RedRamage

4 minutes ago, oblong said:

As long as we have writers not voting for players for reasons other than whether they belong in the HOF, then it's a problem leaving with the BBWAA.  I'm not talking about their judgements on PED use but this silly idea that they aren't first ballot or they don't deserve unanimous or even "too high of a %".   Voters have used that as an excuse in the past.

While I agree 100% with this, I doubt we're gonna see major changes any time soon that address this. But, there is a minor change that could address this: Players who are on their first HOF ballot and receive at least 5 votes (not 5%) will not be dropped from the list.

We really should get rid of the silly notion that a player is HOF worthy, but just not first ballot HOF worthy... but I don't see that disappearing anytime soon so the alternative is just don't drop players from from the ballot the first year if there's even a low level of people who vote for a player.

2 hours ago, oblong said:

In all seriousness, it's out dated.  There's so much information available to potential voters that it's odd to leave it in their hands now.  And do the smart baseball people even become writers anymore?

I almost wonder if there shouldn't be some sort of petition system where candidates who think they are HOF worthy prepare a case before a panel of baseball experts (managers, players, writers, historians, etc.) Honestly I'm imagining a court room sort of thing. The "jury" is a mix of various experts. The "judge" is someone from MLB who ensures rules are followed. The prosecution provides the evidence and the witnesses to support the claim that the player/person is HOF worthy while the DH (designated hater) is the defense trying to challenge the accuracy and/or relevancy of the evidence presented and poke holes in any comparisons to existing HOF members.

That's probably way to elaborate of a system but it seems like it'd be more accurate than the current system and less prone to snubs because of less known players from smaller markets or biases against/for teams or players.

14 minutes ago, papalawrence said:

I've always felt it's odd to have journalists vote a player in. I get that there is a vet committee down the road. I've always thought players and management should carry the most weight in votes.

I think the theory was that journalists would be the most knowledgeable while being the least biased. 

Obviously it's not a perfect system but the hope would be that journalists would be less likely to vote for someone just because he was a good teammate or in the hopes that that person would then vote for you as well. (Or that you might withhold a vote because you didn't like a guy or because that guy always seemed to have success against you/your team.)

11 hours ago, Jason_R said:

Or a phone call he can use to call the head replay official in the home office to declare a slide. 🙃

Referencing my previous post about trying to think of some way to signal "I give up" other than the slide, I actually mentally debated having some sort of LEDs built into the QBs uniform that he could trigger. I mentally rejected the idea but not for the reason you're probably thinking. As much as it would be an abomination to see a QBs jersey start blinking on the field, it actually would solve a lot of problems.

Having the jersey light up would allow defenders from any angle see the QB was giving up. The QB could assume any position during this time (to brace for any late hits) while still clearly signaling his intent. And replay could clearly show where the QB was when he first signaled allowing for accurate marking of the ball AND being able to determine how far away a defender was when the QB signaled to judge if a defender hit the QB late or not.

So yeah, as ugly and awful as it'd be to see this in a game, it actually solves a lot of problems. But I threw out the idea because I couldn't think of an effective way that the QB could trigger the LEDs. How do you get a trigger or button that the QB can easily activate that's always very easy to access in a split second but also (nearly) impossible to accidentally set off?

Where's Skubal on this list? I don't think he's in the 100% lock at all, but I think he's in that mix of reasonably good shot. Expanding on Oblong's categories:

1. If they retired right now, are they a HOFer.
2. The way they are going they are almost there.
3. They have the talent and the track record to have a HOF career, but need more seasons at this level.

I view line 1 as 100% (obviously). Line 2 is maybe 90%+, does that sound reasonable? Then Line 3 is 70%+. I guess what I'm trying to identify in line 3 is players who aren't new on season... they've been at it for a while and have shown the talent and have the the stats and great seasons to indicate they are top tier players. These are different than players like Meadows, for example, who seem to have the potential to be all-star players, but don't have the track record or the service time that we can reasonably extrapolate from. And these are different than players like Bobby Higginson, for example, who have had many solid years but were never a top tier guys.

I'd put Skubal in my new Line 3 category. He has amazing talent. He's been in the league for 4.5 seasons and he's had 1.5 seasons of HOF level of play. He's headed to the HOF but has to accomplish a lot more yet vs. players in Line 2 who just have to just not fall off a cliff to get into the HOF.

