs for 14 of the last 15 years straight. True fans, realizing this, would want the championships they win to actually mean something. True fans welcome competition from as many teams as possible in order to justify the monumental task of winning the championship. However, today’s Yankee fan is simply interested in winning at any & all costs.
For those cities that have teams that aren’t able to compete in the spend happy league, they should be dismissed, relocated or contracted. If you can’t cut it. Too bad. Fine. And with this logic, if baseball has only 12 or 18 teams instead of 30, then what does that say about the championships that are won from such a pared down league? What does it say for the sport that it is willing to take 10, 12 or 18 teams and wipe them off the baseball map alienating millions of their own fan base? By not admitting that this is the direction the league is headed or worse, simply not caring, you are in fact, as bad as any steroid abusing player or any owner that looked the other way selling the sport’s legitimacy out for money & TV ratings.
Clearly this Yanks team is one of the best teams of the last 25 years. The issue isn’t with the Yanks themselves. If Yankee fans were “true baseball fans” and not simply fans of all-things-NY, fully understanding the history that baseball represents & the Yankees specifically, they would acknowledge the illegitimacy of the sport in its current form and would welcome reform. I’ve been a baseball fan for going on 40 years. I want the sport to mean something. I understand that things will never be fully equal & I have no problem with that. Hell, that’s what makes sports fun. But there’s “advantage” and then there’s “hopelessly impossible.”
Joe, Thanks for this post. It puts things in perspective.
As for the poll, how can you forget Thoreau, Emerson, Kerouak or Egdar Allen Poe? It’s one thing to forget EAP, but a poll of best American writers with no trancendentalist or beat writers is disgraceful.
I keep coming back to the comments on this piece because, like a car wreck, I can’t seem to look away. A few thoughts:
1) My number one pet peeve of all this: I really wish people would stop saying the NFL is “socialist”, because it’s a totally inappropriate term. That term applies to actions like a government entity taking over entire industries (e.g. British health care) or using radical tax policies to spread the wealth of a population. The NFL is a a single company, the franchises branches of that company. The NFL is not the industry, it is the part of a larger industry, the sports/entertainment industry. Some wealth is pooled among the franchises of the NFL in order to make the company as a whole more profitable against its competitors, such as baseball, basketball, movies, tv, etc. That is NOT socialism, it is a company working in the free market system to maximize its profitability.
2) Thank you Peter (#340) for highlighting the role of the union in creating the current system. I would even go a step further, and point out that since the reserve clause was overturned, nearly every time the owners have tried to get some power back the unions have stopped them because of essential help from the power of judges and arbitrators (see e.g. “collusion” 1987 and the owners’ attempt to use replacement players in 1995). Clearly the MLB owners were not as skilled as NFL at negotiating and manipulating the political system, so the current system is largely the creation not of the Yankees (who can be outvoted / shut down by the other owners, as they were in the last collective bargaining agreement when revenue sharing was increased) but of the players union.
Mike Lupica (usually a pro-union shill) uncharacteristically said it best in his book Mad As Hell: “The stronger the union, the weaker the sport.”
Lmao #348
Yes, those 5 victories; 4 of them came when our payroll was LOW. come up with a real argument.
We have ONE championship while we’ve been spending a ton of money. Take all the crying back to your mommies.
and stpat…
so you mean to tell me the Braves’ division titles were all bought and paid for the past 13 years? That it was only because the Mets and Phillies outspent them that they’ve won the division…
your argument then leads to the belief that the team who spends the most wins… so… why would you not spend to win?!?
my eyes hurt from reading all the posts.
A few points –
1) “Revenue” as we have the info available to us, is a farce. I won’t geek everybody out and carry on, but the Yankees have more than $309 million in revenues. Be serious.
2) There will never be a salary cap (or floor). The common trend in law, the “anti-trust exemption”, the union, and the unworkability of a floor will never allow it. It’s not that the union is deft and the owners inept (though that may be true), but the players have the anti-trust exemption always as their ace-in-the-hole.
I would expect the following things to be true (half-taking the Yankees out of the discussion for the moment):
1) Over a period of years, actual payroll as a percentage of actual revenues available is probably pretty equal among all teams. Limited by:
2) On the low end, the $30-odd million necessary to field a team, and on the high end, whatever the figure is to (on paper) make the playoffs. One has to get into all kinds of insanity to account for under-control players, but in the long-run, that probably evens out.
3) This means that the Yankess no doubt spend a much lower portion of their available cash on players than the average team.
So… the obvious solution to create more fairness would be the same 60/40 split for TV revenues. I think that’s obviously fair.
However, in the end, you still will have the same situation – Yankees, big market teams, have the most revenue. And thus, assuming relative competency, still have the best chances over time to make the playoffs.
I don’t think that statistically relocating teams will ever happen to a huge degree, because of the politics of the situation, and because inevitably you end up with Chicago having 2.16 teams. And Kansas City with .75. That’s absurd in reality.
So, outside of the (to me) obvious unfairness re: TV revenues…. it’s just the way it is. Just like it was in 1920. Is it unfair to the Kansas City Royals of the game – not really. Is it bad for the game? I’m not so sure. Yankee loving and Yankee hating combine for a lot of press and TV.
But to throw a monkey wrench in, what if #348’s categorizations of teams were indeed split into two leagues. I think if you had big market vs big market teams all season, things would be very different. No fattening up the W/L against much lesser teams, and thus less revenue. And, all conversely, (probably) much more for small market teams.