On 5/29/2025 at 9:19 AM, RedRamage said:

The 2025 Colorado Rockies. As of May 28 the Rockies still having broken double digit wins. They are 9 and 47. The '24 White Sox, thru 56 games, were 15-41. The '03 Tigers were 16-40. The Rockies winning percentage right now is .161! More than 70 points LOWER than the worst modern era winning percentage. The Rockies are on pace to win just 26 games. That would be 136 losses. 15 more losses than the White Sox had last year.

Just 22 days later and the Rockies season has had a 180 degree turn! Wait... sorry, forgot the decimal point. It's been a 18.0 degree turn!

Okay, jokes aside the last three weeks or so since I started this thread have seen the Rockies gain some traction. In games since my post they've gone 8 and 11... a much more respectable .421, including TWO 3-game winning streaks. Now, it certainly helps that two of the teams they faced in this time where the 29-44 Marlins and the 31-44 Nationals. (In fact both of those three game winning streaks happened against those teams.)

Regardless of opponents faced, the Rockies have nearly doubled their wins in three weeks and raised their season winning percentage to .227. Now, as detailed in my opening post this is still pretty bad. Both the '24 Sox and the '03 Tigers has WPCT over .250 at the end so this is still epically bad right now. But again both the Sox and the Tigers had those late season boosts (finishing 5-1) that helped them get over the .250 mark. At 75 games into the season, here's how things compare to the other two seasons:

Obviously the Rockies are sitting right there with the other two teams so things are not looking nearly as historically awful as they were at the end of May. There's still a lot of season left and I think there is every chance in the world that the Rockies will end up surpassing the '24 Sox in terms of total losses. But at least right now they don't appear to be on pace to shatter that record.

I disagree with this. Especially in the NFL with so few games, it's impossible to truly rank teams. Factors like injuries to key players at different points in the year, non-common opponents, potentially uneven home-away status even among common opponents, and schedules made specifically matching uneven opponents depending on last years record... these all add up to making it very hard to really say if Team A, that finished with a better record than Team B, who won their division, would really have had the better record if they'd played the same schedule at Team B.

Because of this winning your division, were your schedule is very, very similar to all division mates, and where you've saved each division mate twice, should be rewarded with a high seed. Winning your division is what matters, the wild card slots are just for teams that also had really good years, but weren't good enough to win their division. It's a consolation prize for coming in second (or third). 

Now of course there will be instances in system where "unfair" playoff seedings happen. Last year was a good sign of this where the 10-7 Bucs got home field and the 14-3 Vikings went on the road. The Vikings played in the toughest division in the NFL while the Bucs were in one of the worst (two 5-12 teams, and a third team that finished under .500). But any system used to rank teams will occasionally have weird instances and this is even more true in the NFL with it's super short schedule.

So again: Win your division and you get a home playoff game. If you're not good enough to win your division but you still had a good year you might be good enough for a consolation prize.

3 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

Why screw around, if it's a penalty award the full yardage. If the offense crosses the line make it a TD. If the defense is moved back across the line it's a safety. None of this Half A@@ stuff

I guess maybe I figured that was too big of a chance and people might be more accepting of a "half measure" that didn't go right to to TD/Safety territory. But as I think about it... yeah... I mean sure, why not?

The biggest fear I guess would be a ticky-tacky penalty that gets a team a Safety/TD, but how is that any different than a ticky-tacky penalty that gets a team 1st down or even just 10 yards one direction or the other? We should change rules because we don't like the possibility of a questionable call giving a team a reward, instead we should work to reduce/eliminate questionable calls.

Heck if the concern is that much over ticky-tacky calls leading to TDs or Safeties, give the coaches a "super challenge" like they do in the UFL... only don't implement it the same way please!

It's gotta be the off season if RedRamage is speculating about rule change, right? Well, here's another:

Let's get rid of the 'half the distance to the goal' on penalties. I always though this was majorly unfair. Imagine a situation where the offense is on the 3-yard line... backed up against their endzone. They do a hard count trying to get the defense to jump. What happens here? If the offense flinches it's a false start the offense loses 1.5 yards. If the defense screws up it's a 5 yard penalty. Now if the the offense tries it again and screws up they lose just .75 yards... but if the defense does they lose 5 yards.

Or consider the other end of the field. The offense just got a first down at the 4 yard line and runs a play. If there's offensive holding the defense gets awarded 10 yards. But if there's defensive holding the offensive gets awarded 2 yards.

My change to the rule would be this:

Any penalty that occurs when the original line of scrimmage is outside of the 1 foot line and would move the new line of scrimmage into the endzone instead moves the new line of scrimmage to the 1 foot line.

Any penalty that occurs when the original line of scrimmage is at or under the 1 foot line and would move the new line of scrimmage into the endzone results in a TD or a Safety depending on the offending side.

In short: If you get a penalty that would move it to the endzone, instead you go right outside of it. If you get another penalty it's the same as if the team crossed into the endzone.

I'm trying to think of an alternative to a slide and I just can't coming up with anything. This is purely just a thought experiment here as I'm quite certain that the NFL isn't searching through message forums for rule change ideas, but...

If we go with the premise that the slide is:

• Unfair as it limits how defenders can try to tackle a QB (for fear of a late slide and a big penalty)
• Unsafe for QBs as it leaves them in a undefendable position if they do get hit

then what's a possible solation? Can we come up with some method to signal to a defender that the player is 'giving up' that:

• Can't be easily faked -- that is, it can't look like the player might be juking or evading the defender. It's a clear "non-football move" that signals "I'm giving up."
• Can be easily seen/detected from all directions -- defenders might be coming from all directions after all.
• Doesn't leave the QB in an exposed/undefendable position in case a hit comes in late.

I just can't come up with something that doesn't boarder on either absurdly silly and/or doesn't protect the QB any better and/or doesn't seem practical at all.

Which makes me come back to the idea of eliminating the slide all together. And I don't totally love that either because defenders will jump at the chance to lay the heavy hit on the QB any chance they get. I want there to be some level of protection vs. straight up: "You're a ball carrier now... have fun!" The only thing I can think of is maybe double penalties and automatic heavy fines to any illegal hit on a QB beyond the line of scrimmage. 

Any hit that's legal... no problem. Any hit that's helmet to helmet or late or whatever... double yardage on the foul.

15 hours ago, 4hzglory said:

Any player has the right to slide, not just the QB

This is true and also brought up in the video. However the video (I think correctly) pointed out that it's not only super, super rare to see a player outside of a QB sliding, but also that if a player does slide and gets hit hard and/or late, it's unlikely to draw a flag outside of being an absolute egregious foul... WR, TE, RB are all EXPECTED to take hard hits. It's part of the game. But QBs are so protected that any we treat them with kid gloves.

In theory I like that idea... but yeah I'm not sure how it would work in practice. I guess we sorta-kinda already have a rule like this in terms of hitting the QB late. A defender can't hit the QB after he's thrown the pass, but this is usually allowed if it's a otherwise legal hit and it's a split-second after the throw. The refs can essentially say: "There's no possible way a defender could stop in that limited time, so no flag." But I think this would be super hard to officiate. 

11 minutes ago, RandyMarsh said:

I'm of the mindset that once the QB leaves the line of scrimmage and chooses to be a runner he should be treated no different than any other ball carrier. He's no more defenseless than any other person in that instance and is actually bigger than most non TEs nowadays. 

That's pretty much the opinion expressed in the video: QBs these days aren't at the same size disadvantage as they were in 1985. Add in restrictions on tackling and there just isn't the same huge risk to the QB that there used to be.

December 24, 2000 - Ross quits nine games into the season. Under interim HC Gary Moeller the Lions rally a bit and go 4-2 over the next six games. The now 9-6 Lions face the 4-11 Bears at home. A win probably gets them a wild card spot (I think they had the tie breakers over the 10-6 TB Bucs).

The games starts out great. 3 and out for the Bears... Lions get a FG on their first drive. Bears fumble the kick off and Lions score a TD on the next play, 10-0 Lions. Then things start to fall apart. Two drives later Batch is sacked by Urlacher and injured. In comes Stoney Case who can't get us any points thru the 2nd and 3rd quarters. Bears get two FGs and TD to go up 13-10 as the 4th quarter starts.

Case finally finds the end zone... Lions up 17-13. Bears go 3 and out... Lions driving down the field, less than 7 minutes left in the game. A TD should seal this game up an--- oh no... oh no, no, no... Case thows an interception that is returned 71 yards... Bears up 20-17, six and a half minutes left.