And, by the way, all this from a Yankee-hater. They’re boring in that they indeed, buy the pennant and win like a machine. But, they’re in NYC, not in KC, so what do you expect? It’s not going to change.
Loved every word of it, Joe.
Just adding to the carnage here, as Mr. Neftleberg apparently misunderstood my brief response to him regarding population sizes.
I am not a resident of Kansas City, in fact, nor am I a Royals fan, but I recognize that there is a substantive difference between a team in Kansas City and a team in New York that doesn’t – to my mind – necessitate the elimination of the Royals. It goes without saying that life is full of inequities, and that some people are better off than others for no good reason. But that’s hardly the point of baseball. As another BR pointed out, we don’t watch sports because they mimic real life; we watch them because they are enjoyable, and culturally significant, and dramatic, and they allow us to use our imaginations and tell stories. They’re not about brute economic force or winner-take-all competition, they’re about the poetry of a walk-off homer, the beauty of a back-door slider, and the tension of a 3-2 pitch.
Does Kansas City “deserve” to see that? Does anyone? I don’t know, and I don’t think it really matters. I think Royals fans will be Royals fans no matter how many World Series titles the Yankees win, and I think Yankees fans will be Yankees fans, too. There will always be more Yankees fans, they will always have more money, and they will always have the competitive advantage, but that doesn’t mean that small market teams shouldn’t exist.
In 1993 the Colorado Rockies drew well over 4,000,000 fans on the road to a last place finish. It was their inaugural season, but the lesson there was simple: Denver wanted baseball. I dare say Denver deserved baseball, not because it was capable of supporting a billion dollar stadium, or because the fans there were willing to shell out $350 a game. No, Denver loved – and loves – baseball in a different way, and the Rockies – for all their flaws – still offer tickets in the “Rockpile” for $4 a pop. The Yankees they are not, but I don’t know that they would want to be.
Baseball isn’t an elitist game, it’s an American game, and America is as much about Denver and Kansas City (and Lincoln and Des Moines and all the rest of “flyover country”) as it is about New York and Los Angeles. I don’t think the middle of the country feels entitled so much as they just love baseball, and it would be extremely sad – for the people of Milwaukee and Denver and Kansas City and Phoenix, but also for the people in San Francisco and Boston and New York – if baseball was only played and watched by children on the streets of Brooklyn, and not in the corn fields of the Midwest.
Mr. Neftleberg, you presume that many of us are starry-eyed idealists with a silver spoons in our mouths. For my part, I choose to work in education because I know students whose parents make less than $15,000 a year, who have to walk four blocks to a gas station just to use the restroom, who are never given a chance to succeed – no matter how hard they work – by an unfair system. Do I believe I can change it? I’m not that naive, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t work my hardest for a better world. At the end of the day, the inequities of life pain me, but they don’t stop me from loving baseball, from loving my family and my friends, or from loving what I do.
Perhaps nobody deserves baseball. Perhaps nobody deserves anything, really. But sometimes the world is made richer when people who don’t ‘deserve’ are lucky enough to have. I can’t really say; I think the issue is thornier and more complicated than you or I or anyone who reads this site cares to admit, but either way, come spring, I’ll still be reading Joe and watching baseball, even if the Royals and Rockies both go 62-100 and the Yankees win the World Series.
Beautiful read. Imagine if they pick up Albert Pujols. I almost wish they do…just to illustrate the problem even further.
Imagine Warren Buffet buying the Royals (please!!) and then crushing the Yankees with the same purchasing habits. What would NY’s reaction be to that?
Exactly!
I’ll never forget visiting my brother in KC back in 1995. We used to go to Royals games back in the 80’s and we even went to Game 7 of the 1985 World Series there. We were the biggest fans!
Anyway, we drove by the stadium and I asked if he wanted to go see a game. He got real serious and said it was all over. I thought he meant the season and he then said “No, don’t you know what they’ve done?, they cancelled the world series!” Later that week we drove by the stadium again and I looked over in the parking lot and it was one quarter full. That’s when I knew my smarter brother was right, it was OVER for KC, still true 15 years later.
Eliminate arbitration, then tell me teams set the pay scale. The scale moves up for all teams because of arbitration. IF the lower level teams could sign/re-sign players indepently of what other teams sign their players for, that would start to help.
I don’t know how anyone can argue a HUGE payroll every year is not an advantage over teams that occassionally can go for it.
Baseball people this last decade have gotten a real inferiority complex, and say “see, we are competitive, and the NFL isn’t…..”. Well, that may or may not be true, but measuring competitiveness by who wins the SB vs the WS is silly. It’s about months of hope, not one game. Yes, some of that is driven by good choices by the Yankees, and bad by the Pirates. But, let’s be real here, the money does matter.
Ahmen,,, are you done whining yet? I am a huge fan of the New York Yankees. Always have been. I am so glad that I read this. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, especially the comments. Two things though; 1) Nobody mentions how close the Red Sox salary was if they had considered the extra 50 million dollars spent just to talk to a pitcher. and 2) I live an hour from Fenway, but I can’t afford tickets, it is a hell of alot cheaper to take the train to New York to catch a game. and 3) Bottom line …. More fans equals more money…… equals more expensive payroll ……. equals more fans! That is the only “circle” in play here. Like one comment said ” is it unfair that Obama won because there were more voting democrats?” I think not. Majority rules, even in baseball. I thank god that my favorite team feels it necessary to pull out all the stops to make me happy! And don’t ever think that a few other teams can’t spend more. They would just rather sit back and complain while they are getting fatter.
If their money guaranteed this win, why didn’t you see it coming back in April when you said they’d miss the playoffs again?