Okay, not a problem... we just need a TD and we're fine. Lions drive down the field, taking a LOT of time off the clock. First and goal from the 10... we got this. Stewart picks up 3, then 2, then... aw crap Case is sacked for a loss of 2. Lions settle for a FG. Not great... but at least we're tried 20-20. Maybe we can stop the Bears and get back into FG range in the last two minutes?

Bears go three and out. Okay, 1:29 left on the clock, let's get that FG! NOOOOO!!! Case fumbles on a sack. Okay, okay... only 40 seconds left, just bleed out the clock and lets try overtime I guess. Bears pick up a few yards but now there's only 7 seconds left and they're trying for an insane 54 yards FG... yeah, like they have any chance of that workin--- Oh ****... it's good. Oh ****. Game lost... playoff shot lost... season over.

And of course, we all know the horror that happened after this: Lions decide to really shake things up after another lackluster season and bring in President and GM Matt Millen.

This video was in my feed today: 

The TL;DRW version is this: The slide rule made sense when in 1985 when defenses has very little rules regarding how they could hit/tackle a ball carrier. But in 2025 stricter rules regarding how defense can tackle, and specific rules regarding how QBs can be tackled, make the slide rule far less necessary.

Further, the video makes the case that the "side effects" of the slide rule out weigh the last lingering benefits. Specifically the video argues two points:

1. It's very hard for a defender who is already in tackle mode to make a split second adjustment if the QB slides. This means the QB may still be hit hard but the sliding position leaves him open for more injury vs. if he prepped for a "normal" hit. 

2. The slide rule is being taken advantage of by QBs. Defenders don't know if the QB is going to slide or not so can't go all out for the (legal) tackle because if the QB slides a half second before you hit him it's 15 yard penalty.

It's an interesting idea that I think has some merit to it. Given the very mobile QBs in todays NFL... I just don't think the slide rule was envisioned with them in mind. I don't blame the QBs for taking advantage of the rules if they can. That's definitely part of the game. But it makes for a less enjoyable game, imho, when you see a defender stop short of a full tackle because you know he's thinking about that possible penalty.

On one hand I get that altered stats for players who spend many games in Coors isn't ideal... but on the other hand I don't think we've seen any super "sacred" numbers (ie, HR/season, career hits, etc.) getting approached. Add in that both teams need to play in the same conditions and to me it's just one more home field advantage thing. You build your team with an eye to whether it will play well in your park because you play half your games there. You alter park conditions (long/short grass, harder packed or "softer" dirt) to the preferences of your players. I see Coors as no different.

Its crazy to me how much time has past and just how old I'm getting! 🙂

The Rockies are a "young" team and yet have been around for over 3 decades now. They haven't won it all yet, but they did make it to one World Series. Also lost in the NLDS three times, so they've had some measure of success. Only 9 winning season in their 32 (completed) season, but even in the bad years they were still often competitive. Only seven times prior to 2018 did they have a wpct lower than .450. They only ever finished below .400 once in that time... they first season.

In 2017 they made the playoffs but lost in the Wild Card. In 2018 they made it to the Divisional round but lost. After that peak they starting falling off... rapidly. In 2019 they won only 71 games... 20 fewer than the previous year. 2020 was covid... which is hard to put any statistical importance on... but they finished .388... their worst wpct ever up to that point.

2021 saw only a very slight improvement over 2019, winning 74 games. But then they dropped again in 2022 with 68 wins. 2023 was only 59 wins, 2024 was only 61. And now 61 wins seems like it would be an amazing accomplishment.

Last year we witnessed a record breaking season in terms of losses for the modern era of MLB (1901+). The Chicago White Sox lost 121 games. This topped the 1962 Mets who lost 120 games (the previous MLB record) as well as our own 2003 Tigers who lost 119 games (the previous AL record). If we look at winning percentage though the 2024 Sox were only the 5th worst team in the modern era. They finished 41 and 121, giving them a .253 wpct... this was better than the 1904 Senators (.252), the 1962 Mets (.250), the 1935 Braves (.248), and the 1916 Athletics (.235).

This year we may be witnessing a season to destroy all those others: The 2025 Colorado Rockies. As of May 28 the Rockies still having broken double digit wins. They are 9 and 47. The '24 White Sox, thru 56 games, were 15-41. The '03 Tigers were 16-40. The Rockies winning percentage right now is .161! More than 70 points LOWER than the worst modern era winning percentage. The Rockies are on pace to win just 26 games. That would be 136 losses. 15 more losses than the White Sox had last year.

To avoid topping the record 121 losses the Rockies would need to go 32-74 for the rest of the season. That doesn't seem like it should be that hard but 32-74 is a .302 winning percentage. That's nearly double the pace of winning vs. what they've done so far.

Working in their favor, both the '03 Tigers and the '24 Sox had a pretty good last month of the year. Because other bad teams are likely playing younger guys to see what they have and better teams might be resting stars to prepare for playoffs September can be a month to make up some ground. The White Sox went 10-15 in Sept last year, a .400 wpct. The '03 Tigers went 9-18 in September, a .333 wpct. But even a September boost seems unlikely to keep the Rockies from setting a new record in terms of losses and worst wpct of the modern era.

A few last notes:

• The Pythagorean W-L for the Rockies so far is 12-44. This is still a dismal .244 wpct and projects to only 35 wins and 127 losses.
• The Rockies have already had three 8-game losing streaks. This seems bad but it's actually a bit better than the Tigers did in '03. That year we had two 8-game, two 9-game, a 10-game, and an 11-game losing streaks. The Tigers clumped their wins more than the Rockies have so far. Four times we won back to the back games and we had three 3-game and one 4-game winning streaks. The Rockies have only had back-to-back wins once so far.
• About two weeks ago the Rockies fired their manager Bud Black, who was 7-33 (.175) on the season. Since then interim manager Warren Schaeffer has gone 2-14 (.125).

12 hours ago, Jason_R said:

The defense will be better because they won't have an IR list full of enough guys to make up a starting lineup that would be a top-fifteen unit in the NFL.

My hunch is that the offense will be less explosive but will do more to protect Goff. In retrospect, Ben Johnson did some auditioning for a head coaching job when he should have been focused on game context. 

Re: Defense: I agree that they should be better given healthier players, but there's also the potential drop off with a new DC so it might be a net zero change. Now I don't think there will be much of a drop off given that the new DC has been around the team, knows the players, and probably won't dramatically change the scheme. But there still will be differences so there is always a possibility of a negative effect due to the change.

Re: Offense: I'm concerned that there's a much bigger risk of a issues here as the new OC is coming from outside of the organization and there's at least some talk/rumors that he's not as run focused as we might like. We're still very talented offensively so I'm not expecting the team to fall off a cliff, but again... there will be differences even if Morton isn't as "run shy" as the scuttlebutt seems to think he might be.

Even if the "drop off" is only like 10% for both sides that still means a slight decrease in scoring and possibly a net zero improvement for the defense vs. end of last season. Combine that with a brutal schedule and that could be enough to see the Lions slip a bit and end up more in the 10-11 win area vs. 13-14 wins. Still a good season, but possibly not the best in the NFCNorth type of season... certainly not the best in the NFC.

On 5/22/2025 at 7:43 AM, Motor City Sonics said:

Why are Lions fans so stressed out?    

This is a great team.    

 

I dunno if I'd say I'm stressed out, but my concern resolves around a new OC and DC. I think the team is fine, as long as injuries don't stack up like they did last year. I don't think anything and recover from that many major injuries on defense, so getting those players back will be like a massive upgrade to the defense as it stood at the end of last season. 

But we're about to find out how much of the Lions great offense was Ben Johnson and how much was Dan Campbell. Time will tell.

Sorry, I know I said I was getting off the soap box, but just wanted to add some raw data because I'm sure one of the question will be: "Is there really a need to balance the playing field? How lopsided is it right now?" There's probably a million ways to answer that question but here's one. I looked back over the past 30 years for the number of teams each team has made it to the World Series. Given 60 teams played in the World Series, perfect distribution would say each team shows up twice in the past 30 years. OBVIOUSLY we're not going to see that because of MANY factors including that over just 30 series we're not going to see perfect distribution even if all other factors were equal. Still, for what it's worth, here are the numbers:

2 teams have five or more appearances: Yankees and Astros.
8 teams have 3 or 4 appearances
6 teams have 2 appearances
6 teams have 1 appearance
8 teams have 0 appearances

33.3% have MORE appearance then average
20% have exactly average
46.6% have LOWER than average

Instead of the expected bell curve that's higher in the middle, we have a upside down bell curve that's higher on the edges.

Just now, RedRamage said:

I 100% agree that this (and the rest of your post) are true, but I don't think it's precludes the idea of a cap/floor. Rather it further highlights the needs for a cap/floor along with better revenue sharing... at least in my humble opinion.

One one hand the Yankees and Dodgers (to pick on the usual suspects) should be lauded for building the following that they have. Granted, they've had the benefit of playing a large market, but so have the Mets and Angels, and they don't have have quite the following the first two teams do, so it's not just the large market that have made them successful. So yeah, again, on one hand it's hard to argue that they've been TOO successful and therefore should be punished by having to give some of their money to other teams.

On the other hand if MLB consisted just of the Yankees and the Dodgers (and maybe 2 or 4 other teams) it probably won't have nearly the following it has and those teams would have the fan following that they do. The Yankees and Dodgers need the other teams to play against. The YES network isn't going to be successful showing the Yankees playing scrimmages against themselves 162 times. So on the other hand I think it's very reasonable to say that the Yankees success (in terms of media revenue) are in a significant part because of the other teams in the league and therefore it's reasonable that they should have to share that revenue.

The debate, in my mind, is not IF, but HOW MUCH should be shared.

Next: Cap/Floor for baseball...

Again, I can see an argument saying that there shouldn't be a cap on how much a player can make or that we should penalize a team that does good marketing and therefore has more money to spend. And I can see some value in that argument.

However, we've seen salary caps be effective in leveling the playing field in other sports and I appreciate that aspect. If we have a contest to see how many balls we can throw into a bucket with the most times getting a ball in the bucket, if I have 100 balls to throw and you only have 10... I probably going to win the contest more of than not, even if I'm not as accurate as you. I feel the same applies towards sports. If my GM has a $300M payroll to work with, more often than not my team is going to be more successful than your team, who's GM only have $90M... even if your GM is better than mine.

Now, if we're going to set a cap and we're going to require sharing of media revenue, we also need to set a floor to ensure that the teams getting the benefit of the revenue sharing aren't just pocketing the extra loot. Is the floor the most effective method of ensure a club fields a competitive team? Probably not, and I'd be open to exploring other options (such as investment in player development, scouting, training camps in other countries, etc) but there has to be a clear and definable method to the other options, one that can be easily checked and verified by the league to again ensure the receivers to the revenue sharing aren't just pocketing the profits and not caring about the team they put on the field. A salary floor is one easy method to do this so I'd argue for that, at least until we can find a better method.

Okay, I'll get off my soap box now.

On 5/17/2025 at 8:22 AM, chasfh said:

That’s another reason against the salary cap/floors without idea: the amount of revenue generated by organizations is vastly different among one another.

I 100% agree that this (and the rest of your post) are true, but I don't think it's precludes the idea of a cap/floor. Rather it further highlights the needs for a cap/floor along with better revenue sharing... at least in my humble opinion.

One one hand the Yankees and Dodgers (to pick on the usual suspects) should be lauded for building the following that they have. Granted, they've had the benefit of playing a large market, but so have the Mets and Angels, and they don't have have quite the following the first two teams do, so it's not just the large market that have made them successful. So yeah, again, on one hand it's hard to argue that they've been TOO successful and therefore should be punished by having to give some of their money to other teams.

On the other hand if MLB consisted just of the Yankees and the Dodgers (and maybe 2 or 4 other teams) it probably won't have nearly the following it has and those teams would have the fan following that they do. The Yankees and Dodgers need the other teams to play against. The YES network isn't going to be successful showing the Yankees playing scrimmages against themselves 162 times. So on the other hand I think it's very reasonable to say that the Yankees success (in terms of media revenue) are in a significant part because of the other teams in the league and therefore it's reasonable that they should have to share that revenue.

The debate, in my mind, is not IF, but HOW MUCH should be shared.

3 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

The thing is, it's not just Ohtani. The Dodgers have an unlimited amount of money. If it doesn't work out, they eat the contract. You can't do that in the NFL. 

That's the part that I think people miss when comparing big vs. small markets. It's not just that you have enough money to sign the big names... it's that if you miss on them you're not handicapped for the next 5 years.

How many times over the years have we said something like: "Well, when player-X is off the books, hopefully Ilitch will be willing to spend more." Now I know this is an oversimplification, but there is truth to it.

7 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

what's fair to the players is to get a % cut of the gross revenue. That works in the NFL, but Baseball owners have never been willing to be transparent. But even that doesn't work until you have revenue equalization/sharing.

Agreed 100%.